Mozilla readying Firefox Home app for iPhone

Open-source software development initiative Mozilla announced it is poised to introduce Firefox Home, a free iPhone application enabling users to remotely access their desktop browsing history and bookmarks. The app also includes the Firefox Awesome Bar, which accelerates access to favorite websites by minimizing typing. Firefox Home is not a complete mobile browser, instead relying on the iPhone's native browser to open websites: "Firefox Home for iPhone is part of a broader Mozilla effort to provide a more personal web experience with more user control," writes Mozilla Labs product manager Ragavan Srinivasan on The Mozilla Blog. "For devices or platforms where we're unable to provide the ‘full' Firefox browser (either technically or due to policy), we aim to provide users with ‘on the go' instant access to their personal Firefox history, bookmarks and open tabs on their iPhones, giving them another reason to keep loving Firefox on their desktops." Srinivasan adds Mozilla will soon submit Firefox Home to Apple for release in its App Store.

Mozilla previously stated it does not plan to develop a full-scale Firefox mobile browser optimized for the iPhone platform. "Our understanding of browsers in the iPhone App Store is that a ‘full' web browser like Firefox that incorporates its own web rendering and JavaScript engines would be prohibited," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of product, in an April interview with FierceMobileContent.

For more on Firefox Home for iPhone:
- read this Mozilla Blog entry

Related articles:
Firefox, Bolt and NetFront don't plan to follow Opera to iPhone
Mozilla halts Firefox for Windows Mobile efforts
Mozilla extends Firefox for mobile to Nokia's Maemo