Mozilla Open Web Apps

[Michiel de Jong]

Hi!

In http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20110721 Brendan Eich explains (if you read between the lines) how web apps (including Mozilla Open Web Apps) are important for keeping mobile devices free from monopolizing control by Apple and Google. I think that makes a lot of sense. Firefox could become something like PhoneGap. I mean, he doesn't say it that way (he doesn't mention PhoneGap), but he says some interesting things about how Mozilla can do important things on mobile phone platforms that may be more revolutionary than what we think of when we hear the word 'browser'.

Right now, Mozilla Open Web Apps is still not something people really use in production a lot, but I think we, if anyone, should be at the forefront of where the web is going with the apps we build. It's also largely compatible with Chrome web apps. To start with, we should always include an appcache manifest as well as a web app manifest. I'll try to write up a howto about this. As part of the 'quality control' thing, we can start with peer-to-peer app publishing where we all just publish apps we are working on, and then publishing a sort of 'app channel' of apps which we have tested and we want people to see as 'products' that come out of the project as a whole, as 'app of the week' or something like that.