Firefox daddy Mozllla has released early code in its campaign to create a completely open alternative not only to Apple's app stores but also Google's fledging Chrome web store. Mozilla's Labs has delivered the first developer release of its Web Application project. The goal is to serve up web-based apps for any device and any …

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Monday 7th March 2011 10:30 GMT John Boyarsky

Is this really a good idea??

Ohhh yeah This is gonna be a GRAND success -- for MALWARE PUNTERS!

As soon as they get holdof this they can INSTALL A MALWARE store "deeply intergrated into" their browser.

**sigh** Will anyone ever learn?

The gravestone because this SHOULD be D.O.A.

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Monday 7th March 2011 10:31 GMT Andy E

Trojan? There's an app for that...

Given that the Android phones have been the target of poisoned apps from the official store with all their resources to check the apps, who's going to trust an app from a small outfit with limited resources to check whats actually being offered for download?

Just wondering.....

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1. Monday 7th March 2011 11:05 GMT Elmer Phud
  
  Is Moz the same as Google?
  
  I was under the impression that they were different companies until I started looking at the comments here.
  
  Is it AppleFanboi day today?
  
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Monday 7th March 2011 10:43 GMT Anonymous Coward

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Would be interesting to see what happens when Apple try to sue them into the ground.

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Monday 7th March 2011 10:43 GMT bojennett

Mozilla is wrong, of course

Quote: "Jay Sullivan, Mozilla vice president of mobile, announcing the project in May 2010, singled out the Apple model as being opposed to what Mozilla has in mind. Developers want app ubiquity for their software, he said."

Jay, no they don't. Developers don't care about "ubiquity". They care about making money. If you build a platform that allows developers to make money, they will port their code to it. If a developer can make a billion dollars porting their code their code to the back of bubble gum wrappers, they'll do it. On the other hand, nobody will port their code to some "ubiquitous" platform if they can't make money.

Would it be "easier" if they could code once and run everywhere? Sure. Has that ever happened? No. HTML5 is the new Java - the latest fantasy in write-once, run everywhere.

There are probably 5 people in the world who care about this concept. And none of them are developers. The rest could care less. I mean, how many times has Tetris been recoded to run on different platforms? Has the fact that it had to be recoded been a "problem"? Of course not.

I also find this whole concept of ubiquity hilarious. If I build an app for a desktop that I want to be "native", I would build it for Windows, Mac, and Linux. If I build it in "HTML5", however, I have to test it against MORE things - Chrome, Safari, Mozilla, a couple of IE's, and probably Opera. None of which support all the HTML5 features, and won't for a long time (especially since HTML5 isn't a fixed target). It would actually be harder to build an HTML5 app without massive amounts of if-thens to deal with all the browser crap. Which is the same amount of work as building native apps for the desktop.

Now, here is Mozilla with their "app model". OK. Great. Chrome also has an "app model", which is different. How is this ubiquitous, exactly?

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Monday 7th March 2011 10:44 GMT jonathanb

Favourites?

Is this any different from the current ability to bookmark a website?

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1. Monday 7th March 2011 10:58 GMT Elmer Phud
  
  yes
  
  yes, again
  
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Monday 7th March 2011 11:23 GMT Anonymous Coward

I may be missing something here

but isn't this a lot like the original web app model Apple unveiled with the iPhone, that everybody said was inadequate and forced Apple to release the SDK?

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Monday 7th March 2011 11:31 GMT ScissorHands

So, did WAC pass under the radar?

I heard these guys tooting their horn about the same thing LAST YEAR, and again at Barcelona last month. www.wacapps.net

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Monday 7th March 2011 15:26 GMT azimutha

A lose/lose proposition

What a waste of time and effort. This project completely misses the point that developers - if they want to provide something at no cost to the user - can either code into an existing website, provide through a plug-in such as Flash or Silverlight, or for free through any of the current app stores for mobile devices.

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