14 DAY TRIAL // Weave, one of the biggest project over at Mozilla Labs, the organization's experimental arm, is getting closer to production level. The first step of the project, the bookmarks and settings sync add-on, has reached the beta stage with Mozilla Weave Sync 1.0 beta. This latest version is the culmination of a lot of work from dev team and packs all of the features introduced lately, along with higher level of polish. The main focus in this release has been on sync speed, a simpler interface, and making the whole experience more seamless.
Mozilla says the strong points of the new release are:
"Faster – using heuristics, Weave Sync computes an interestingness score to get you the most relevant data first. We have more details below. Simpler – a user interface that allows regular users to get up and running in a matter of minutes, while being flexible to accommodate advanced users. Unobtrusive – once it has been setup, Weave Sync works mostly in the background and when your computer is idle, without interrupting your regular Firefox experience.”
There are a couple of things to check before installing the new beta version. Weave Sync 1.0 beta does a full re-upload of all the data on all of the Firefox and Fennec instances you use. Normally, this shouldn’t be a problem unless you have no copy of the data stored online on any of the browsers. To make sure you don't lose it, first sync a browser to the data in the cloud and then install the latest version. Another small caveat is the fact that the sync process only works with other 1.0 versions, so all installs have to be updated to the beta.
Another thing you may notice, especially if you have a lot of sync data, is that not all of it will be available from the get go. This is because the incremental sync features introduced a couple of iterations back, which make for a smoother experience by retrieving the data it deems to be the most important first and using idle time to download the rest.
With Weave Sync 1.0 beta, the project is taking shape, but the final goal is still some way off, as Mozilla wants to make the browser completely connected to the cloud by integrating a number of web services. Sync just takes care of the settings and bookmarks and the team is now launching a new add-on for auto-login features which will be the focus of the project for the near future.
Mozilla Weave Sync 1.0 beta for Firefox is available for download here.