Mozilla's Open Web Apps Project Gets an Update, Some Help from Google

Mozilla has provided an update on its Web Apps project. Mozilla Web Apps aims to provide an open, standard and common platform for web applications. When completed, it should allow developers to build applications that can be run in any browser, as long as others support the platform.

The latest update is still experimental and is available as a Firefox extension. There are several updates and improvements, but also two completely new features, Web Activities and App Discovery.

"We’re proud to release a new version of the experimental OpenWebApps add-on for Firefox that allows you to easily install and manage web applications in Firefox and aims to provide a tightly integrated app experience," Mozilla's Ben Adida wrote.

"These features are aimed at developers and adventurous users and give you an idea of what to expect in the future," he warned.

One of the new features in OpenWebApps is Web Activities. It's an interesting concept, once created in collaboration with the Google Chrome team.

Web Activities enable developers to build apps and services that can 'outsource' some of their features and integrate other apps or functionality in a simple and dynamic way.

For example, if you want to add web sharing to your app, you could go around and collect code snippets from all of the services that offer them, Google +1, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on.

You have to add quite a lot of these to make sure that users find their favorite ones. With Web Activities, or Web Intents as Google calls them, all you have to do is add a few lines of code that indicate that the app 'needs' share functionality.

The browser will recognize this and pick the service that the user has already selected to send along the share request. This can be expanded to anything, from image editing, to video uploads.

This project is still in the early stages, but once it gets enough support, both from browsers, Mozilla and Google are on board, and from websites, it could greatly expand the web's functionality.

Another new feature in OpenWebApps is App Discovery, which, as the name implies, allows the browser to discover whether a site you're visiting has an app available and offer you the possibility of installing it without having to search for it.

"This experiment is built around the notion that you should be able to discover interesting Web Apps as you browse the web. To try this, once you have installed the OpenWebApps add-on in Firefox, visit nytimes.com and you will see a prompt to install the awesome NY Times web app," Mozilla explained.

"Note: We have faked this for the NY Times site to give you a sense and idea of what the experience might be as more web sites add support for browser-based App Discovery," it said.