HTML5 Desktop Apps Become a Reality with Firefox 15 and the Mozilla Marketplace

Mozilla is rather serious about web apps and it's been working on making its own platform a reality. The Mozilla Marketplace will soon go live for users and Mozilla is highlighting one of the potential uses of the app store and the web platform itself, describing how web apps can be "installed" locally, on Windows and Mac for now.

What this means is that web apps can run separately from the Firefox browser, or any other browser that may support them, but they'll still be relying on the browser underneath. "App shortcuts" on the dekstop or in the start menu have been around for ages, both Chrome and Firefox can do it, so it's not much of a big deal. But the ability coupled with the single-focus of most web apps, which do tend to be more like apps than websites, at least if they're designed properly, could be a big advantage, especially for less tech-savvy people who want to have all of their apps, no matter where they came from, look, feel and work the same.

The "Mozilla Apps Native Install Experience" has just landed in the Firefox Nightly channel, currently housing Firefox 15. "This functionality lets us install an HTML5 application with a native launching experience on Windows or Mac (Linux and Android coming)," Mozilla explained.

"One great way to do this is to simply list your app in the Mozilla Marketplace. The Marketplace will be open to the general public soon and developers can submit their app now at the Marketplace Ecosystem Portal. All you need besides an app to submit is a set of BrowserID credentials," it added. Developers can already submit apps to the Mozilla Marketplace, but the app store is not open to the public yet. The Marketplace already supports the native install feature, but if you want to offer the same on your own website there are some preparations to be made, which Mozilla details in its blog post.

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