Mozilla Unveils Platform Neutral Apps Marketplace for HTML5 Developers

Aiming to deliver technology-agnostic apps store to developers building apps using HTML5, Javascript, CSS and similar web technologies, Firefox web browser creator Mozilla (News - Alert) unwrapped a platform neutral Apps Store at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, according to the global online tech publication The Register (News - Alert). As per the report, Mozilla is planning to make the web apps store open. And for that, it is asking Microsoft, Google, Apple and other developers to start coding for its technology-agnostic apps store.

As per the report, the non-profit Mozilla Foundation has revealed that the platform-neutral apps store, which is part of the company’s 2012 roadmap, will open in June. In addition, wrote The Register reporter Gavin Clarke, “The Marketplace will mean ‘write once, deploy anywhere’ for web apps – ‘anywhere’ being any HTML5-capable device or operating system.”

According to the Register, the Mozilla Marketplace is founded on the company’s Web Platform and Apps/WebRT that promises to deliver networking, layout, programming, identity and a chrome-free and browser-independent installation and runtime environment. “It will use existing rendering engines such as Mozilla's Gecko and WebKit that are used by Google’s (News - Alert) Chrome and Apple's Safari on iOS as well as on Google’s Android and Amazon's Kindle Fire browser,” wrote Clarke.

Lately, the trend, driven by Apple (News - Alert), is to create app stores that are based on a closed proprietary platform with applications that will run only on the vendors mobile devices. Mozilla, a champion of the open Web, wants to change that.

According to Mozilla, wrote Clarke, closed web stores mean more cost and time for developers, whose apps must be tweaked and re-worked for different platforms. Explaining its forthcoming Marketplace, Mozilla said, “The nature of the platform will massively reduce the cost of creating, versioning and maintaining applications, enabling a truly open, standards-based web that advances opportunity and innovation for all, ” wrote Clarke.