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Mozilla on Thursday launched a developer preview of its Web application platform, a more distributed version of what Google is doing with its Chrome Web Store.
Web applications are simply Web sites with an accompanying configuration file. This file, the manifest, contains extra information necessary to install the Web app, which in some instances may make it available when there’s no network connection.
Google’s Web app specification makes a distinction between installable Web apps and hosted Web apps. The former rely on Google Chrome Extension APIs and only run in the Chrome browser. The latter are simply what we know today as Web sites and they can be accessed by typing the appropriate URL into one’s Web browser.
Mozilla’s scheme differentiates between published applications and bookmarked applications. The former rely on Open Web App APIs. The latter are just Web sites, what Google calls hosted apps.
These two approaches are not quite compatible, though efforts are being made to make them more so. Google Chrome Web apps are only available from the Chrome Web Store and can only be installed in the Chrome browser. Mozilla Open Web apps will be available from anyone who bothers to set up a Web store using Mozilla’s specifications and can be installed in any compatible browser.