Iphones won't get a full Firefox

OPEN SOURCE OUTFIT Mozilla won't be releasing a full-featured mobile version of Firefox for Apple's Iphone.

The news came out when Mozilla employee Ragavan blogged about the applications and the features of its cloud service, Firefox Home for the Iphone.

The INQUIRER reported in June that Mozilla submitted its Firefox Home application to Apple in the hope that it would be accepted into the fruit themed App Store. The free app let its web browser users carry their desktop history and bookmarks over to Apple's gadgets.

With Firefox in direct competition with Safari and Apple notoriously tight on Apps Store submissions it's a wonder that Apple accepted Firefox Home, but it did.

With Firefox Home having been given the green light for the Apps Store, we thought Mozilla was on a roll. But the team has pulled up short on a full Firefox web browser for the Iphone. The hopes of the open source community were that it would be able to tinker with a full featured Firefox browser on the Iphone. Alas, Mozilla was probably worried about getting its fingers burnt by dealing with Apple.

"People have asked about adding more browser-like features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone," Ragavan blogged.

Mozilla said that it is working on Blackberry and Symbian editions of Firefox Home. The Mozilla team already has versions of Firefox for Blackberry and Symbian devices so it hasn't previously had a problem transposing some of its technology onto mobile phone hardware. µ