Mozilla stops development of Firefox Home for IOS

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has ceased development of Firefox Home for IOS and removed it from the App Store.

Mozilla's Firefox Home was the firm's attempt to have a presence on Apple's IOS, where third party web browsers are few and far between. However after two years, Mozilla called time on Firefox Home and said it had provided "valuable insight and experience" with the operating system.

Mozilla recently announced it was ceasing active development of its Thunderbird messaging client and now the firm said it will divert resources from Firefox Home to other projects, though it didn't say which ones. As Mozilla cuts down on the number of projects, the source code for Firefox Home has been uploaded to Github with the outfit saying the code is free from any Mozilla trademarks and ready for independent development.

Mozilla's Firefox Home was effectively a landing application where users could use the firm's Awesome bar to search the web. The only problem is that IOS' Safari web browser can be used for much the same task. The firm said it will focus its IOS development activities on Firefox Sync.

Given that Mozilla has little hope of usurping Safari on IOS, its decision to cease Firefox Home development is a prudent choice. Perhaps Mozilla will use the extra resources from Firefox Home to maintain its six-week release schedule for its Firefox web browser. µ