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  > Chrome is the mobile browser that is built for web 
  > applications and sadly Firefox Mobile is not. And 
  > actually this has always been a difference in 
  > philosophy. It's why Chrome started with the one 
  > process per tab and with strong sandboxing on the 
  > desktop as well, Chrome being built for applications.

Looking forward, Mozilla is adopting this philosophy in Servo by targeting mobile first and foremost, as well as taking sandboxing seriously from the get-go: https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/667494515582758913

> taking sandboxing seriously from the get-go

I'm curious how that would work. I know the desktop Firefox will only - very gradually - move to a complete sandboxing architecture, because of the way it will break many add-ons.

But Firefox for Android already supports extensions - is it only the Chrome-like/WebExtensions-like extensions it supports now? Is that why it will be easier to move to a complete sandboxing system on mobile first?

Multi-process to isolate tasks, and whitelists for system apis to minimize the priviledge of each task. Servo has no back-compat concerns. It will be using browser.html -- no legacy XUL addons at all.

> like how it pops that magnifier on taps, preventing fat fingering

Zoomed View? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=663803

> It's also the best browser in terms of web standards implemented.

http://caniuse.com/#compare=firefox+45,chrome+49,and_chr+46,...

Looks pretty "even" to me? Mostly the things Google seem to be focusing on is things they can use in their services or that can use their already existing services as a back-end, for example speech synthesis.

> implements the Push and the Notifications API

Push API is available in Firefox Dev Edition¹·².

> Along with other features, like giving access to the phone's camera

What do you mean? This is available via the same API in Firefox.

> giving each website its own "window"

Think you could clarify what you mean with "window"?

1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/keep-pushing-it-with-the-w...

2: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Push_API

what is the problem with Add to Homescreen. Firefox Mobile does have it .

The first mobile browser I used and that delivered deeper integration for web apps was Safari on iOS. By including some meta tags in your HTML head, like apple-mobile-web-app-capable, viewport and apple-touch-icon, upon adding a shortcut to your homescreen it would use a high-res icon and then on opening it would hide the address bar, set the initial scale and even use a startup image. This would make it possible for web apps to pretend that they are apps.

This functionality is actually old, see here: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleA...

And of course, these are proprietary extensions to Safari, so since then a proposal for a standard happened and got implemented in Chrome. The way forward is to specify a JSON file containing a specification, called the app's manifest. I already mentioned it above, but see here: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2014/11/Support-fo...

Firefox Mobile on Android does not implement it. BUT, they have a very similar manifest for Firefox OS, but that is not compatible with the new W3C standard. I can't really blame them for Firefox OS, as they probably developed this format before the W3c specification, of which they were also a part of. See here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/Manifest

But yes, take a recent Android and try Add to Homescreen for say Facebook or Twitter. And compare the result. Yes, a shortcut gets added to your homescreen, with a low resolution icon and no integration whatsoever. Heck, sometimes it doesn't even use the normal favicon. My old iPhone 3GS was handling this better 5 years ago.

Their strategy right now is to implement new APIs meant for web apps, including the above mentioned manifest, but only for privileged applications, packaged as a zip file and only installable via the Firefox Marketplace, an effort part of Firefox OS. And even though that's cool and you can install and run some of those apps on Android and probably on the desktop as well, that's not the Web.

And I'm not even asking for much. For my needs all I want is high-res icons, as I've got a resolution of 2560×1440 on my Nexus and those icons that Firefox adds are freaking horrible.

I thought the way forward was via the ServiceWorker framework [1] - the most important part of a webapp based mobile app is definitely notification.

I mean - I dont mind the low res icon, though I dont receive notifications.

[1] http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/service-worker/introd...

Well yeah, that was partially my point, Android Chrome already has at least partial support for service workers along with the Push and Notification APIs. On my Android I've been receiving Facebook's push notifications through Chrome and works well.

Firefox is my default on Android, but I do hope to see some progress on these, as I personally prefer web apps to native ones - more portable, not subject to a walled garden, plus the browser is the ultimate sandbox.