It's no big secret that Mozilla's Firefox OS has had quite a tough time gaining market traction. Despite this, Firefox OS development has trudged along, with the Google Nexus 5 recently receiving highly functional nightly builds and Sony contributing to the OS's development. Now, Mozilla hopes to bring Firefox OS (or at least its applications) to more users by allowing its applications to run alongside traditional Android apps on Android-powered smartphones.

For those who are unfamiliar, Firefox OS apps are quite similar to Chrome apps on the desktop. Rather than being built with more traditional programing languages, Firefox OS apps are built with open Web technologies and APIs. And now, as of Firefox for Android 29, Mozilla has extended this ecosystem over to Android.

Provided you have Firefox for Android 29 installed, Firefox OS apps can be managed and summoned just like any other application. This means that you can install, update, and uninstall these apps just like traditional Android apps. They will also show up in your App Drawer and Recent Apps lists, just like you'd expect from standard apps.

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Are you a developer working on apps using open Web technologies, or is the performance simply not there yet for what you're thinking of developing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and don't forget to head over to our web app development forums.

[Source: Mozilla Blog]