For the last two years, Mozilla has been working on a project called ‘Weave’ that enables users to sync their browser activities. Now at along last, Weave has hit version 1.0.
Weave is a Firefox add-on and unlike the bookmark sync that Chrome 4.0 users now enjoy, it’s not directly part of a default Firefox download – though I personally expect that it will be – eventually.
I’ve been a Weave user over the last two years and really what has changed is the fact that Weave now actually works, and works really well. Frankly I could not do my job without Weave today.
Synchronizing bookmarks is one thing, but with Weave you can also sync open tabs as well which is a very useful feature. Say you’re on a work desktop and then go home. How do you remember what you had open at work? (assuming you really want to work at home). With Weave that’s not a challenge at all.
The real key will be for mobile users, as mobile versions of Firefox start to proliferate. With Weave users will be able to move from desktop to mobile and back again in their browsing.
Originally the Weave plan was to develop a Mozilla Services back-end. With Weave 1.0 a basic level of that services back-end is now in place. It will be interesting to see how it evolves for Weave 2.0 and how Mozilla developers will (or won’t) integrate Weave with Firefox Lorentz.