Mozilla this week released the first beta for its browser data synchronization service, Weave 1.0.
I’ve been tracking Weave for nearly two years now and it sure has been a long and winding road for this interesting project to get close to it’s 1.0 release.
At its core, Weave is services backend. Initially the services are all about basic browser data synchronization with support for bookmarks, history, passwords, tabs, add-one and preferences.
So yeah, it’s more than just a del.icio.us knockoff.
With the Weave 1.0 beta, Mozilla developers note that the new release, “…marks a significant step towards making Weave Sync a production quality add-on.”
Aside from being more stable and usable (in my own limited usage so far), the 1.0 beta includes some functional improvements as well. For one, data is now backed up via an incremental sync behavior. Basically that means the system can sync data more intelligently and in chunks instead of sucking up all of your local system resources.
From my perspective it is critical that Mozilla gets Weave 1.0 up to full release status sooner rather than later at this point. Looking at the competitive landscape, bookmark sync is part of latest Google Chrome builds and it is a compelling feature to have.
Right now Weave is an add-on to Firefox, but I would also hope that sooner rather than later it gets baked into the mainline of Firefox development. Having an add-on directly integrated into Firefox will no doubt increase the adoption and perhaps the practical utility of Weave.