Popular:
 Building Resilient Systems on AWS: Learn how to design and implement a resilient, highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on AWS.

Detecting Mozilla App Install Capabilities with JavaScript

By  on  

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I'm riveting super excited about the forthcoming Firefox Marketplace. A marketplace where you can download desktop, tablet, and mobile phone applications based on web technologies, from a host with a record as awesome as Mozilla, is a dream come true. The initial install process is powered via a JavaScript interface within Firefox, and if you can detect if the user's current Firefox install has app capabilities, you can advertise your own app when they come to your website.

The JavaScript

Feature detection is the best way to discover if the user's browser can install Firefox Marketplace applications:

var canInstallMozApp = !!(navigator.mozApps && navigator.mozApps.install);

Marketplace features live within the navigator object under the mozApps property. The install method triggers app installation, so that's ultimately the method whose existence should be checked. If present, the user has app install capabilities and you know you can show a "download our app" advertisement or, if your app manifest is configured properly, you can install the app from your own site!

Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring
Request Metrics real user monitoring

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Filters

    CSS filter support recently landed within WebKit nightlies. CSS filters provide a method for modifying the rendering of a basic DOM element, image, or video. CSS filters allow for blurring, warping, and modifying the color intensity of elements. Let's have...

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    Dynamic Waveform Visualizations with wavesurfer.js

    Waveform images are an awesome addition to boring audio widgets.  They can be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing, allowing users to navigate audio visually.  I recently found wavesurfer.js, an amazing waveform image utility that uses to Web Audio API to create super customizable...

Discussion

  1. Alex

    I personally can’t find a use for it even if combined with OpenCl, WebGl in the not-so-distant future.

  2. Fred

    Nice! Potch has some boilerplate install code. I think it should use this snippet if it doesn’t already.

  3. Peter Fisher

    Nice, first I’ve heard of this. Now to think if an app. :-)

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!