Firefox 7 Gets an ‘Appcenter’ – But Only in China

The recently-released Firefox 7 browser has a fun feature that’s unique to China – a web apps panel called Appcenter. It’s developed by Mozilla China’s engineers at their Beijing HQ and doesn’t appear in international versions of the browser.

Firefox’s Chinese Appcenter is quite like the Google Chrome web apps homepage that houses all your preferred web apps – whether they’re games, or web services. But the Firefox Appcenter is more like a catalog – there’s no need to download. It opens in a pinned tab, and can be kept open through your entire browsing session, if you wish.

Last time we chatted with Mozilla China, earlier this summer, it explained the many localization efforts it has devised, such as promoting the browser on-campus. The team also admitted it makes some custom China features for Firefox, such as the start-page that appears whenever a new tab is opened.

Pictured above is the Firefox Appcenter page that’s unique to China. The three tabs on the left show the entire web app catalog, your favourites, and your recently-opened ones. You’ll notice that two of the featured games are web-based versions of Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies. Clicking any web app opens it in a special Firefox box, as you’ll see with this pool game:

Most of the other icons/links are not actually specially-made HTML5 web apps, but simply web pages or Flash games which load in that box. It’s not quite the Chrome Web Store which features a larger number of unique HTML5 apps.

There’s a chance that the Firefox Appcenter will roll-out globally – but don’t hold your breath. The Mozilla China-made start-page that I mentioned earlier first appeared in Firefox 6, but still hasn’t rolled-out globally. Likely, both will remain as localized features. If the Appcenter goes global, then it’ll be made by Mozilla US.

If you want to take some of these China-only features for a spin, you can download the Mozilla China version of Firefox.