Next Up For Firefox: Instant Sync

Originally launched as an add-on for Firefox 3.5, Sync was developed to give Firefox an edge in the browser platform to bridge traditional desktop with mobile devices. Eventually, it became one of the big new features in Firefox 4, but Sync was not perfect and even a bit late to the party. Instant will be the first major revision of this feature and promises to give Mozilla the edge it promised more than a year ago.

 

Revolutionary as it may have been, Sync was really failure due to its complex set-up procedures and time consuming Sync process. Not only did Syncing itself take considerable time, but every time you use a new password or bookmark a new page, you have to manually re-sync Firefox. If you want your newly synced data to appear on another computer or mobile device, then you have to follow the same procedure on those devises as well.

Unfortunately for Mozilla, Sync has not been worth people’s time and aggravation so far. Even when it was working as intended, it was still faster to just type in your password or visit your would-be bookmarked page in the traditional way via the URL bar. Compared to Chrome’s Sync, Mozilla’s version is simply way too clumsy.

However, Mozilla, which got a lot of complaints regarding the new feature, has been working on a fix for Sync. Firefox 5 was marketed with a better Sync feature, easier setup and more responsiveness. Still, the biggest problem remains and you have to do more work to sync your devices than just use them separately. Firefox 5 had a lot of features planned out for it and the release did not exactly pan out as expected, at least not from the user’s perspective. While it was a great release to stabilize their core product and signify the success of the new fast release cycle, Firefox 5 was a disappointment when it came to new features, or revamps of old ones, like Sync.

Sync wasn’t forgotten about, but pushed back a version or two. Sync is yet another item to add to your ever growing list of why Firefox 7 is going to be the best version Firefox yet: “Instant Sync” is on track and chugging along just fine and should be here in time for that version of Firefox sporting the retro biblical number 7.

Instant Sync will work by automatically syncing new passwords and bookmarks to the sync server as they are created – in the background. No more going through menus or clicking buttons, no more waiting for synchronization to finish. In short: Sync should just work. What about your other devices? They should sync on startup, when you first launch Firefox and hopefully without slowing down the browser’s startup time anymore.

Syncing will also work during a browser version: Let’s say you decided to take a break from reading news on your smartphone and instead chose to switch to Angry Birds. Assuming you played for long enough to prompt Firefox to automatically go into idle mode, a sync progress will triggered when you return and should deliver anything new you got while you were playing.

Clearly, this would work better if you were doing work on your PC at the time instead of playing games, but you get the picture. The same idle function exists on the desktop version of Firefox as well, so if you use multiple PCs and you switch between them, they should always be fully synced.

While Instant sync is still several weeks away from the standard user, you can try it now with Firefox 7 Aurora build or Firefox 8 Nightly. However, keep in mind that you will need those Aurora and nightly versions on all the devices you want to keep in Instant Sync. There will be no more excuses to not use Sync as Instant Sync functions the way it was always meant to. This time it should be the great feature Mozilla promised all the way back for Firefox 4.

Michael Rabinovsky in Products on July 12