Firefox Home for iPhone, Firefox Sync see fixes

Updates to the Firefox Home app for iPhone and to the Firefox Sync add-on for Firefox (Windows|Mac) fix the top three problems users reported for each program, says Mozilla.

The new version of Firefox Home (1.0.1), a companion app for the Firefox browser on iPhone, now supports usernames with upper-case letters for logging in to the URL viewer.

It also inserts a help button on the log-in page that will link you to common troubleshooting tips. The final addition is a set of error notifications that Mozilla hopes will explain application errors with more clarity when they do occur.

The update hadn't appeared in the App Store on our iPhone at the time of writing.

Since Firefox Home is essentially an iPhone-flavored offshoot of the Firefox Sync service, Mozilla made some changes to that program a well. Firefox Sync 1.4.3 is now able to complete a first-time sync even if you're browsing in Private mode, a significant addition.

The update also corrects a problem with multibyte characters in passwords. Lastly, it adds a sync indicator on the interface to let you know your status, and how much time you have left to sync your history, bookmarks, and open tabs.

You can update Firefox Sync through the add-ons submenu in Firefox.

Firefox Sync stores data about your browsing history, bookmarks, and open browser tabs online. Firefox Home is the iPhone arm of the service that lets you access those URLs from your iPhone, as a way to save time searching over again for links to your favorite sites. Using Firefox Home on the iPhone requires you to first run Firefox Sync for the Firefox browser.

Keep in mind that Firefox Home isn't itself a browser, though it does use the Apple-approved WebKit viewer to display your stored URLs. You can also open those sites in the iPhone's default Safari browser.