Firefox for iPhone? No, but almost...

The only thing better than having a browser in your pocket, is having the all of the bookmarks, browser history and the open tabs from your desktop or notebook browser in your pocket as well.

Now you can! Mozilla Labs has worked up a nifty iPhone App that uses their Weave Sync technology to put what’s happening on your computer into your phone. While the Firefox and the Weave Sync add-in is available on the Nokia N900 and coming soon to other mobile platforms, Apple’s ban on allowing alternate browsers for the iPhone means Firefox won’t be available any time soon on the iPhone, iPad Touch or the forthcoming iPad.

But the Weave Sync application nicely sidesteps the browser ban by taking your computer’s browser history and bookmarks and making them available in search-friendly form on your iPhone. Select the link you want and you can either preview it in Weave Sync, open it in Safari, or email it. There’s also a search function that’s almost as good as having a real Firefox Awesome Bar in your iPhone.

Sadly, you can’t get the Weave Sync app in the iTunes App Store yet. If you have the iPhone SDK on your Mac, you can grab the source code for it, and compile it yourself. It’s quick and easy, so you’ll be up and running is less than 10 minutes.

If you don’t have the SDK, there’s a free iPhone App that is in the App Store and might help. It’s called Ad Hoc and it will let you send the UDID (unique device ID) from your iPhone or Touch to a friend who does have the SDK so he or she can compile a copy that will work on your device. In most cases you’ll find the Ad Hoc app works better if the message includes an offer to meet at a local pub and buy a beer or two.

If you’re a Palm WebOS user, you might want to check the status of the experimental Weave Sync client for WebOS. As developers start to play with the new Weave APIs, expect to see more great things happen.