A few weeks after launching the first web browser for Amazon Fire TV devices, Amazon has now announced that users have two options.

You can still use the company’s own Silk Browser, which now supports all Fire TV devices. But you can also now opt for Mozilla’s Firefox browser for Fire TV.

Both are available as free downloads from the Amazon Appstore, and both are optimized for TV-sized displays and remote control-based input.

Up until recently the only way to access online content with a Fire TV was to install the appropriate app. Adding web browser support means that users can now visit news or social media sites that might not otherwise be available, as well as online video sites.

Silk will show Microsoft’s Bing website the first time you load it, but the next time you launch the app it will show the last site you were visiting when you closed Silk.

Firefox has more of a start page design, with popular sites pinned to the start page, as well as a search box.

Both browsers let you use a Fire TV remote control’s media playback buttons to play, pause, fast forward, or rewind videos on supported sites (including YouTube), and they also both let you use the direction buttons to control an on-screen cursor for mouse-style navigation.

One odd thing about the addition of a Firefox app for Fire TV? It’s the only version of Firefox in the Amazon Appstore. You can’t currently install Firefox on an Amazon Fire tablet unless you sideload it.

via Amazon and Mozilla

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3 replies on “Amazon Fire TV devices now support Firefox web browser”

  1. I currently have a Chromebox hooked up to my big screen TV. I use it with a wireless keyboard. I like it a lot but I’ve noticed that there haven’t been any new Chromebox models released by manufacturers in a long time. I’m thinking Chromeboxes probably aren’t selling well. So when my Chromebox dies I might need to find a different device to hook up to my TV to surf the web. Does anybody have any suggestions? How does Chrome on the Nvidia Shield android TV box compare to the Firefox browser on Fire TV? I’m sure Chromebooks outsell the Chromeboxes but it’s not really practical to have a Chromebook hooked up to the TV all the time. And I prefer a device with ethernet. Would I be better off buying a little mini computer box compared to a Fire TV or android TV? I’m a novice with computers which is why I bought a Chromebox (because of the simplicity and automatic updates). Brad do you have any suggestions? Are there any new Chromeboxes in the pipeline for 2018? My main concern is the web browser I don’t really care about the other apps.

  2. Hmmm so it seems…
    * No bookmarks and no Sync so you need a keyboard to type URLs.
    * No Add-ons.
    * I wonder about JavaScript support.
    Seems half-baked to me.

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