With the release of the iPhone, many software companies are releasing iPhone versions of their applications. Even though you might not have an iPhone, there is still a chance that you can use them with Firefox’s sidebar.

Firefox’s sidebar is and odd place to load a web page, however if you manage your bookmarks, there will be an option to load any bookmark in your sidebar. The good news is that some iPhone applications can load and work in Firefox’s sidebar!

A good example I came up with was the Facebook iPhone application. Simply bookmark the link in Firefox, then go in and “organize your bookmarks”, highlight it and click the options button, then you’ll see the “load in sidebar” option. Click that and save it. Now, whenever you load the bookmark, it’ll pop open in Firefox’s sidebar.

I tried a few other applications too with varied results. Netvibes iPhone portal sort of works. Lots of possibility but it ends up loading items in the main window. goMovies is a bit big, but works and iZoho also has a few font sizing issues too, but basically works.

Now, I think most of the issues with iPhone apps in Firefox’s sidebar surround either exclusive Safari 3 features or just some CSS font settings.

What I’d really like to see is developers keep the Firefox sidebar in mind. Do a little Javascript to detect one or the other and throw up a good style sheet. A nice version of Netbives in my sidebar would be awesome or, even better yet, Google Reader. Unfortunately the Google Reader iPhone application is Safari 3 only.

If you give iPhone applications in your Firefox’s sidebar a try, let me know what works and what doesn’t. That way I can find more sidebar applications too.

Tags: facebook, gomovies, iphone, mac, netvibes, safari