When building apps for Firefox OS, developers use modern Web tools like HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to deliver apps with near native performance on mobile devices. Now Mozilla helps those self same developers bring their Firefox OS apps to other platforms.

A while back, Mozilla introduced a brand new technology called Open Web Apps that might help developers bring HTML5 apps to platforms like Android, Windows and OS X. Worthwhile part was that these apps will require no additional development as Mozilla’s tools would automatically convert the HTML5 app right into a native app upon being downloaded to a non-Firefox OS platform.

Here’s a video demo that shows how an app built for Firefox OS is automatically converted right into a native app on Android, Windows and Mac OS X.

Mozilla notes that privileged apps may even seamlessly install from the Firefox OS marketplace to an Android device. Similar to within the Google Play store, the app will ask for various permissions upon being installed. All of that is accomplished with none further code being written.

So, what about Open Web Apps on iOS? For the time being, that’s unimaginable as Open Web Apps requires a platform that supports Gecko, Mozilla’s Web rendering platform. The non-profit doesn’t, however, that it’s working with Cordova to permit Open Web Apps packaged by Cordova to run on iOS. You will read more about that here.

The above video demo can have you itching for a local app experience in your Open Web Apps, but Mozilla isn’t quite ready yet. At this time, it only supports hosted, unprivileged apps on desktops using Firefox 16 or newer, and mobile apps on Android via Mobile Firefox Aurora. Mozilla notes that the native app experience isn’t available on Android just yet, nonetheless it should hit Mobile Firefox Nightly in December.

[Image: Mozilla Hacks]