Mozilla unfurls first mobile Firefox
'Fennec' on Maemo
Mozilla has officially released the first mobile Firefox, a condensed version of the popular open-source browser that runs on Nokia's Maemo platform.
Codenamed 'Fennec,' Firefox 1.0 for Maemo was previously available only as a beta. Mozilla calls this the first mobile web browser to accomodate add-ons - long a staple of the Firefox desktop browser. More than 40 add-ons are already available for the new mobile platform, including AdBlock Plus, the most famous of Firefox extensions.
The inaugural mobile Firefox also offers Mozilla's Awesome Bar, a way of quickly returning to sites you've visited in the past; the new Weave Sync tool, for synchronizing bookmarks and other Firefox settings across multiple machines; and, yes, those familiar Firefox tabs.
Two days ago, when it pushed out a third release candidate for Firefox mobile 1.0, Mozilla disabled support for an Adobe plug-in, saying it had "degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn't meet our standards." Instead, the open sourcers urge you to install a YouTube Enabler add-on that will at least let you watch Googlevideos on the browser.
The new browser runs on Maemo 5, which means your only smartphone option is the Nokia N900. It will also run on the N810 internet tablet. You can download the browser here.
Mozilla is currently alpha testing a version of Fennec for Windows Mobile, and it has prototyped Firefox browsers for Google's Android platform. But it has no intention of building anything for the iPhone. Apple, you see, doesn't allow interpreted code on the Jesus Phone, and Mozilla won't waste time trying to put Firefox where it's "not wanted." ®
COMMENTS
microB better than firefox?
Ive had an n900 for about a month now and the first thing I did was install the firefox beta. After using that for a while I wasn't impressed with the overall speed and initially blamed the hardware. Then after trying the built in browser (microB) I realised the it was just FF that was slow...fair enough it was beta. I was delighted to see the update a few days ago and it is definitely faster but microB still has the edge and seem to handle flash remarkably well. Bring on chrome mobile!
Silverlight - it doesn't matter what it is
I think Silverlight got in because people, the majority... that are a bit "not clever", would install it regardless of whatever it is (even if its a virus, which is the main way people get infected).
He did
Steve DID say that - Flash is not on the iPhone because it's a buggy, poorly-written CPU hog. And now it's not on Mobile Firefox, either, and rightly so.
That's the Nokia N900
Not the "N990" as typo'd in the article.
It's a wonderful device, with full multi-tasking, a high res screen, and much more(http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/). There's a good wiki of detailed information at http://wiki.maemo.org, and a very active community at http://talk.maemo.org. In the community there is a lot of impatience, as the software doesn't *currently* use the hardware to full advantage.
Having said that, my N900 has displaced my Nokia E71 and the iPlayer use on my iPod Touch, leaving only the Kindle and Read it Later apps and DRM media on the iPhone as significant reasons why I need to keep the iPod/iPhone device...
It's not cpu...
The N900 already has a browser based on Mozilla code, and it supports flash just fine. It even runs adblock, jand it has for far longer than the N900 has been around. Granted adblock made my N810 so slow that I couldn't use it at all, but it would run. Now I just use a proxy that filters based on the adblock rulesets, and I've got the best of both worlds.
Basically none of the other browsers I've tried on my N900 or N810 have been able to compare to MicroB, either on speed or touch interface usability, and Firefox is no exception/
