fennec

Mobile Firefox gets shown off

March 18, 2009 | By Surur

While the Windows Mobile version has hit a bit of a snag, the version of the Nokia N810 seems to have come on great, and the Mozilla team is readying a beta for the device soon. This video below shows the app in action, and it looks pretty good.

The latest news from the Windows Mobile Fennec team is that they have sorted out their memory allocation issues and are just about ready to move ahead. They have also implemented GPS and telephone dialler support.

Hopefully the Windows Mobile version can now also move full steam ahead and add to the already large library of great Windows Mobile browsers.

Via WMExperts.com

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Fennec gets beta Weave implementation

February 24, 2009 | By Surur

Weave is a feature by the Firefox team that will allow you to see what tabs was last open in the last browser you used, and be able to open at the browser you are using at the moment.

This is particularly useful for mobile devices, meaning you cna continue reading on your handset what you read on your desktop, and vice versa when you arrive at your destination.

An early implementation of this feature has now reached Fennec, allowing a user to see a list of tabs open on another browser and open them on your Fennec browser on your handheld.

The UI is currently a bit rough, but this will be improved soon. The developer is also looking at synchronizing thumb nails instead of only text, but this has so far not been implemented.

Fennec beta to come in summer, have bookmark cloud sync feature

February 15, 2009 | By Surur

Brad Lassey, lead developer of the Fennec browser for Windows Mobile has been interviewed by WMExperts and has dropped some hints of what’s to come in the near future.

When asked how Fennec would compete against incumbents like Opera Mobile and Safari, Brian said: “The first is to bring users the same level of web compatibility, security and ease of use that has made Firefox so successful.”

Some features that will be present in the beta version of the browser, which will be feature complete and come some time this summer will be the same “awesome bar that was introduced in Firefox 3. In Fennec it will be even more useful because of the typing it saves the user.

Another feature will be the ability to sync the users history bookmarks and open tabs between all of their desktops, laptops and mobile devices. This feature, called Weave, will allow one to start researching something on the desktop, continue on your smartphone, and then return right back on a third device where you left off on your smartphone.

Of course Firefox’s biggest ace in the hole has always been its extension support, and Fennec will support the same extension mechanism as Firefox, allowing developers to extend its functionality and users to customize their experience.

Brad also spoke of the Mozilla Fennec Team’s larger ambitions. They aim to develop the browser as a development platform for mobile devices, much like WebOS uses browser technologies for its own applications. At the same time specific mobile functionality, such as geolocation and phone control, will also be exposed to the developers, making for a powerful environment.

Read the full interview at WMExperts here.

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REAL Fennec pre-alpha finally released

February 11, 2009 | By Surur

A week after first rumoured, but better late than never, the real pre-alpha release (but hopefully more stable than the leaked version) has been released by Mozilla.

The cab installer can be downloaded from Mozilla, but is still very much targeted at the HTC Touch Pro, meaning the graphics will look odd on a non-VGA screen, and text entry is impossible without a hard keyboard.

The pre-alpha does not support automatic updates and extensions at this point, but enthusiasts are encouraged to keep their eye on the Mozilla blog for the latest builds.

Fennec on Video

January 31, 2009 | By Surur

Pocketnow has managed to keep Firefox Mobile running long enough to make a 3 minute video of the app in action.

While the UI appears nice the app still looks slow and unresponsive. Hopefully this will improve rapidly in the coming months

Fennec leaks early – falls over like a drunked sailor

January 30, 2009 | By Surur

Fuzemobility has posted up a link to a cab of the FireFox Mobile browser for Windows Mobile. It is not known if this is the version that will be released next week, but so far David K from FuzeMobility is not particularly impressed:

So what can I tell you about the leaked version? It is NOT the beta version scheduled for release. How do I know that? It lacks any form of stability. It is a whopping 23megs, requires a soft reset after installation and installs into the Games folder (which is oddly appropriate since navigating a webpage without a crash is a game). As of now, the load times are mediocre and responsiveness is questionable BUT we can still learn a few things about it. It is VGA and as we’ve seen with some other browsers the font is really really tiny. The keyboard does not automatically pop-up (even the keyboard icon does not come up automatically). You need to begin typing with the physical keyboard and then the onscreen keyboard may appear (this may be a problem for Diamond users unless they set a physical key to toggle the onscreen keyboard). And the default is to load the mobile version of the website (not the full version).

If you are not put of too much download the cab from Mozilla here.

See full-sized screenshots and read more at Fuzemobility here.

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Firefox Mobile coming to the Touch Pro next week?

January 27, 2009 | By Surur

WMExperts reports that Mozilla is close to releasing a first public release of the Fennec, the Firefox Mobile browser, on the Windows Mobile platform.

According the the notes from their weekly meeting, the release is just awaiting the code being signed of by one or two members of the team.

We are targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February, targeting the HTC touch pro.

We are two patches away from the meta goal of building from trunk. The tools changes have review from dougt, and are waiting for review from ted, who has promised review by the end of the week. NSPR changes are waiting for review from Nelson, who asked for and received a patch against NSPR trunk

Its likely the release will be far from bug-free and polished, but progress seems to be occurring apace, and we will hopefully soon have another contender in the now crowded Windows Mobile browser space.

First build of Fennec for Windows Mobile caught on video

January 14, 2009 | By Surur

We have seen the new Mozilla Mobile browser Fennec released for the Nokia Linux tablet and even for the Windows desktop,but so far we have never seen the browser actually in action on the Windows Mobile platform.

Open source whiz Gnubeashie has however managed to build the browser from the early source code and published this video of the software running in the Windows Mobile 6.1 emulator.

The user interface is functional but not particular pretty, but this is because it is just a test container for the renderer, rather than any indication of the final UI. Of note is that rendering is pretty good and that the code runs pretty well for running in the notoriously slow emulator.

At present the code is not available for download yet, but hopefully this will change soon. We can never have enough browsers to play with, can we?

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Firefox Mobile released for Windows, get an early taste

October 17, 2008 | By Surur

While Firefox Mobile for Windows Mobile has not been released yet, one can get an early taste of the browser in action by running the desktop emulator version, which can be downloaded here.

GSMDome has done just that, and has recorded this video of the application in action.

As can be seem from the video, the rendering is pretty good. However in my experience, while double tap zooming works OK, there seems no way to do variable zooming as in Opera Mobile.

Read more about the release and download the emulator here.

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Firefox Mobile on Windows Mobile scored 88/100 in Acid 3 browser test

October 11, 2008 | By Surur

In a rather impressive debut, Firefox Mobile, which has not even entered alpha release yet, already scored 88/100 in the Acid 3 web-standards test (wikipedia). This test measures how standards compliant a web browser’s rendering engine is, and therefore how accurately it will be able to display complex web pages.

For comparison, the iPhone 3G browser only scores 74, wile making a complete hash of the rendering of the test, and the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser scores a lower 71 (but however renders the web page much more accurately than the iPhone browser).

With results this good, and also reports that browsing is pretty past, I cant wait for this new entrant to arrive in the now-crowded Windows Mobile browser arena.

See Brad Lassey’s blog to follow the latest developments.

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Mobile Firefox – now running on Windows Mobile

October 10, 2008 | By Surur

The picture is not pretty, but what it represents is – Mozilla running in the Windows Mobile emulator, rendering a web page.

The new version of Firefox mobile, code-named Fennec, is already running on the Linux-based Nokia N810 tablet, but early released on the Windows Mobile platform will occur “within the next few months”, according to Jay Sullivan, Mozilla vice president of mobile.

Follow the progress of Firefox on Windows Mobile on Brad Lassey’s blog here.

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Firefox Mobile developer asking for help

October 3, 2008 | By Surur

Brad Lassey, the developer of my favourite up and coming alternate browser, is asking for a bit of advice regarding the Windows Mobile Emulator:

I want to run a debug build of fennec on my windows mobile emulator. I have been able to do this by “mounting” my object directory as a shared folder. Unfortunately I’m seeing IO errors which I’ve read could be due to the way the emulator maps in the “storage card.”

So now I’m trying to deploy fennec and xulrunner to the Program Files folder through visual studio. Unfortunately the emulator images provided by microsoft only have 10-20mb (depending on how you launch them) of free storage space, so the deploy fails.

I’m hoping some one out there has a work around. One option would be to edit the emulator configuration in some seemingly undocumented way. Another could be to download different images. Most actual consumer devices have more than enough internal storage (the HTC Touch Pro has 512Mb), and I seem to remember seeing device specific images at some point. Any help would be appreciated though.

I am sure amongst our very competent readership (remember 75% of us are supposed to be powerusers ) there is some-one who has solved this problem before. Please drop Brad a line and help us get another great desktop browser on Windows Mobile.

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