mozilla

Mozilla on Windows Phone 7 – “We’re not going to bother.

July 10, 2010 | By Surur

Firefox is dead on Windows Phone 7

Christopher Blizzard, Director of Developer Relations and Open Source Evangelist at Mozilla spoke to Gizmodo about the future of their browser in the new order, where they are facing competition from Google on the desktop and mobile, and are also seemingly excluded from many mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Windows Phone 7.

While the interview only touches on Windows Phone 7, is is clear the open source browser project has no love lost for the new OS.

Noting that they were going to do Windows Mobile because it “really needed a good browser”, he felt the restrictions related to Windows Phone 7 was too cumbersome to make it worthwhile.

“(Microsoft) said, ‘You can use stuff in Silverlight if you want, but you have to come through our app store, and we get to veto.’ We’re not going to bother….”

He was not too impressed with IE Mobile 7 either.

“They’re gonna ship some version of IE, which is gonna be terrible.” He went on “The wonderful thing about the mobile web is the people like being able to use modern browser platforms and Microsoft’s gonna single-handedly gonna drag that back.”

Of course the slow progress of the browser on Windows Mobile has meant Mozilla lost any fanbase they may have had rooting for a Windows Phone 7 port, but it is still disappointing that they are not even expressing any desire to be on the platform, especially given Microsoft’s expressed willingness to bend the rules regarding native applications for significant players.

Read the full interview at Gizmodo here.

Via The Deranged Shaman, thanks Serge Francis for the tip

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Mozilla dropping mobile Firefox development for Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7

March 23, 2010 | By Surur

In a blog post Stuart Parmenter, Mobile Team Technical Lead, Mozilla Corporation, announced that the company will cease all development of Firefox for Windows Mobile.

Just like on Android prior to the release of the Native Developer Kit, the company blames it on the inability to develop native applications:

While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.

Mozilla will soon disable the builds and test automation, and will only return to further development if and when Microsoft opens up the Windows Phone platform. The move comes as another blow to Windows Mobile, which is rapidly entering dead man walking status.

Via Techie-buzz.com

Thanks Cristian Adam for the tip.

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Fennec Alpha 4 now available

February 19, 2010 | By Surur

Mozilla has announced a new Alpha for their Mobile Firefox product on Windows Mobile. The timing is opportune, as their project has been seen to be in doubt after comments by one of their executives suggesting they may wait till Windows Phone 7 is released.

New in this version is:

Improved interactions with the software keyboard
Fixed painting artefacts from panning
Faster .exe installer option
More responsive "fuzzy" zoom
Option to become default browser
Opening downloads from download manager fixed
Password echoing
Improved panning/scrolling performance
Improved start-up time
Numerous bug fixes
Improved painting performance
Improved UI polish
Improved kinetic panning with directional locking
Ability to scroll frames
Improved zooming support

The 10 MB cab can be downloaded, here.

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Pocketfox now Fennec’s new logo

November 8, 2009 | By Surur

Mozilla has announced the result of their Mozilla Creative Collective’s “Firefox Goes Mobile” design challenge, and reported the winner was “Pocketfox”, by Yaroslaff Chekunov.

Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.”

The official emblem of the upcoming mobile version of Firefox will be used as an avatar on social networking sites, on mozilla.com, on t-shirts and more.

Do our readers feel the logo is dynamic enough to represent something as important as a cross-platform mobile browser? Let us know in the comments.

Via Pocketpcthoughts.com

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FireFox weave released, syncs your browser sessions between your desktop and smartphone

June 29, 2009 | By Surur

Weave Sync 0.4 has just been released by Mozilla labs and now supports the new Fennec Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile. Weave Sync lets you take your Firefox experience with you to all your Firefox browsers. It currently supports continuous synchronization of your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs. For example:

Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers, so you can get to your favourite sites with just a few keystrokes
Continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on any of your Firefox browsers
Keep the same list of bookmarks on all of your Firefox browsers
Easily sign in to all your favourite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it’s hard to type in complex passwords)
Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers, so that only you can access your data

Weave 0.4 brings:

Preference syncing (including Personas)
Identity support (automatic login, including use of OpenID logins)
Better support for addons using Weave
Support for Fennec 1.0 beta 2.
Significant improvements in performance during startup and opening new windows.

Weave 0.4 can for Firefox 3.5 (the only supported desktop version) can be downloaded from here.

Via LifeHacker.com

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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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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 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.

5

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 for Windows Mobile progressing nicely

October 8, 2008 | By Surur

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News last week, Mozilla CEO John Lilly said, “The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.” At the time it was not clear which of the two development platforms, Windows Mobile or Linux would be getting the new builds.

Now, Mozilla developer Mark Finkle has revealed that, while the linux build is doing well and is in a more advanced stage of alpha testing, “Work on Windows Mobile has heated up quite a bit. We should be getting some Fennec builds for Windows Mobile soon.”

In a further post he said “Windows Mobile builds of XULRunner have progressed to the point where it can be built directly from the main Mozilla source tree. However, there’s a bit more work needed before we can start creating nightly builds.”

Hopefully progress will continue unabated, as I would love to see the innovative concept design for the software implemented on real Windows Mobile devices soon.

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Via windowsfordevices.com

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