In a recent interview with Gizmodo, Christopher Blizzard, Director of Developer Relations and Open Source Evangelist at Mozilla spoke about the future of their browser in the modern Mobile browser wars.
Firefox which used to be backed by Google, is now facing direct competition from them on desktop and mobile in the form of Google Chrome. Mozilla who never got to releasing a client for Windows Mobile ( Fennec had some beta and alpha clients floating around ) while the OS was doing well for all those years is now blaming Microsoft for the restrictions on WP7 !!!
Fennec is built on the same browser engine as the desktop Firefox 3.6 with some extensive under the hood work to optimize for mobile. These key design principles are at the heart of the browsing experience: minimize typing, let the Web have center stage, and personalize your browser, to name a few. Fennec 1.1 alpha 1 for Windows Mobile includes some of your favorite features including the Awesome Bar, Weave Sync, add-ons, and Location-Aware Browsing. In this video they show you some of these features , the app is evolving out to be a great new browser dont you think. Syncing Tabs from Desktop looks like a fantastic feature.
The Mobile version of the Firefox browser could be days away from getting launched. The open source software is going through final testing and could be released before the end of the year. The mobile browser, also known as Fennec, will be able to sync with the desktop model. Any web pages open in a user’s desk top browser will automatically open in the mobile version. At the end of the working day you can walk away from your computer and keep on going on your phone, It encrypts all of the information and sends it back through the cloud between your desktop and mobile.
They are saying that a RC version of the Browser will be coming very soon. the final build of Windows Mobile version of the browser will be out early next year. There can be a release candidate next week and if all goes well a (final) version out in the next few weeks ( Not sure if this will be a Nokia only release or a Windows Mobile version ), and Mozilla has begun working on an Android version.
After a month of their release for Alpha 1, Mozilla is back with its alpha 2. With Opera & Skyfire is almost ready with their paradigmatic shift releases, Fennec seems to have been determined to give them a real fight.
Here are some of the changes that Mozilla has claimed to brought in this new release:
-Improved panning performance
-Newly designed theme
-JavaScript error console is now built in
-Improved add-on support
-Numerous bug fixes
-Improved UI polish
Although we do find some bugs even now which prohibits us from making it our default browser, as the way we have it on our PC. But nevertheless we do expect Mozilla to come out with all those fixes in their next version. Till then check out this!
Consider this, you are reading an interesting item on the internet, and half way through the article you have to go out and you are on the train and you wanna continue reading that article but you dont remember the name of the website, of course you can google it but wouldn’t it be better if you could sync the open tabs between your PC and mobile phone. Now Jono from Mozilla Labs is telling us that Weave is bringing that feature on to Fennec.
Well the wait is finally over and its not 2010, well its still in pre-alpha stage but hey it works on Windows Mobile. Looks like the browser loads just fine, but the browsing may not be going so smoothly. So are you ready to give it a go ? Back up your phone (as this is a pre-alpha release, just to be on the safe side) only supports HTC Touch Pro for now.
Most of the windows mobile users were having high hopes for the Firefox version of Windows Mobile ( Fennec ), but David K from fuzemobility.com had a go @ the leaked version and is not at all impressed. Some of the cons he pointed out are listed below :
Lacks stability
23MB Install
Installs into the Games folder
The keyboard does not automatically pop-up
And the default is to load the mobile version of the website (not the full version)
Twimagic: http://www.Ringer.org is the best ringtone maker I’ve ever seen! Completely free, online, no registration!
Andrew Chobaniuk: Thanks for the heads up! [Posted from the 1800PocketPC app]
Emiel Zuurbier: I would like to see the posibility of making a trip that uses different kinds of transportation as from train to bus, bus to subway, subway to train. With a map and directions,...
MrVamosMuchachos: Nice idea. You could take some ideas from the application “SBB”. It is the public transport app from switzerland. [Posted from the 1800PocketPC app]
Twimagic
Andrew Chobaniuk
Emiel Zuurbier
MrVamosMuchachos
Skypirate
DeeDee
Dlanor
hg
Sam
Sweet
