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 !!!
I am guessing the folks from Mozilla is excited about WP7 and not too happy about the iPhone. Rob Sayre recently posted an open letter to Microsoft requesting to open up the NDK ( Native Development Kit ) for developers Well, you have this new Windows Phone thing going on. Tufte slammed it a little, and maybe the cropped UI is kind of busted. I’ll give it a shot, though. I think a head to head comparison makes you look pretty good. It makes the iPhone UI look like it’s made of ugly jelly beans. I’m kind of surprised–the allegedly cool Cocoa Touch stuff is reminding me of 90s Unix window managers. Oh wait, that’s what it is. haha.
So, anyway, you guys don’t have an NDK for Windows Phone. But I think there’s an opening here for everyone to do what they’re best at. I suggest you clone the Android NDK API, and add some stuff to make it better. Microsoft rocks at that. We’ll port Firefox, and I’m sure a bunch of games will come along too. It’s gonna be awesome.
If any of our readers who are developers are looking to voice your opinion on the subject head over to blog.mozilla.com. I am no developer, so if anyone can enlighten me … what are the advantages of developing with the NDK as opposed to the SDK that was released earlier ??
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.
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.”
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!
After more than 200Million downloads for the desktop version , the fox is still going strong. Its no secret they are trying to get a mobile version of firefox out there for mobile users. Here is a Quick peek @ what it might look like:
This concept prototype for Firefox mobile (code name Fennec) is being designed for a touch screen. Start it up and this is what will greet you
Features:
* You can scroll the page by dragging as well as flicking.
* You zoom out again by dragging the page past its border in any direction.
* Creating a new tab is easy. You click on the big plus, and the browser finds an open spot, puts the tab there, and zooms in on it.
* The standard controls (like back and forward) are located to the left of the page. You get there by gently dragging the page in the appropriate direction.
Lee
Xmel
antslava
Saijo George
Anonymous
Andrearommi
YellowStar
SAHITYA KUMAR
