By With faster data connections and more robust hardware/software, mobile web browsing capabilities should improve drastically in the new era of wireless. Firefox will soon usher in the new era with a fantastic mobile browser that Mozilla’s Head of User Experience, Aza Raskin, provided a demo for:
Nothing short of amazing. The integration of tabs and navigation within the contsraints of limited mobile screen real estate is a huge step forward in building an experience specifically for mobile.
Keep in mind that this represents, “a possible direction,” and that, “this isn’t necessarily the exact way we’re going to go with mobile. It might look entirely different.” But they would only make it “different” to improve it further. And as it stands, this browser already kicks butt.
So will you be able to have Firefox on your Android phone? Of course. And for the iPhone-wielding readers out there? Tough luck:
For the iPhone, Apple’s licence can not install software to have an interpreted language. But Firefox includes JavaScript, which makes it legally impossible to carry on the iPhone….For Android, Webkit is integrated into the OS, and only Java applications can run. And Firefox is not written in Java. So that’s why [Fennec will not run on Android]. However, in both cases, things may change in future, but it does not depend on Mozilla.
That’s not to say Apple won’t somehow make some accommodations, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see them pushing forcing their Safari browser on users. Piece by piece, we’re starting to see the flexibility of Android in relation to competing systems where user choice is restricted and limited.
Firefox, owned by Mozilla, is currently the main source of browser innovation. Slowly but surely, more and more computer users are adopting Firefox as their default browser in favor of the majority used Internet Explorer. Since the mobile web world is so young, it’d be difficult to say any one browser is the “default” or “favorite”. But, it looks like Firefox is on track to reach that status.
[Via CNET]
“Since the mobile web world is so young, it’d be difficult to say any one browser is the ‘default’ or ‘favorite’. But, it looks like Firefox is on track to reach that status.”
Interesting you’d say this when it’s not coming to either of the next big mobile OSes. In fact the entire title is misleading. To me, this article only says that Webkit is going to become the mobile standard browser.
Article is all about nothing really. Headline is sensationalism, trying to make us believe it’s coming for Android. It’s not lined up for either…yet.
“So that’s why [Fennec will not run on Android]. However, in both cases, things may change in future, but it does not depend on Mozilla.”
Come back and tackle this when there is news to report.
The embedded video itself is reason enough for excitement. Had I posted that alone, with no commentary, I think it STILL would have been an interesting read… errr… look. The first Firefox Mobile browser… if you don’t think that’s a big deal you’re only kidding yourself.
Wikipedia writes Aza Raskin as the son of late Jef Raskin. Just a note.
@phandroid – Yes, it is exciting to think about Mobile Firefox. But the headline is where Andrex and I take issue. There is nothing to indicate Android is getting Firefox or thinking about it. Further, Apple could beat them to the punch. It’s hard to say at this point. Overall, a good site that I like to keep up on, but be careful with not trying to get too many page views from headlines.
What about Opera? The first android phone to be commerically available is about to hit the market (T-Mobile G1), and Opera already has an Android-ready Opera Mini for it.
All in all, if I’d have to settle for a cross-platform browser, it’d be Opera, not Firefox, even if I wasn’t a longt-time Opera user. It simply rocks, and has no competition in terms of usability, standards compliance and security.
Chrome is feature-poor. Opera allows me to not just run google web apps, but also manage mail, bookmarks, settings, feeds etc. coherently across different devices (desktop, phone, laptop etc.). IMO, any other browser has a long way to go before it can brag with a similarly pleasant user experience.
Please please have unicode support.
or let the users add or choose fonts from SD.
thank you
Wait a min …you said the first mozilla mobile browser…..ummm haven’t you heard of minimo for windows based smartphones???