Mozilla Fennec Alpha Released for Android and Nokia N900 | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla Fennec Alpha Released for Android and Nokia N900

blog.mozilla.com

23 pointsmbrubeck13 comments

"Fennec (codename for Firefox mobile) is the first mobile browser to offer add-ons..."

Ummm... Dolphin?

Fennec 1.0 for Maemo was released in January 2010, before Dolphin had add-on support.

It's true that Dolphin was the first Android browser with add-ons, though.

Agreed... I just find it curious their use of "IS" vs. "WAS". As in, "We are at the moment the first (and thus implied... only) mobile browser with add-on support"

Am I missing something? I remember trying this on a Nokia N810 about 1.5 years back, was quite slow, I gave up.

Looks like they are still working on it.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=21428

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0b1/releasenotes/

Fennec 1.0 and 1.1 were released earlier this year for Maemo 4 and Maemo 5 (Nokia N810 and N900): http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/

This is the first alpha of Fennec 2.0, which will be released for Maemo 5, MeeGo, and Android.

I see, thanks for the update. It would have helped if the title was Fennec 2.0 Alpha, not just Fennec Alpha. I would give it a try sometime this weekend.

I'd recommend waiting for a beta, it was quite unusable for me.

Maybe explain why? Otherwise I have no reason...

no thank you , android has one of the best mobile browsers I have played with so far. Appreciate the effort thow.

It's true, the Android browser is extremely fast, polished, easy to use, and good at rendering. We still have more performance and polish work to do to make Fennec competitive. That will be happening during our beta release cycle.

But once Fennec matures, I think it will be a better browser for some users - not everyone, but many people. Already there are features that I miss when using Android's Browser:

* Quick access to the tab bar.

* Seamless sync with my desktop history, tabs, bookmarks, form completion, and passwords.

* Add-ons. The ability to customize the browser is great. Here are a few Fennec add-ons that I've written to scratch my own "itches": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/user/5283521/

Android's browser is clunky dealing with multiple windows. I find occasionally I need to go and close down windows so a new one can be opened. Thing is, I had no idea I was opening multiple windows in the first place. Compared to the iPhone browser's treatment of multiple windows, Android aint so good. Perhaps Fennec has a better approach.

Try xScope.

I was amazed that my entirely non technical friends had installed opera to replace the android browser. I think it was mostly that dealing with tabs was annoying, open is on my android now but a stable firefox sounds awesome.

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