Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Mobile Firefox Alpha 1 Released

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Oct 17, 2008 12:55 PM
from the smaller-better-deal dept.
Mozilla The Internet Handhelds Technology
An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla released development builds of its next mobile browser, Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1. 'The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface. We really want to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible and get feedback.' To that end, Fennec has been made available for the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Fennec browser alpha 1 released by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Mobile Firefox Alpha 1 Released 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • OS X Intel Only (Score:4, Informative)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Friday October 17 2008, @12:58PM (#25415329)
    The OS X version is Intel only. This probably won't affect most of you, but it does kinda suck for those of us still on PPC machines.

      • It especially sucks if you're waiting for the Mac mini update. It's been over a year now, and the last update was a simple CPU speed bump.

        The white Macbook is $50 more than the faster Mini. Not bad for a screen and UPS.

  • I'm really interested in trying Fennec on my actual mobile device. Oh well, I'm glad to see they're making progress.

    • And of course a RHEL4 desktop won't run it, wrong glibc version. When will people learn, either package it properly for a small set of distros or static link everything like netscape used to do.

      • When will people learn, either package it properly for a small set of distros or static link everything like netscape used to do.

        There probably aren't many people running an outdated desktop linux disto who want to try out new alpha web browsers.

        One would assume you could recompile it, no?

        • > There probably aren't many people running an outdated desktop linux disto
          > who want to try out new alpha web browsers.

          Not a good assumption. There are good arguments for a STABLE load on a machine you depend on. For example, I have tried updating that machine to Fedora 9 but I get subtle file corruption when reading files on the RAID array.

          But the bigger point is I'm sure I;m not alone in tiring of this attitude that if you aren't running sid or rawhide you can't be a developer. You should only b

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by felipekk (1007591)

        Or developers. From the blog entry:

        "That's right, you can install Fennec on your Windows, OS X or Linux desktop too! We want you to be able to experiment, provide feedback, write add-ons and generally get involved with the Mozilla Mobile project, even if you don't have a device."

  • I'd like to see a version for the iPhone, although I'm sure Apple would never let it see the light of day.

    • Re:iphone (Score:5, Funny)

      by Yvan256 (722131) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:20PM (#25415619) Homepage Journal

      How about a version that only works at night then?

    • That's an understatement, Apple could do with the competition. Whilst Safari is the best mobile browser at the moment it is extremely crash happy. More so on the 2.1 update.

      I average 2 Safari crashes a day on my iphone.

    • I'd like to see a version for the iPhone, although I'm sure Apple would never let it see the light of day.

      It's expressly forbidden by the terms of the iPhone SDK license.

      Here's a nickel, kid, get a real platform.

  • Dead (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mehetabelo (1388177)
    And, in classic slashdot style, the site is dead before I make it there.

  • More Standard compliant? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skifreemonster (1388187) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:20PM (#25415615)
    Fennec scores higher on the Acid3 test than Firefox 3.0.3. Well at least running on a windows PC

  • Or is Fennec solar powered? That would explain the ears.

  • Switching between the name and title when you edit the name/title widget is nice, but it means if you want to copy the name of the page you won't be able to select it.

  • Minimo2 (Score:3, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:32PM (#25415773) Journal
    I'm curious to see how this performs on a real mobile device compared to Minimo [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia seems to indicate it's being pushed by the same developer, Doug Turner. I was never able to get even runnable performance out of Minimo, but there's definitely a market for a better mobile browser. I just updated my Q9m to WM 6.1 and Pocket IE is still garbage. The other alternatives like Skyfire & Iris show potential, but they are not there yet.

    • Re:Minimo2 (Score:4, Informative)

      by Colonel Korn (1258968) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:51PM (#25415967)

      I'm curious to see how this performs on a real mobile device compared to Minimo [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia seems to indicate it's being pushed by the same developer, Doug Turner. I was never able to get even runnable performance out of Minimo, but there's definitely a market for a better mobile browser. I just updated my Q9m to WM 6.1 and Pocket IE is still garbage. The other alternatives like Skyfire & Iris show potential, but they are not there yet.

      Opera Mobile's not a bad browser at all.

    • Opera Mobile is pretty nice (albeit not entirely free).
      Safari on the iPhone is also pretty good, except it crashes at random points all over.

    • Have you tried opera mini? On the Blackberry it's definitely better than the OS4 browser.
  • The linked article is already Slashdotted due to "exceeding bandwidth" or some such thing. No surprise there as it's a blog.

    Going to the official Firefox site and searching for "fennec" matched nothing. Yea! With it being so easy to get, I'll be trying it "real soon now".

  • Posting from Fennec in Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:46PM (#25415897) Journal

    So far it seems pretty interesting, although there's definitely bugs (eg. my text disappears when I'm not typing a character), but hey it's an alpha. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes, although the interface is not geared towards Windows Mobile Smartphone, it seems to be best suited for a touchscreen at the moment.

    On a side note, I didn't see any interface to specify a proxy, but I was able to set one through about:config. I have to go through an auto proxy so I just set the autoconfig_url to the URL of my proxy and the network.proxy.type to 2.

  • This is really very interesting. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Millennium (2451) on Friday October 17 2008, @02:34PM (#25416557) Homepage

    The minimal UI would be perfect not just for mobile phones, but for other small-screen devices (I'd use it on my eee, for instance). This is obviously not the core market for Fennec, but I'd love to see an extension which added back just a few "desktop/laptop" conveniences:

    • Keyboard shortcuts, at least for Back, Forward, Reload, Open Location, Find (and Find Again), Print, Cut, Copy, and Paste.
    • Scrolling around in pages, not just vertically but also horizontally.
    • Some means to highlight, cut/copy, and paste.

    Again, I'm not necessarily saying these should be folded into the core Fennec distro; "full" computers aren't its main market. But an extension would be nice.

  • N810 users beware. (Score:3, Informative)

    by supernova_hq (1014429) on Friday October 17 2008, @03:14PM (#25417297)
    I've tried installing this a couple times on an N810 (last week) and both times it completely messed up xulrunner. Couldn't remove it, update it, reinstall it, nothin'. If you are planning on testing it on an N810, make sure you are prepared to backup and flash if necessary (I was still able to use the device after xulrunner died, but my other browser, microb stopped working).

  • Just installed it on my n800 (Score:3, Informative)

    by dbc001 (541033) on Friday October 17 2008, @03:54PM (#25418055)
    The one-click install didn't work, but the step-by-step instructions worked fine.

    It seems to run pretty slow. Can't seem to enter any text into the address bar.

    Disabled Javascript and now I can enter a URL - not sure if that's related.

    It needs a lot of work (it is an alpha) but it's exciting that they've gotten this far.

  • Back and forward buttons hidden, why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by guest (3772) on Friday October 17 2008, @04:15PM (#25418359)

    It seems like a big mistake to hide the back and forward buttons, the buttons that users are frequently going to want to use. I'd much prefer that they hide the Bookmarks button and put the forward and back buttons on the main screen so I can get to them without having to move the screen to the left first.

    • Re:Windows Linux Mac. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dolda2000 (759023) <fredrik@do l d a2000.com> on Friday October 17 2008, @12:59PM (#25415355) Homepage
      Indeed, that's exactly what the summary said. They made it "available for the desktop", "to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible".

    • Re:Windows Linux Mac. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Friday October 17 2008, @01:02PM (#25415399)
      No, those aren't mobile platforms. But if you'd read the page, you'd see that they're making these available to help get the widest number of users to provide feedback re: the interface, as well as making it available for people to begin developing plugins for it. Of course, that will probably also lower the S/N ratio re: valid feedback.
    • Well, I'm not really digging it ... "Targeted at Nokia N800/810 devices, with Windows Mobile a gleam in a developers eye, no plans to develop for Symbian, and iPhone not mentioned" ... nice big market share there.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by J05H (5625)

        especially stupid considering Symbian S60 makes up well over half of the smartphone market worldwide - 64% last time I checked. Not that you'll notice this if you live in the States, land of Blackberry and iPhone, but it dominates the EMEA and APAC markets - I've been using several S60 phones from Samsung and Nokia for a few months for testing and they frankly blow everything else away in terms of usability (holy crap it's a PHONE FIRST), interface design (clean and extensible) and as convergence devices.

        On

    • While this is true,by putting the browser out for desktops it gives users a chance to "try before they buy" and decide if Fennec is right for them. It also gives them a chance to report problem areas in the controls as well as ask for features. Besides there isn't anything wrong with having a lightweight browser for your desktop. For those that are curious I just download the Fennec for Windows and it is as simple as unzip and use.

      Oh and for those that hate to RTFA(this is slashdot,after all) the link fo

    • No, what would be really great would be a browser with Flash. Yes, ad-block is great, but most modern OSes (and mobile ones if you hack them enough) have a hosts file that can be configured to block ads. But without Flash you take a way a good portion of the web.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.