Firefox Arrives On Android 164
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the well-good-for-them dept.
from the well-good-for-them dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla has launched a 'pre-alpha' version of Firefox for Android smartphones. The mobile version of Firefox, codenamed Fennec, has until now been restricted to Maemo Linux handsets. But following a surge in developer effort, Mozilla has unveiled a build for handsets running Android 2.0 or above. Mozilla is making no guarantees about the browser's stability. 'It will likely not eat your phone, but bugs might cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot,' writes Mozilla developer Vladimir Vukicevic on his blog. 'Memory usage of this build isn't great — in many ways it's a debug build, and we haven't really done a lot of optimization yet. This could cause some problems with large pages, especially on low memory devices like the Droid.'"
Is it as fast as Opera Mini with Turbo? (Score:2, Informative)
Probably not.
Re:How does this work? Native or links to java? (Score:1, Informative)
Probably uses the Android NDK (instead of the SDK)
http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
Re:Why then (Score:3, Informative)
It does, and they are. There are a few tweaks that add-on authors should make to their add-ons to support the mobile versions (mainly UI-related), but those are trivial for most cases. I say this as someone who has ported more add-ons to Firefox for Mobile than anyone else (as far as I know).
Clueless about testing... (Score:5, Informative)
I see you're one of those people who knows a few testing buzzwords, and thus consider yourself an expert in the field.
Just so you know, "UAT" refers to user-acceptance testing, not "usability testing" like you've mistakenly claimed. Usability testing checks whether or not the program is convenient to use, whether or not it's accessible to people with handicaps, whether or not it works well with various input and output devices, and so forth.
User-acceptance testing ("UAT") refers to testing that the client or user performs in order to ensure that the system meets their minimum requirements in terms of functionality, usability, stability, reliability, performance, and so on.
Oh, and your breakdown of the tests applied to each release level are pure bunk. They don't even correspond to Firefox's development practices at all. Please refrain from spewing mountains of bullshit the next time you post. Thank you!
Re:Android momentum... (Score:3, Informative)
I've written code on Android. It's based on Java, and includes most of the standard Java SDK library classes. If you've written Java, or even C++, you should be fine. You can add external libraries if you like, but most apps probably won't need to. I really like the Eclipse integration they did, you can even do interactive debugging on the code while it's running on your phone. There is also a nice emulator you can use if you wish to test other versions of the OS and such. Overall, I find it quite easy to get most things done, and the docs are pretty good. At least as good as the Java SDK.
Re:Android momentum... (Score:3, Informative)
* Wireless and USB tethering.
* CIFS mount,
* Bluetooth HID keyboard demon (with some fiddling)
* Extra 200+MB memory (Due to a kernel problem in the stock rom the N1 can only use half it's memory).
* Use of the LED flash as a torch, ability to use coloured notification lights in the trackball
* Ability to screenshot any app without using the SDK
* 360deg screen rotation
Those are the things that I unlocked my N1's bootloader for
Re:What about resource usage? (Score:3, Informative)
I have a g1. You really need to use a task manager and uninstall anything that possibly runs at boot/in the background. They are just waaaay too ram limited. Also check out cyanogen mod as well as the 10mb RAM hack and turning on compcache and swap. My phone flies compared to stock android 1.6 and I have stuff on every desktop. Just keep getting rid of stuff till it gets smooth again....
Re:Android momentum... (Score:3, Informative)
CyanogenMod no longer bundles the Google applications, since October or thereabouts. You can download those in a separate package from a third party, or pull them from your existing ROM. The current solution was implemented with consent from Google. Unlike Apple, who actively try to shut down jailbreaking and modding, Google doesn't really care, and doesn't interfere, as long as you aren't redistributing copyrighted, closed source apps of theirs.
In any case, my iPhone was unlocked and jailbroken, so I am comparing apples to apples here. One significant difference is that with every release Apple tries harder and harder to prevent unlocking and hacking, while Google has come out with the Nexus One where you have root and complete freedom out of the box. Another is that even a jailbroken iPhone has limitations - you can't compile a custom version of the Mail app, for example, since it's all closed source, and fundamental improvements to the operating system are much harder to make.