After the slightly shaky launch of their ultra-early milestone one release, Mozilla is back with more Fennec (otherwise known as “Firefox Mobile”) goodness. This morning, the company began distributing Alpha 1 of Fennec for Windows Mobile. As with all Alphas, this release is by no means intended for every day use by the general public, but it gives us a sneak peak at what’s to come.
What’s new in this build:
- 3 months worth of bug fixes and performance upgrades.
- Fennec UI have been rebuilt entirely in CSS, allowing Mozilla to tweak the UI for different handsets without having to go in and change the hardcoding. This should make it a lot less complex to port Fennec to different screensizes and resolutions.
- Add-ons! Add-ons are an integral part of Firefox, and something much clamored for in its mobile spinoff. Add-ons won’t jump directly over from Firefox, but users are already hard at work at creating them.
Being that it’s an Alpha, its not nearly perfect. Mozilla cites a few bugs for themselves, noting that performance is a bit shoddy and panning is laggy. As long as that “Checkerboard” bug that plagued nearly everyone’s test runs in the milestone have been fixed (where, upon launching Fennec, nothing was displayed but a checkerboard pattern), we’ll forgive’m for these other little bugs.
Though Firefox has seen great success on the PC (over 50% of MobileCrunch readers use it), the mobile space is rough territory. A significant chunk of mobile users have no clue how to install software on their handsets, especially as a number of carriers block the installation of software through the browser. As such, many simply stick with the default browser. Of those that do know how (and want) to switch away, Opera Mobile is already well established as an alternative browser of choice, with Skyfire (and its Flash-playing capabilities) hot on its tail.
Only the HTC Touch Pro (and presumably the AT&T branded Touch Pro, the Fuze) is currently supported, though it might just work elsewhere. If you’ve got a Windows Mobile handset running at a resolution of 480×640, it’s worth a shot. You can find the CAB files for installation here.
Don’t have a compatible handset, but still want to take a look? Check out the video walkthrough below:
Fennec – alpha 1 for Windows Mobile from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.
How does it compare to Opera? That seems like the only mobile browser worth using.
This is so feral!
wow, just waiting to get test
Why has it taken Mozilla so long to launch their own mobile browser?
Ah, I’m using opera for my Nintendo DS Web Browser. In my Opinion Opera is better, buy hey you got to try new things once in a while. I have been tweetering on my Nintend o DS for the past 2 months, using Opera’s software. =/
I think that they should refer to it as Firefox Mobile, or at least maintain the Firefox name.
1) Fennec, just sounds bad, and its not nearly as sexy of a name as Firefox. Also, the Fennec Fox is the only other fox type that has even close to a decent name that would make sense. Otherwise you have, Bengal Fox, Blanford’s Fox, Cape Fox, Corsac Fox, Tibetan Sand Fox, Arctic Fox, Kit Fox, Pale Fox, Rüppell’s Fox ,Swift Fox, Red Fox, Fennec Fox. So the next browser type would be called what? Ruppell? Corsac? I don’t think so.
2) For their mail client, Thunderbird. Using a different animal makes sense because it represents a totally different functionality. But in this case, its the same functionality, just on a different device. Maybe to the development team it seems like a completely different app. But, to an end user it will just look like Firefox on a mobile device.
3) For a while, at least, any mention of Fennec will require the explanation “The mobile browser by the maker’s of Firefox”. Its already confusing that their company is called Mozilla.
aza raskin is da man!!!
Agreed.
What about other platforms?
It sure takes them too long and that’s for only one screen resolution…
The swipe left and right for system functions looks like a hassle when your trying to horizontally scroll a website. Plus not very finger friendly.
Opera still superficially winning so far. But I will test when Fennec in beta.
It’s not too bad. Oddly, Mobile Safari allows you to swipe right/left beyond the limits of the page about a hundred pixels – it just doesn’t do anything with it.
I’ve used the linux version on my Nokia n810. I did like the interface on th edge of page concept, but they really need to make the scrolling kinetic to make it effective. They need to have a look at the beta webkit based Tear browser.
Why Windows Mobile? Blackberry desperately needs a good browser.
One word: touchscreen. The UI is totally built around it.
Any progress in the mobile browser space is positive. The iPhone and Android browsers are the clear differentiators that make them passable (preferrable) as mobile information devices. Stepping aside from the Openwave browsers are huge steps forward to making a broader range of phones acceptable as real mobile devices that are information companions. And the fact that it is open source is even better. I can’t wait to test it out.
Why not call it Firefox Mobile…as stated earlier by other people? Fennec is kind of a silly name.
I am having htc 3400i model, i am not sure whether it is supported by this browser or not? lets give this a try and i will share my experience with you.