Firefox 4 Mobile Beta for Android and Maemo
Today is a good day for Android users; as yet another browser competitor enters the ring.
This time it’s Firefox 4, built on the very same technology platform as desktop web browser; however, with optimizations for mobile phones in mind.
Maemo users have also received a Firefox 4 Beta build to play with.
Features
- Pinch-to-zoom (Android), double-tap, or use the volume rocker (Nokia N900) to zoom in and out
- Tabbed browsing in thumbnail view lets you easily see and open the site you want
- Location-Aware Browsing gives you content and info relevant to your location
- Find in Page in the Site Menu lets you quickly find text on the webpage
- Share Page in the Site Menu lets you send content to email, Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader
- Forget Password in the Site Menu tells a website you no longer trust to forget your private data
- Add Search Engine in the Site Menu lets you quickly add a new search engine to your Awesome Screen
- Context Menu lets you Open in New Tab and Share by long tapping and holding a link
- Smart Tapping lets you tap on links, widgets and other Web content with accuracy
- Password Manager lets you choose to remember site password to avoid typing
and more…
About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
That is some good news :)
WebM video? Sweet.
Fireofox for Mobile? Not so much. It’s very slow and heavy even on high-end devices. :/ And there is no option to compress web pages. Seems like I will have to wait for Opera Mobile for Android.
yeah, maybe not much people will use it, but it is still the competition and as such this can be considered as good news :)
Not webM, dummy, it’s Theora.
Ekhem:
http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/mobile/meetFFXmobile2-640×360.webm
There are three different versions depending on what your browser support, with a fallback to Flash.
http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/mobile/meetFFXmobile2-640×360.webm
http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/mobile/meetFFXmobile2-640×360.theora.ogv
http://videos.mozilla.org/serv/mobile/meetFFXmobile2-640×360.mp4
You have to remember it’s still in beta. They’ve only tested on 4 Android devices so far according to the supported devices section of the Firefox 4 mobile beta page. They’ll get it together. It’s Firefox!
Exactly. It’s Firefox. Or Bloatfox as it’s known. Knowing that it’s Firefox, we know that they will not get it together.
Mozilla’s attempts at mobile browsers have been miserable failures so far.
Maybe Firefox will run without lagging all the time when phones have 3 GHz CPUs and 4 GB RAM…
And you still have to pay to get Opera without ads…
Aha? Good for you. Why should I care, exactly?
Because what I wrote is closer to the reality of today than what you wrote.
What you wrote is irrelevant, and doesn’t change the fact that Bloatfox is bloated, and that their attempts at mobile browsers have been pathetic at best. Google made the best mobile browser out there in a fraction of the time it took Mozilla to get a buggy, unstable, bloated “mobile” browser into alpha.
Google “created” it by, pretty much, creating a GUI for WebKit, an engine which have been used and tested on mobile and even less capable platforms for many years.
Fennec on the other hand has been out for around 1½years and has already been majorly improved. Most of the improvements being very recent.
Google’s WebKit is customized, and not just a raw copy of the WebKit repository. Fennec fails because Gecko is bloated.
Took em fken long enough
Mozilla are a close second to MS in regards of development.
I see you’re full of fucking shit as usual. How exactly is taking your time getting things working comparable to Microsofts abandoning of a whole platform.
I am full of shit?
And what platform would that be?
I never made the connection between MS abandoning a project and Mozilla taking a long time (like MS to bring something to the light of day)
What I just said was the truth. What is there to dispute. Fool
And what other part of Microsoft’s development efforts is there that you would try to draw analogies to? You really should stop coming up with such bad excuses.
Foo, stop being such a Firefox fanboy. It’s annoying.
Oh, so you really can’t come up with any reasoning then? In the end you just start with personal attacks instead, as you usually do.
Guess it’s too much of a mental challenge for you. I just sank down to your low level with this paragraph you say? Well, yes, probably. =P
Your Firefox fanboyism is getting in the way of the fact that Chrome is killing Firefox, and Mozilla’s complete failure to create a decent mobile browser while Google did it with no problems whatsoever.
By the by, how come you suddenly started talking about “Chrome” instead of Opera?
I prefer Opera… Firefox is lame at the moment… IMO…
The Android browser is better than either of them.
What the hell does that have to do with the article? Your IMO Browser preference and calling Firefox lame has nothing to do with the mobile beta topic.
Ok, Opera has just announced Opera Mobile for Android beta, which is coming in a month. It will have Hardware acceleration and Pinch to Zoom.
Also, they have announced Opera 11 with extensions. Seems like nobody now has only Dragonfly left to criticize Opera :).
How about the crappy preferences interface?
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/duazq/when_we_said_soon_we_meant_soon_heres_opera_11/c12ywp6
At least Opera’s preferences aren’t as crappy as Firefox.
Well, it’s hard to be “as crappy” when Firefox (and SeaMonkey) preferences are vastly superior.
Even disregarding the aspect of preferences: simply the fact that the developers completely ignored the QA section, when developing the browser, is a clear sign that something is rotten with the company.
The only rotten thing here is your Firefox fanboyism. You are really grasping at straws, and trying to make up any sort of nonsense you can to make Firefox look less pathetic compared to Chrome in particular.
So now you’re bringing up Chrome instead when you can’t come up with any defence for Opera?