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Mozilla Hitting 'Brick Walls' Getting Firefox on Phones

Posted by Zonk on from the watch-dino-hit-brick-wall dept.

meteorit writes "Mozilla has been working on a mobile version of Firefox since last year, and is now looking to repeat the success of Firefox on the PC. Although development seems not to have been completed, it is known that informal negotiations have already started with mobile network operators. Firefox Mobile is scheduled to be launched by the end of the year and the inaugural version will be compatible with the Linux and Windows Mobile operating systems. Work is already underway to determine what the browser's UI will look like. In the meantime those negotiations seem to be hitting 'brick walls', as cellphone operators resist the intrusion of the open web onto their platforms."

10 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. As of now by Corpuscavernosa · · Score: 5, Informative
    Opera is the king of mobile browsers IMHO. IE, as expected, is marginal at best. On my Windows Mobile 6 phone, Opera cruises along.

    As a loyal Firefox user, I'd LOVE to see a mobile version if it can compete with the speed of Opera.

    --
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    1. Re:As of now by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a loyal Firefox user, I'd LOVE to see a mobile version if it can compete with the speed of Opera.
      With Opera (mini and, i think, mobile), the pages you request are sent via Opera's servers, where they are put through some kind of compression. The upshot is that not only is Opera quicker, but I can visit almost twice the number of pages for my money. In practice, given that you can set it to not download pictures, I get about 3 times more pages-per-buck than when I use the browser the phone comes with.

      I could seriously become a fanboy at this rate.
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    2. Re:As of now by nxtw · · Score: 4, Informative

      Opera Mobile is a regular web browser that does not go through Opera's servers. It'll use your device's connection settings, so it could end up connecting through your wireless provider's WAP/HTTP gateway if your device is set up to use it. (The rendering engine in the current version of Opera Mobile is old - the PC & Wii versions are newer)

      Opera Mini is a completely different product.

    3. Re:As of now by Doogie5526 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip.

      Never used Opera on a cellphone, but from what I've read, the proxy will scale down the images before sending to the browser. No need to download the full res if you're viewing on a tiny screen. The browser does give you the option to download the full res version if requested, but i'm sure 90% of the time you're just using the images for navigation.

      I'm sure it's obvious by now, but scaling down the images will reduce the bandwidth way more than gzipping them. Also, the proxy could add gzip compression even if the web server doesn't use it.
    4. Re:As of now by D4MO · · Score: 4, Informative

      The amusing thing is that the most "open" platform at the moment is windows mobile. Even if you get a subsidised / locked one, it's easy to modify. There's a very active ROM scene (though it's a legal grey area), you can install whatever you like, and write what you want for it in C++ or .Net compact framework. I have skype, jabber client, remote desktop, vnc.

      Getting symbian updates, even on unlocked phone is entirely at the whim of the manufacture, which usually doesn't happen.

      But yeah, the cost of an unlocked phone is prohibitive.

      --

      Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
    5. Re:As of now by hkmwbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Opera Mini does support SSL. The connection between the phone and the proxy is encrypted as well.

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    6. Re:As of now by hkmwbz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Opera is Norwegian, and Norway has extremely strict privacy laws. Opera has been in business for more than ten years, and is definitely trustworthy.

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      Clever signature text goes here.
    7. Re:As of now by nxtw · · Score: 3, Informative

      Opera Mobile is a Web browser that renders HTML/CSS and does JavaScript. It connects to web servers directly if a WAP/HTTP gateway/proxy is not configured. Pages are fully rendered on the device; it's written in native code (C/C++) and is almost certainly based on the 8.6 version of the Opera rendering code. (Opera for Wii uses something close to the in-beta 9.5 code, Opera for Windows/Unix/OS X is at release version 9.26, and Opera Mobile has been at 8.65 for awhile.)

      Opera Mini is a Web browser that renders specially processed pages from Opera's proxy server to reduce rendering & download time. It's written in J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition).

  2. Image recompression by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't really see why a central proxy is significantly faster than a phone with a well-designed name resolver plus a well-designed browser, and a web server which supports Content-Encoding:gzip. Gzip cannot recompress GIF, JPEG, and PNG images at reduced quality and file size, which I'm suspecting that some proxies do.

    Unless servers normally don't compress their responses A lot of servers don't compress responses out of the box.
  3. Re:Vapor Cannot Hit A Brick Wall by VGPowerlord · · Score: 3, Informative

    But even on Windows, Safari is twice as fast as Firefox, and Safari for Windows is an 8MB download (including Mac graphics libraries) while Firefox is 22MB.

    You might want to check your figures.

    For PCs:
    Firefox 2.0.0.12 installer: 5.75 MB (6,029,648 bytes)
    Safari 3.x Beta installer: 15.6 MB (16,398,632 bytes)
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