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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."

4 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.

    --
    We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
    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.
      --
      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
    2. 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.

      --
      Clever signature text goes here.
  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.