Firefox Mobile Reaches 1.0

Majix writes "Firefox Mobile, the mobile browser developed by Mozilla based on the same engine as in the recently released Firefox 3.6, has finally hit version 1.0. The first device to be officially supported is the Nokia N900. With a long list of features, Firefox Mobile looks to be the most complete mobile browser to date. Highlights include the familiar Awesome Bar, Weave Sync for sharing your browser state between your PC and mobile, and of course tabbed browsing and Firefox add-ons. With the Nokia 900 and Firefox Mobile 1.0, even Flash content including the normal YouTube site is working, showing that a mobile browser does not have to equal a compromised Internet experience."

Comments

How about the iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this thing run on the iPad?

Re:How about the iPad?

[Nightspirit]

"We do not have plans to build an iPhone browser due to constraints with the OS environment and distribution. "
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms

Re:How about the iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a Turing complete program. Of course it can't be approved for the iBad.

Re:How about the iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? the GP asked about iPad!

Re:How about the iPad?

[Lifyre]

And he answered the GGP's question.

Re:How about the iPad?

[TheRaven64]

Not so much the OS as the app store. Apple won't allow apps that can run code, or apps that duplicate existing functionality. A browser does both. Porting it to run on the iPhone wouldn't be too hard, but then only people using jailbroken phones could use it.

Re:How about the iPad?

[larry bagina]

Or people who compile it with an developer provision file. Or people who compile it with an ad hoc provision file. Or enterprises that bypass the app store.

Re:How about the iPad?

[KibibyteBrain]

Porting Firefox to the iPhone/iPad under even modified appstore rules that would allow another browser would be VERY hard, due to the absurd language restriction.

Re:How about the iPad?

[Trepidity]

The XUL stuff might also run afoul of Apple's refusal to allow any apps that include scripting languages.

Re:How about the iPad?

[mdwh2]

Why would you want to? Even far cheaper netbooks have the power to run full blown browsers like the normal Firefox. If the Ipad can't do that, more fool anyone who buys it.

Re:How about the iPad?

[trytoguess]

The iPad will use the same OS as the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

One device?

[Anonymous Coward]

They released version 1.0 and that's all they support? A whole one device?

More development needed methinks.

Re:One device?

[iammani]

Not just one device, it is Firefox Maemo 1.0. Which means it can run any Nokia running Meamo 5.0. There are other versions which are in various stages of development. For eg, its in Alpha 3 for Windows Mobile 6.0.
Check https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms for more info

Re:One device?

[quenda]

It makes sense to start with the coolest device first. You think the best developers want to write for Win-Mo??

And there are other devices: N810 is official, N800 works too.

Re:One device?

[mgblst]

Why the hell are they building this for WinMo? You do realise that Microsoft is not your friend. Microsoft wants to crush firefox. It has forced them to start working again. Why are you helping Microsoft?

Re:One device?

[quenda]

Actually, it is worse. They support the one and only mobile phone which does not need it.
The N900 already has an excellent mozilla-based web browser in MicroB. Fennec is very slow in comparison, and unlike to get much acceptance in it's current form.
(what the n900 needs is a half-decent maps program, or a better mail client, or jave-ME, ... not another browser.)

Re:One device?

[rodgerd]

Microsoft is more my friend than Apple, yet they seem to escape such suggestions in the free software world.

Re:One device?

[wmac]

Do you watch too much aggressive films?
Firefox mission is to provide benefit to users (of all OS and environments) not to start or engage in wars. Bush's legacy of thing war is everywhere :(

I want one...

[psYchotic87]

This makes me want a Nokia N900 even more. I'm desperate for one. Unfortunately, these things cost a shitload of money (even on ebay, I can't find one cheaper than about $520). This thing has WIFI, which is all I really need, but if I decide to get one with a plan, I'll be robbed blind because there's no way to get one without an online plan that costs $10/month. Mobile phone service providers need to stop robbing us.

Re:I want one...

[c_forq]

$10 a month for online access is robbing you? Really? Maybe it is because I remember the days of having to pay for the phone call along with monthly charges to connect to something resembling the internet but $10 a month seems pretty damn cheap for what you get.

Re:I want one...

[EzInKy]

I never even considered actually "buying" a cellphone. I basically only carried one for emergencies and was satisfied with whatever came with the service. That was until I heard about the N900. I've had mine for over a month now and I got to say, the thing just rocks and was worth every penny.

Not only does it all the features you would expect from a smartphone such as web browsing, playing media, shooting pictures and video etc., but it also can receive and transmit FM radio and has TV out.

As far as software goes, besides what's available in the standard, extras, and testing repos, after installing an "EasyDebian" chroot you can run just about anything on it. I haven't carried my laptop since I bought the thing.

Re:I want one...

[maxume]

Well, he wants a contract with no online access for $0 a month. For a 2 year deal, that's the obvious savings of $240.

Re:I want one...

[VoltageX]

Wait. From what I see in the community, it looks like Nokia will be dropping the N900 in favour of a yet unreleased Maemo 6 device.

Re:I want one...

[Eunuchswear]

Well, that's a very fuddy way to put it.

Nokia have said they're going to release other Maemo devices.

Nokia have said they're working on Maemo 6.

It is as yet unknown whether Maemo 6 will run on the N900. (all the previous Maemo devices got at least one OS update).

There is nothing stopping people other than Nokia porting all but the closed source bits of Maemo 6 to the N900 (And Maemo 6 is likely to have fewer closed source bits than Maemo 5 does, e.g. ofono for the telephone stack instead of the N900's closed source stack).

Re:I want one...

[smartaleckkill]

he said 'the community', not nokia official statements, so the FUD's the community's rather than his
FWIW the rumour appears to be that the n900 is to be discontinued and replaced by a maemo 6 device with capacitive multitouch and no slideout keyboard--so even if the FUD has some substance, you could do worse than grab the n900 while you can

Re:I want one...

[Jesus_666]

If all you want is a Linux ultraportable, there are devices besides the N900 you could look into. There are a few Beagleboard-based ones as well as the very similar Pandora, which gives you a keyboard, a touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB and two SD slots in a form factor similar to the original NDS. If you want a Pandora, though, you'll have to order from the second batch; the first batch is expected to ship somewhere within the next two or three months, with the second one close behind. The price was 330 USD for the first batch; this should not change for the second one.

Also, you could always look into importing an N900; it ought to be sold without a plan at least somewhere in Europe.

Re:I want one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this...I am generally a Windows/.NET developer by profession (don't hate me) but have always dabbled in Linux...not enough though to be truly proficient. I bought an N900 to help me bridge the gap...easier to learn when one has a cool toy. When I finally get around to feeling comfortable in most things linux I am sure I'll love the phone even more. My laptop has been relegated to work only pretty much now, the N900 does everything else very well.

??? Ok then...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Firefox Mobile looks to be the most complete mobile browser to date."

Perhaps if you ignore Opera, Safari and Netfront.. Otherwise, from what I have seen, it mostly sucks pretty bad...

Re:??? Ok then...

[cmunic8r99]

I've never used Firefox Mobile, and probably won't for a long time. Your insistence that Safari and Opera are complete web browsers, however, is laughable. Mobile Safari is by no means a 'complete' browser: no support for add-ons, missing Flash support, etc. Opera Mini isn't even a true web browser - it's a redisplay app like Skyfire, and neither of them are all that great. I can't talk about Netfront because I've not used it either. Got a download link?

Re:??? Ok then...

[zombie_monkey]

http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/
There are Symbian and Windows Mobile versions.

Re:??? Ok then...

[heffrey]

On certain devices (e.g. anything smaller than iPad) a redisplay browser allows you to read the web quicker and more effectively than a full browser.

Re:??? Ok then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well for one, i doubt Apple would add Flash to it considering it is a mobile browser and they hate Flash as it is. (made even more obvious with the recent HUGE iPod touch they released there)

Not to mention people's efforts to emulate and replace Flash entirely, from JavaScript Gordon library (Flash Runtime in JS) and HTML5 respectively.
While i admit Flash probably won't vanish for a good decade or more, the war has certainly begun.

Non-important part, go away, don't read >_>
What really needs to happen for HTML5 to replace Flash is support for some of the features that are commonplace in Flash, mainly PRELOADING and embedding single files instead of a whole bunch of files.
So, in essence, libraries / programs to generate JS files with all the media embedded within. (or possibly a directory with all the files, but that won't make a lot of Flash devs happy)
Flash games especially need to be catered for with all this new development in web languages, they are pretty much the main reason people use Flash. (unless you count popularity of a single file, then Youtube would probably win)
This is where Adobe will almost certainly move in to try attract the most developers before anyone else does.
They could offer to export the current project as SWF (default), Directory, JS (single file).

Re:??? Ok then...

[Sockatume]

How are any of those "more complete" than this? It's practically at a feature parity with the desktop version. (Whether that's wise or useful is up for debate!)

Re:??? Ok then...

[mdwh2]

"We currently have no plans to develop Firefox for the Symbian platform." - so they're ignoring the most used phone OS.

Opera Mobile supports Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android and BREW. On the other hand, I'm not sure it supports Maemo, so to be fair Firefox is there for that platform.

They have no plans for Java, so Opera Mini will still be the preference for the 2 billion or so Java smartphones out there.

Re:??? Ok then...

[sznupi]

The point is merely that there are full mobile browsers available for quite some time...and suddenly this FF viral marketing summary comes claiming that Firefox mobile is the first one; well, nothing unexpected really...

"First one" and available pretty much only for most powerful mobile devices. Meanwhile some of other exisitng full mobile browsers work comfortably on devices roughly an order of magnitude slower.

Re:??? Ok then...

[mdwh2]

Symbian's built in browser supports Flash fine.

Why is a redisplay app bad if it gets the job done?

Re:??? Ok then...

[rdnetto]

Everything I've read about Firefox Mobile says that it is significantly slower than the native Maemo browser, MicroB. Since MicroB is based on Firefox anyway (and supports several addons), I don't really see what the point is.
What I'd really like to see ported is Opera Mini - at least it compresses the data for me.

Re:??? Ok then...

[jrumney]

The original Nokia 770 and N800 used Opera as their browser, so the port has been done, at least for an earlier version of Opera.

Re:??? Ok then...

[truedfx]

Where did you see "first one"? "Most complete" doesn't mean it's the first, it means it's more complete than the other browsers. (Whether that's true, I have no idea.)

Re:??? Ok then...

[squiggleslash]

Nope, the versions of Maemo you're talking about had a version of the standard Opera browser. Despite the presence of the world "Opera" in the names of both Opera and Opera Mini, and the fact they come from the same company, these are two entirely different browsers, as alike as, say, Windows Vista and Windows CE.

Re:??? Ok then...

[hkmwbz]

Wait, what? So a web browser is not complete unless it supports some proprietary plugin? LOL. By the way, mobile browsers do support the Flash plugin.

Nokia N900 win

[dcposch]

...the N900 is an amazing platform. I know it from a computational photography class at my university: http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs448a-10/ It runs a full Linux distro, has a 5MP camera, and now with FF 1.0 I consider it the first phone with a real browser. (IPhone/ITouch/IPad doesn't count because there's no flash and they don't support any browser extensions. Once I can run Flash, Firebug, and Adblock, then it's real.)

I think it deserves a shoutout especially because
*) Nokia is truly awful at promoting their products
*) a certain company that's great at marketing is making all sorts of splash with the antithesis of this phone. it's called the iPad; it runs a Unix derivative, but is an affront to the Unix philosophy. it somehow manages to be three times the size of an N900 with a tenth the functionality.

I think that N900 + FF Mobile is a real tool in an ocean of toys.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Aranykai]

Android 2.0 and 2.1 support flash with their native browsers. Hell, even android 1.5 supported flash lite.

That being said, I do hope they release a version for us android folks. The N900 is nice, but the price is a bit off putting for the masses.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Because when I view Flash content, I get a message from Adobe saying that it's coming in early 2010. (Motorola Droid, Android 2.0.1)

Re:Nokia N900 win

[rinoid]

Once I can run Flash, Firebug, FlashBlock ... oh wait!

Face it -- 90% of Flash usage is video (not necessary) and conceited designs (not needed) both of which can be done without Flash. The other 10% - games - it is great at that but native platforms are stronger. An iPhone game takes advantage of the iron, Flash could not.

Annoying uses of flash: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1256171@N20/pool/ Add yours too.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[AbRASiON]

I've delt with Nokia support for faulty handheld phones from them and I've delt with Apple.
Nokia is now blacklisted for me, they will never ever ever see a cent of my money, ever again. I don't care if god personally endorses their next phone.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[tepples]

The other 10% - games - it is great at that but native platforms are stronger.

Provided that the native platform is even open to development. For example, the only legit way for individuals and small companies to make and publish games for Wii is through Internet Channel. (Otherwise, you have to have a corporation or LLC, a dedicated office, and one or more prior published commercial titles.) The iPhone/iPod Touch devkit is far easier to get, but it still costs $600. Tools for JavaScript and SWF development, on the other hand, run on the commodity PC that you are more likely to already have.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[MichaelSmith]

I've delt with Nokia support for faulty handheld phones from them and I've delt with Apple.
Nokia is now blacklisted for me, they will never ever ever see a cent of my money, ever again. I don't care if god personally endorses their next phone.

I have never dealt with apple but agree with you about Nokia. I last bought a nokia 10 years ago and it was a disaster. I am just sorry that Ericsson don't make phones on their own any more. They used to make great phones.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[tsa]

The first iSync plugin for the N900 came out 6 days ago. Now FF 1.0 is also out for it, I don't think it will be too long before I buy one. That thing really blows the iPhone away. But I still need it to be able to sync with my Mac.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[mqduck]

I don't know where you got that idea, but Android has no Flash support to date. There were promises of support for all Android phones by the end of 2009. Current word is that it'll be out by the end of the first half of 2010, for Android 2 phones only.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[zullnero]

The only multitouch phone getting Flash anytime soon is the Palm Pre. At least, that has been actually announced.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[mdwh2]

Note that Nokia's other phones, running Symbian, do support Flash with their native browsers.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[mejogid]

It's supported on the HTC Hero, but only as an explicit addon by HTC.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[AbRASiON]

Any reason my informative post is moderated at 0? Seeing as I have experience dealing with both companies multiple times?
Someone hates apple, loves nokia or dislikes me - either way pal meta moderation is coming for you!

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Dragonslicer]

The N900 is nice, but the price is a bit off putting for the masses.

The price only seems high because you can't get it subsidized by a carrier (at least as far as I know in the US). If you look at the regular retail prices of most Android phones and the iPhone, you'll find that they're in the same range as the N900. If you get service from T-Mobile, you can even save $10 per month if you don't get a subsidized phone, so if you put that $240 (or more, if you plan on keeping the phone more than two years), towards the price of the phone, it's the equivalent of a $300 subsidized phone.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[cbhacking]

Awesome though this is, I'm not sure why it's seen as such a new thing. The browser on the N800/N810 (non-phone predecessors to the N900) is Gecko-based and includes full Flash 9 support. It doesn't use XUL, which means that porting something like AdBlock Plus wasn't trivial, but it *was* done - i.e. you can't even argue that it doesn't support extensions (it just couldn't use un-modified Firefox extensions).

Granted, the version of Gecko on the last N800 I tried was outdated (1.6?) by modern standards, so definitely not as standards-compliant as Firefox 3.6, but it certainly worked well enough for most things (especially since this was 2 years ago).

Re:Nokia N900 win

[yahwotqa]

Because (and I'm sure you knew about this) plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Eunuchswear]

The price only seems high because you can't get it subsidized by a carrier (at least as far as I know in the US).

In the Uk it's available from Vodaphone for "free" ("On Pay monthly plans from £40").

Myself I bought it outright, like my last 3 phones. Just hate the idea of tying myself to a supplier.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[rinoid]

Huh? I have not seen a $699.00 entry price for iPhone dev. From the program page: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

Join the Program
The iPhone Developer Program provides a complete and integrated process for developing and distributing applications for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Standard Program $99
Enterprise Program $299

Very low entry price.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the crappy Lite version, and it's not integrated into the browser but a separate player. Maemo devices render for example Youtube the same as on a desktop PC, Symbian doesn't even come close.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[AbRASiON]

Oh really, so traditionally when someone makes some input, even if it's a single anecdote they are at least left alone or mod'd up but this goes down.
So I ask again, who is the Nokia fan, Apple hater or cry baby? Which one plz.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[mjwx]

Any reason my informative post is moderated at 0?

Because your "informative" (snicker) post deserves it.

You fail to inform us of anything except your unsubstantiated bias.

I've never had to deal with Nokia support, ever in the 10 years I owned Nokia phones. This includes one Nokia I purchased in the Philipines, if you don't know what happens to refurbished Nokia's from first world nations, they go to be re-sold in 3rd world nations cheaply. So I cant say how good or bad Nokia support is.

Now Apple on the other hand, they took 5 days to replace a faulty PSU in an Imac, they also couldn't find anything wrong with a Macbook and tried to charge me for taking a look at it. Upon further inspection, there appeared to be water damage on the RAM, seeing as the user who had this laptop previously had left the organisation it became a rather pricey doorstop. How the Genius's at Apple missed this one is beyond me. BTW, I've only had the misfortune of dealing with Apple for the last 3 years.

As others have said, the plural of anecdote is not data. You failed to substantiate your anecdotes with even circumstantial evidence or conjecture, further more you label anyone who disagrees with you as an "Apple Hater" or "Cry Baby". Clearly the moderation system has already dealt with you.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[mjwx]

So I ask again, who is the Nokia fan, Apple hater or cry baby? Which one plz

Oh, this just proves everything about your point. We were wrong to doubt your unsubstantiated claims.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Aranykai]

Ah, that explains it. My android experience has been limited to the Hero and the Droid Eris, essentially the same handset. Although I did recall hearing that the Moto Droid was supposed to have it. After research, its supposedly coming in 2010.

Now I like my Hero even more :)

Re:Nokia N900 win

[Aranykai]

Thats true, but I a) Don't intend to change providers and b) only payed $99 for my Hero. Outright it's $479 and I don't think I can get much cheaper than my $69 dollar unlimited messaging/data/anymobile plan from sprint.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[hazydave]

The DROID currently has a special YouTube viewer, which supports just enough of the way flash is used in YouTube to play pretty much any YouTube video (eg, the ones that don't play on the iPhone). But full flash support is not out yet, but has been announced by Google, Motorola, Verizon, Adobe, and pretty much anyone else with a finger in that pie.

Apple will not allow Flash on their "walled garden" devices, simply because that creates a hole in the wall. Flash allows the download of things that behave "application-like", and Apple only supports the use of the browser for things that behave "web-page like". Well, except for a small but growing number of Javascript programs that also behave application-like. The reason is that Apple wants money for and control of any applications on these devices. They don't want unapproved applications, nor any possible way to sell applications without their getting paid.

Re:Nokia N900 win

[jfanning]

The N900 already has a excellent FF based browser in MicroB. It is also much faster than FF Mobile. And it also supports several plug-ins already.

Symbian

[heffrey]

Why select a minority platform with no devices? Surely someone sane would develop for S60 and perhaps iPhone first (perhaps because Safari probably quite entrenched with iPhone users).

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will not allow competition on iphone.

Re:Symbian

[barzok]

Doesn't Apple still prohibit 3rd-party web browsers on iPhone because they would directly compete with software offered by Apple?

Re:Symbian

[ducomputergeek]

It would never be allowed on the iPhone. Apple prohibits any apps that complete with their offerings. So no browsers other than Safari. That being said, why didn't they target blackberry first?

Re:Symbian

[marmoute]

The N900 is not running Symbian but Mameo 5 a mobile oriented linux distribution based on debian. Firefox mobile is running on it because Nokia is commiting internal resources to develop it. That's all.

Re:Symbian

[merrickm]

"Sorry, no plans. Due to its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components, Firefox is not compatible on the Blackberry OS."

Re:Symbian

[AbRASiON]

This relationship I'm having with my iphone is becoming a love / hate one. goddamn I hope Nexus One really takes off (and Nexus 1.1 actually works on Telstra in Australia)

Re:Symbian

[barzok]

Mozilla has already stated that a BlackBerry port won't happen or if it does, it's at the bottom of the priority list. The BB OS isn't powerful enough to handle it, apparently. http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/11/09/mozilla-rules-out-firefox-for-iphone-and-blackberry/

Re:Symbian

[amRadioHed]

According to this page they aren't targeting blackberry at all. They say that it's a problem that the platform is based on Java, which seems strange to me since they are working on an Android version and that is also a java based platform.

Re:Symbian

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

By far the path of least resistance.

The hard part of Firefox Mobile is the fact that Firefox itself has gotten a bit pudgy. All sorts of optimizing and cutting down and whatnot has been necessary to get it to fit on phone hardware(on the plus side, the fruits of this process should be applicable to just about any small embedded device, and possibly back to desktop Firefox). The second hard part is porting to all the various oddball environments running on different phones.

The N900 pretty much eliminates the second hard part; because Maemo is basically debian, complete with X and a fair slice of GTK(QT in the future), running on ARM. Its power is limited compared to your standard X86 PC; but it is otherwise probably the closest thing to a normal Linux environment that will ever be available to the general public in phone form(at least in the near future. OpenMoko is nearly dead, the hacks to get at the standard linux that runs under Android are hacks, and anything else is some tiny volume dev-board device.). This makes it a good environment for real-world testing of the effort to make Firefox work within mobile constraints, without the large effort of substantial porting.

I would assume that the long term plan does involve porting to more environments, because otherwise this is a whole lot of work to put into making sure that Maemo has a nicer browser; but each presents various difficulties. iPhone is almost certainly out, because Apple forbids alternate browsers(they do allow 3rd party programs that put a slightly different face on mobile Safari; but that isn't at all the same thing). Android wants everything done in the java-eque world of Dalvic, with minimal facility for running native Linux applications, so that would be a major porting effort. Symbian has substantial market share(at least for now); but it doesn't resemble any of the environments where Firefox already runs all that much(plus, more practically, S60 devices tend to have specs a bit behind the bleeding edge. The fact that this works is a feather in S60's cap; but if you have a browser that has some dieting to do, there isn't much point in porting until the dieting is done). It really remains to be seen if doing a WinMo port is worth it at all. If WinMo 7 turns out to be genuinely interesting, they probably will. If 7 is just more of 6, WinMo will likely just bleed away into a niche of tightly corporate-controlled Exchange appendages, and Corporate IT lockdown world has never really been Firefox's native habitat.

Re:Symbian

[solanum]

Check here for info on other ports:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms

As far as Symbian is concerned they say "We currently have no plans to develop Firefox for the Symbian platform." Because after all there are so many more phones running Windows Mobile and Maemo than Symbian.....

Stick with Opera Mobile, it's an excellent mobile browser anyway.

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the "minority" platform is among the most open and friendly to developers and also happens to be the most similar to one where Firefox is already available (desktop GNU/Linux with Gtk+).

Re:Symbian

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that the real issue is that most blackberry devices are running distinctly tepid hardware(which is fine for them, BB knows what they are doing in terms of getting their email and messaging clients working on that hardware, and lower spec hardware means cheaper for corporate customers to get more of their employees on blackberry), and you aren't going to get firefox going, particularly with tabs, under those conditions. Android, on the other hand, has seen some rather zippy devices as Google attempts to one-up the iPhone user experience.

Re:Symbian

[onefriedrice]

Apple prohibits any apps that complete with their offerings. So no browsers other than Safari.

Actually, that's not at all accurate. There are several other browsers in the App Store. The catch, of course, is that Apple won't allow interpreters, so you would just need to use the system Javascript library which Safari uses. I can understand how this would be too restrictive for Mozilla to spend much effort on an iPhone port, but to say that Apple doesn't allow browsers because they compete with their own offerings is clearly not true.

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use Skyfire (an equivalent of Opera Mini, but which uses Gecko on the server side, and can handle youtube's flash movies)

Re:Symbian

[Quantumstate]

Android has a native development kit so you can use languages other than Java. It is just primarily designed to use Java.

Re:Symbian

[tepples]

Because after all there are so many more phones running Windows Mobile and Maemo than Symbian.....

For one thing, what kind of CPU and RAM are in typical S60 phones compared to Maemo devices? For another, Maemo is much more similar to an existing supported platform (Debian GNU/Linux) than Symbian is.

Re:Symbian

[heffrey]

I know N900 is not Symbian, hence my post. Interesting point you make that the development for FF mobile in Maemo was done by Nokia!

Re:Symbian

[heffrey]

Because after all there are so many more phones running Windows Mobile and Maemo than Symbian

Er, I think you'll find that Symbian outnumbers Windows Mobile / Maemo combined by a very great distance indeed.

I'm not a great fan of Opera Mobile, partly because I've got so used to Opera Mini which I think is fantastic.

Re:Symbian

[MichaelSmith]

My wife has an HTC Magic running android and she loves it. She got it bundled with a two year vodafone contract (renewing her old contract). The funny thing is that if you work out the cost of the contracts the iphone is frequently more expensive with the app store lock in, while the android phones are a slightly cheaper with a bit more freedom.

Re:Symbian

[Nightspirit]

Even the winmobile requirements are pretty harsh (128Mb ram), which pretty much means it can only be used on devices within the past year.

Re:Symbian

[MichaelSmith]

BAll sorts of optimizing and cutting down and whatnot has been necessary to get it to fit on phone hardware(on the plus side, the fruits of this process should be applicable to just about any small embedded device, and possibly back to desktop Firefox).

Yes, my first thought was to see if I could install this on my eeepc 701.

Re:Symbian

[heffrey]

I've got an E52 and Skyfire is useless on it. On that device to get viable web browsing you need something that reformats the page and then serves it through a proxy. That means Opera as far as I can tell.

Re:Symbian

[heffrey]

most open and friendly to developers

For a moment there I thought you were referring to Windows Mobile. That said, I wouldn't describe any Linux platform as being friendly to developers.

Re:Symbian

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Check the release notes for the n900 version, they say that it can be installed on desktop linux(albeit with a bunch of "for testing only, some features not available, yadda yadda" caveats. I haven't tried it yet.)

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Why select a minority platform with no devices?

Why select a piece of shit platform with lots of devices so that your first impression is awful?

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you mean it can only be used by devices within past 7 years, right? I mean, ipaq 5555 was released in 2003, and I really doubt it was the first device with 128MB SDRAM.

Re:Symbian

[Nightspirit]

I believe they're talking about program memory. I think in the old ipaqs you could adjust what you wanted between storage and program memory but once everything went to nonvolatile memory only recently have devices had 128Mb of program memory.

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to name even ONE platform that's more friendly to developers than Linux? None? Thought so... and this is coming from a C# developer.

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can tell, Opera Mobile hasn't been released for the Maemo platform yet (at least not in any of the catalogs I've added)

Re:Symbian

[heffrey]

Windows is great for developers.

Re:Symbian

[zullnero]

1. Because the N900 supports flash.
2. Because the N900 doesn't have a capacitive touch screen. It takes more work to build a browser that supports really good multitouch properly than just a traditional touch sensitive screen. That said, the N900 does run Linux. And other platforms already have decent enough browser solutions integrated into them. Linux phones benefit from having a good open source web browser, iPhone or Android kind of have interests in promoting their parent company's browsers.

And yes, Firefox Mobile isn't exactly what I'd call the "most complete" browser out there. The term browser, on mobile devices, is very, very vague. There is an OS like webOS that has a customized webKit based browser basically integrated throughout the UI on top of Linux, you've got Explorer which is a little less integrated throughout WM, then you have true third party solutions like Opera. Calling one better than the other doesn't work so well, since an integrated browser is going to have an advantage no matter how you slice it.

Re:Symbian

[Sentry360]

You're forgetting the super-geek demographic. The kind that don't want Linux-Lite that Android offers, but want the whole shebang you get with Maemo. That being said I own an N900 and it is by far the best phone I've ever had. I've played with friend's iPhones and Android phones before and they never appealed to me. The devices felt cheap... not hardware cheap.... software cheap. The limitations of which could be felt within 5 minutes of using the device... heck you can't even multi task on the iphone.

One of the first things I did when I got my N900 was first install gainroot, takes like minute from the app manager, then installed Ruby 1.8.7, then found some Ruby tutorial pages and began copy/pasting Ruby code snippets into Conboy notes that I keep synced up. Then I make files using PyGTKEditor and execute them from terminal. So now whenever I'm stuck in a boring situation... aka the bus, lame party, work gatherings... I pull out my phone and continue learning Ruby so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.

Ohh I also remapped my arrow keys to do Home/End/PageUp/PageDown when I hold the function keys, and remapped the Pound and Euro symbols to < and >.

I don't know if any other phone would have let me do all this stuff... and it's just a fraction of the fun of having a full blown OS... but I feel that if I had an Android I'd be hitting walls of frustration.

The reason FireFox went with the N900 is because Nokia spent alot of time working on it for the Maemo internal browser. The FireFox mobile project probably got alot of free code from Nokia which made writing FireFox for the N900 the easiest task to tackle. Which I still prefer over the FireFox simply because it's much more integrated into the phone, and I've yet to had a website not work in it.

Re:Symbian

[mdwh2]

You're right about Symbian, but the Iphone's market share is way behind. I have no idea how it compares to Maemo (do you have a source?), but there are plenty of other platforms they ought to support before the Iphone, if market share was their concern.

Re:Symbian

[Theril]

Nobody sane would voluntarily develop anything for Symbian. It's most probably the worst and most hostile environment for development ever created.

For some evidence to my claim see how many open source projects there are for Symbian comparing to it's market share.

Re:Symbian

[negRo_slim]

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms

Firefox for Blackberry
Sorry, no plans. Due to its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components, Firefox is not compatible on the Blackberry OS.

Re:Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Nokia already did the hard work? It's a normal Linux device, runs on GTK, and the built in browser (MicroB) is Mozilla based, which means they already have all the work done to build the core browser. Whip up a UI, make some tweaks because they can, and release!

Well, their choice of implementation for the UI actually made a bit of back end work necessary - the sort of thing Nokia wouldn't be able to do because they don't control Gecko development.

Re:Symbian

[BZ]

You would need to not only use the system JS library, but you also couldn't ship, say, the Gecko XSLT implementation (since XSLT is turing-complete). Could you ship CSS features like calc()? Hard to say.

Are there any browsers in the App Store that aren't just thin wrappers about the default Webkit and JavaScriptCore?

Re:Symbian

[cloricus]

That makes me worry about the quality of the Firefox they've made for 'mobile' computing if it can't even work on a Black Berry.

I didn't 'get' mobile internet or think it was worth the time of day until my work Black Berry saved my holiday by allowing me to online order tickets from people reselling theirs to a week long festival. This was in the middle of no where using the Opera Mobile browser over 3G while I was standing in the sold out queue trying to get in. By the time I got to the scanning gate I had the barcode up in an Opera tab and walked right in. Was a great festival too. This was three or four years ago.

If Firefox can't equal or better that experience years later what are they really offering beyond some competition?

And why are they pimping a 'full web browser' as my iPhones 3G has had that since the day I bought it almost two years ago.

Re:Symbian

[Scoth]

A more accurate saying might be no non-webkit browsers. All the browsers in Apple Store are, to my knowledge, still using the iphone/ipod webkit widgets. Thus Apple still has ultimate control over the browsing experience, and can ensure that anything that is a browser or embeds a web browser has the same visual experience.

Re:Symbian

[Xyde]

There are plenty of other browsers on the iPhone.

Re:Symbian

[mjwx]

That being said, why didn't they target blackberry first?

Simple answer, Maemo is Linux, Blackberry is WinCE. It was easier and faster for them to port their X86 Linux code to ARM Linux code then it was for them to write WinCE ARM code.

Re:Symbian

[hazydave]

Your iPhone web browser don't support Flash or Java, it's not "full" in the sense of virtually every deskop browser's capabilities. Or tabs, or plug-ins, or lots of other desktop-class features. Many of the small browsers are closer to "full", many are farther away. It certainly remains to be seen whether Firefox will deliver, but that's their target.

Despite the proprietary nature of Flash and other ugliness (there's not much of a good reason for 90%+ of Flash web sites), it is a reality of the modern web, and until it's replaced by something better, not having in your web browser renders you less than a first class user of the web. Same deal with Java... if you don't have it, there are many things you can't do online (curiously, less that in the past, largely because asynchronous Javascript + CSS and Flash have both taken on some of the things Java could only do 10+ years ago). Sadly for iPhone users, Apple will neither fix the problem nor allow you to fix it by using a rival browser. Every other mobile platform allows freedom of choice in such applications.

Re:Symbian

[badkarmadayaccount]

Time for porting Gecko to JS. You can swap TraceMonkey with Rhino anytime, and you're done. As an extra, you get quicker DOM manipulations.

Nokia N810?

[TejWC]

I read on the website that it can be installed for the N810 as well but I can't find the easy "Install" button anywhere.

Does anybody know how good the performance is on the N810? The built-in Firefox browser is OK (terrible at javascript though) and I am wondering if this mobile version is any better.

Re:Nokia N810?

[cmunic8r99]

You can get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/m/

Re:Nokia N810?

[Anonymous Coward]

It lags pretty bad, search around for the "Tear" browser instead.

Re:Nokia N810?

[guysoft]

Runs really slow on the N810. And randomly crashes after a minute or so. Its quite a shame.

Re:Nokia N810?

[TeknoHog]

It also installs and runs on a N800, after all the internal hardware is almost the same as in the N810. It is likewise slow, actually looks and feels much like Fennec (what is the difference anyway?).

Re:Nokia N810?

[TuringTest]

It's the same beast. Fennec was the project internal codename, Mozilla Browser is the final commercial name.

Re:Nokia N810?

[jfanning]

I would avoid it as the N810 is basically too low powered. But on the other hand if you want a faster browser on the N810 download Tear or one of the other webkit ones. Tear works fine and with the browser switcher tool also available I can replace the system MicroB browser with it for most things.

Am I the only one?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I don't care that a "mobile browser does not have to equal a compromised Internet experience." My BlackBerry Bold is physically too large, in my opinion, yet the screen is far to small for me to give two winks about nice graphics or watching videos. I have the largest battery that fits into a stock battery cover, so I don't want to deal with further battery limitations to process all that crap. When I browse the Internet on the phone, I find myself wishing that more sites offered mobile versions, but only because the only thing I want is the content. I can even do without pictures and graphics altogether.

Re:Am I the only one?

[MichaelSmith]

When I browse the Internet on the phone, I find myself wishing that more sites offered mobile versions

Not sure about the blackberry but the web browsers on many mobile devices (such as the iphone) don't identify themselves as mobile devices to avoid being given a mobile version of web pages.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Overzeetop]

The problem is that web developers work for the marketing arm, and nothing says success like shiny. All the demos and development, I'm certain, are run on large monitors with a local connection to the server. hey really ought to require all web developers to run on a 100kb connection with 150ms ping times, with a P-III-350 machine. Only then will you get a set of web pages which will be tolerable on smaller devices.

Take a look at Rainforest Cafe's website. If you don't have flash, they don't want you - period. No way to get restaurant locations or information (heaven forbid you should want to check that on your mobile) at all without flash. Look at any major website - NYT, eBay, /. - you're loading hundreds of kilobytes of css definitions before you even get to page contents.

I have the same rule today with my companies website I had 7 years ago when I started: Every page should load in 10 seconds or less on a 56k dialup connection. It won't be great on a mobile device, but its very viewable - and usable. People still complement me on my site, despite it being out of date, and I suspect it's because (1) it's pretty (2) everything is easy to find and (3) it loads almost instantly on just about any connection.

Re:Am I the only one?

[heffrey]

When I browse the Internet on the phone, I find myself wishing that more sites offered mobile versions, but only because the only thing I want is the content. I can even do without pictures and graphics altogether.

You need Opera Mini.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Aranykai]

rainforestcafe.com works on my HTC Hero(android 1.5) just fine. It's certainly not snappy, but perfectly usable considering its a mobile phone.

Flash is not out of the realm of an affordable smartphone. The hero and droid eris are both had for under $100 out of pocket and handle this stuff just fine.

Re:Am I the only one?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I love Opera Mini! I use it all the time, but if the site has too much junk, it still takes forever to load, even in Opera. I'm actually pretty impressed with the second rev of their version 5 beta. The first version really stunk, but the new one is quite slick, and I especially like the addition of copy and paste.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea how people tolerate the stock Bold browser - that thing is awful.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

show me flash on them, please.

Re:Am I the only one?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

nothing says success like shiny.

I wonder if they ever compare their 'success' with sites like Wikipedia, craigslist and Google?

Re:Am I the only one?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I agree that it's not out of the range of possibility, it's just that I don't care. All I really want on my phone is text - pure content. All that stuff really doesn't do anything for my experience on a 320 x 480 2.6" display.

Re:Am I the only one?

[sznupi]

Well, those are prices with contract...

But most importantly, things like full Flash websites don't belong on mobile phone mostly because of insane requirements for power they brings; and it's not just about "CPU power", which current top smartphones can provide, but wasting battery power.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Aranykai]

Regardless of what you want, if the situation arose that you needed to access a flash site for some reason, wouldn't you want to be able to? It doesn't mean you have to use it 24/7.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

The default browser on Android 2.0.1 identifies itself as a mobile browser.

Re:Zzzzz...

[cmunic8r99]

I hate to burst your bubble, but Safari on the iPhone/iPod Touch is not a 'full mobile browser'.

Re:Zzzzz...

[igjeff]

And to take it one step further, this really isn't a 'full mobile browser'. Its a 'full browser that happens to be on a mobile device'

When you go to web pages that would serve up a "mobile" version of their page to devices like the iPhone, or Blackberries, or whathaveyou, with the N900 (even with the built-in Fennec based browser, but with this Firefox version as well) you don't get the mobile version of the page, you get the regular version of the page...and its quite usable doing it, too.

"even flash"?

[Anonymous Coward]

They talk like this is a new thing for mobile platforms, but I've had Flash on my N800 for years and years now. I know that isn't the only mobile platform with Flash support. Why does everyone pretend it's something new to mobile computing?

Re:"even flash"?

[__aaaaxm1522]

I've had Flash on my N800 for years too. And I hate it. Incredibly slow. This is one of the reasons why Apple is doing the right thing by dropping Flash in their browser. I mean, what's the point? Having a web page that renders well and quickly except for blue boxes, or having "flash support" that results in your browser slowing to a crawl on all but the most "lightweight" flash pages?

Re:"even flash"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The points are that flash is the most common way to deliver video content, which my N800 generally plays fine, and that I only load the flash I want to load, so I have more flexibility to view more pages by having flash support than by not having it. Not having it is not an advantage, because I don't load "flash crap", just things I actually want to use or see.

Apple did not do the right thing, I'm afraid. The right thing would be to give the user the *choice*. Hate flash? Fine, don't use it. Want flash? Fine, use it. Best of both worlds.

Re:"even flash"?

[tepples]

I mean, what's the point [of SWF]? Having a web page that renders well and quickly except for blue boxes

SWF is for working around limitations of Internet Explorer, namely its lack of a fast script engine, HTML 5 canvas, and HTML 5 audio. These are important for games if nothing else.

Re:"even flash"?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

How does Hulu play on your N800? How about from the cellular data connection?

Re:"even flash"?

[cbhacking]

You should be using AdBlock Plus port for MicroB and Flashblock port for MicroB.

No ads, pages load faster, don't run any Flash you don't want to - and yet, you can run all the flash that you *do* want to!

n800

[Anonymous Coward]

seems to work, albeit a bit sluggish on my n800 also. posting from it right now! ;)

Re:n800

[ultrabot]

Great news. I'm using Tear on my n810 mostly, let's see if this can top it...

You fail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you're confusing Opera Mini with Opera Mobile, which is a full browser.

First impressions

[dnaumov]

The UI felt a bit unusual at the start, but I actually ended up liking it, felt unique and effective. The application start time is a few seconds slower than the Micro browser that ships with the N900, but page load and rendering speed seems toughly equal. The straightforwardness of installing and configuring AdBlocker felt more integrated and polished in the new Firefox 1.0. However, the Firefox has a major deal-breaker for me, it's broken ZOOM function. You're only limited to a "maximum zoom in" or "maximum zoom out" by doubletapping the screen, you can't pick your desired level of zoom by doing a clockwise/counterclockwise drag movement like in Micro. Ctrl-UP and Ctrl-DOWN were supposed keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out, but these didn't even work at all, the key combinations did nothing (while other shortcuts like Ctrl-L worked normally). This definately feels like a good start, but it's more of a 0.98 version than a 1.0, it just has a few rough edges and needs some polish.

Re:First impressions

[ipX]

Ctrl-UP and Ctrl-DOWN were supposed keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out, but these didn't even work at all, the key combinations did nothing (while other shortcuts like Ctrl-L worked normally).

Works fine for me on my N900. Also if you are in a form, they move between elements. Sort of like Ctrl+Left arrow in MicroB.

Re:First impressions

[jspenguin1]

You also can't use long press to open a menu on a link. No portrait mode, no drag from left to hover, no select mode.

Until Firefox implements these, I'll stick with the Maemo browser.

Re:First impressions

[Spliffster]

I have just downloaded the linux version of mobile ff 1 and gave it a spin. Zoom was one of my concerns. On a desktop linux you can zoom into pages and images gradually with the mouse wheel. I guess the functionality is there the browser is just not (yet?) very well integrated in your test platform as it seems.

Re:First impressions

[21mhz]

The application start time is a few seconds slower than the Micro browser that ships with the N900

That's because it is not "pre-started" like the MicroB browser. You can enable it for fennec by adding a field X-Maemo-Prestarted=always in the file /usr/share/applications/hildon/fennec.desktop. You can switch off the MicroB, too.

However, the Firefox has a major deal-breaker for me, it's broken ZOOM function. You're only limited to a "maximum zoom in" or "maximum zoom out" by doubletapping the screen, you can't pick your desired level of zoom by doing a clockwise/counterclockwise drag movement like in Micro.

I guess many people enjoy it, but I find it simpler and quicker to double-tap at an element and have the view zoomed to exacty its block width.
I have discovered another great feature: the form navigation mode. Tap into a form element to enable it.

Re:First impressions

[vinsci]

Zooming with Ctrl-up and Ctrl-down works perfectly.

If your physical keyboard layout have the up/down keys in blue, like mine, you must also press the blue arrow together with Ctrl (easy as they are next to each other), otherwise you're really typing Ctrl-left or Ctrl-right.

While at first it seems handy that the N900 built-in browser, Microb, uses the volume control buttons for easy zooming, it's not so great once you'd actually like to change the volume quickly. (You'd have to use the desktop status area volume control in Microb.) Since some will prefer that anyway, a preference setting may be in place.

Re:First impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

It is much more than a few seconds slower for me on my N900. MicroB starts up virtually instantly, and Firefox takes 19 seconds to fully load. It's slower in normal usage as well.

For teh N900 ownrz

[ipX]

Download@ http://firefox.com/m/

If anyone figures out how to select text on the page (not in a textarea or input - shift+right/left arrow does that) plz reply.

Two More Versions Until It's Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on Firefox desktop and Thunderbird this should be fairly good for at version 1.0, great at version 2.0 and then version 3.0 will be utterly terrible and will force you to switch to something else.

I switched to Opera when Firefox 3.0 and have found it to be better than even Firefox 2.0 was. I've also switched to using GMail through the web interface instead through Thunderbird. I have to say I preferred Thunderbird 2.0 to GMail but GMail is far better than Thunderbird 3.0.

Mozilla really should stop developing at 2.0 since that seems to be the point by which they've implemented all their good ideas and after that they only add crap features and bloat.

Re:Two More Versions Until It's Crap

[Aranykai]

Have you tried SeaMonkey from mozilla? If you liked early firefox but hated the bloat, you might like it. Its more similar to the original mozilla suite but it is simple and clean. Might be right up your alley.

Re:Two More Versions Until It's Crap

[sznupi]

Latest versions of Seamonkey brought it closer to FF unfortuntelly; though it still seems second only to Opera in overall snappiness, how smooth the whole browsing experience is. Which is especially weird considering that the Seamonkey is supposed to be the heavy one, which caused development of FF...

But Flash means a compromised mobile experience

[straponego]

Given that flash uses 100% of a core of a high-end x64 processor, it'll be murderous on cell phone batteries. Still, Mozilla is the first mobile browser I'm aware of which may support something like Flashblock. And flashy pages are even uglier and more punishing on a mobile device.

Re:But Flash means a compromised mobile experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment only tells that you have not used N900.

a) pages with flash do not drain battery (the difference is not noticeable)
b) there's absolutely no performance hit when, for example, opening the browser to a youtube page, starting video, minimizing the browser (so that the video plays in the background) and running other applications ...this with the default mozilla-based browser.

Don't know how it is with firefox mobile.

Re:But Flash means a compromised mobile experience

[cbhacking]

The N800/N810 has had a Gecko-based browser since 2008, with full Flash support (version 9, not the "lite" crap). Both AdBlock Plus and Flashblock were ported to this browser. While the ability to use un-modified Firefox extensions would be nice (the older browser doesn't include XUL), the idea isn't so new.

That said, yes, playing Flash hurt the battery life significantly. With normal browsing (including ABP so no Flash ads), you could get 7 hours continuous use pretty easily. Hit YouTube or Pandora.com, though, and it dropped to more like 2 hours (although it could run both sites, if slowly - loading Pandora took about 10 seconds). It also used enough RAM that having much else open at once would be pretty slow, although it was possible (SD card configured to act as swap).

Highlights?

[owlnation]

Highlights include the familiar Awesome Bar

How can Firefox's most controversial "feature" be considered a highlight? This one "highlight" will be the reason I'm sticking with Opera on my phone. It's bad enough having bloated crap on a fully specced desktop machine -- it's a total dealbreaker on a limited platform.

This summary has to be one of the most blatantly astroturfed I've read on /.

Re:Highlights?

[Cruxus]

The Awesome Bar is pretty awesome; I don't know why there's been so much negativity about it here on Slashdot. Rather than organizing a bunch of bookmarks, I just remember a few key phrases from a website's URL or page title. This is especially useful where I work because we have many web apps in various stages of development, and the URL varies by port number. I just type in the port and get the version I want. Also I don't notice much of a slow-down on any of the PCs I've used it on.

Re:Highlights?

[EzInKy]

For me it was totally irritating and distracting, but I don't much like the way completion is implemented in editors either. Now bash, which only completes a line when requested, gets it right.

Re:Highlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

The awesome bar is not awesome. It's shit.

But those who like it will never agree with those who don't. The biggest problem was that such a major change to the browser was forced on all users - support for FF2 was dropped when 3 came out (or shortly afterwards). There are some workarounds and an extension that tries to bring back the sensible functionality, but it's still not the same.

The awful bar should have been an extension. Even if Mozilla felt it had to be with the browser, if it were an extension it could be removed properly.

I think NoScript is pretty awesome (well, I don't - I am just using the same stupid word you did. NS is a good idea, and massively increases security, and reduces annoyances). Should NoScript type functionality should be built into the browser? How would you like it if there was a major change in functionality when you already know how to use a tool, a tool that worked fine in the first place?

I really wish there were a fork of FF that trimmed it back down to being close to its original aim: to be a sleek, fast, browser with an extension system to add functionality.....

The awesome bar is so bad that I still haven't upgraded any installs of FF to v3 (and distros that come with FF3 have had it replaced with 2). I have even been using Seamonkey, as that hasn't been ruined to chase the clueless IE users. Yes, that is why FF is being dumbed down, to pander to fuckwits who don't know (and are so anti-intellectual that they refuse to read documentation) that the browser already had searchable bookmarks, and searchable history.

It is funny how people justify the awful bar being good for everyone, because of their specific need. I'm sure all users need the awful bar in case they need to access the same server, but on a different port. It saves them a few key strokes, and for the hunter-peckers this is good.

Re:Highlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, its incredibly fucking useful.

No, it is not. It is totally redundant, as (almost) all the functionality it provides was already in the browser, if you know how to use the browser.

To access history through the address bar is quicker and convenient than having to navigate through a ton of history.

The history was searchable pre-FF3, and it could be viewed in a few different ways. And a simple ctrl-h will bring up the history, and put the cursor in the search box. So there is no navigating through tons of history.

Admittedly the history being in a crappy little sidebar sucks, Seamokey's history is better, as it presents a different window with columns of information.

Do people really go trawling through their history so frequently that having that function available in the address bar is necessary? I doubt it.

The thing I don't get is even if you don't like it, don't fucking use it.

That's the point: you can't not fucking use it. You can try, but even with additional software, and option fiddling, things are still fucked up.

Besides, it adds chubbiness to the browser, and is a major symptom of Mozilla's destruction of the philosophy of FF. FF is just an IE alternative these days, and barely better (it is the extensions that make the product better).

It doesn't exactly get in the way and cause problems.

Now that is the biggest issue, it does. It's not clear, it's slower than the simple address bar. It presents lots of information, maybe even opening up opportunities for attack. It also presents irrelevant info: the bar doesn't know if you want bookmarks, history, a search, or if you are entering a new URL, so it does everything at once!

The awful bar is all about Mozilla ruining FF, and making it into what is basically a proprietary product (99.9999%+ of all users can't program, so to them it might as well be closed source). FF is just an IE competitor, not the best product technology will allow. The addition of the search box directly in the UI with FF2 shows this: the address bar could already by used for searching, but Mozilla (funded mainly by Google) added a redundant search box, right in the user's face, which benefits Google's business more than the user. The UI gets complicated by an additional box, but Google get their brand sitting in the user's eye-line for their whole browsing session.

The awful barf (lol, gonna leave that typo) is clearly Mozilla trying to make the browser appealing to IE-type users, the ones who will bitch about the line of rubbish (aka, a URL) purely because of their ignorance. Software should not be dumbed down, and generally FLOSS doesn't get dumbed down unless it is being user to chase the mass-market.

Re:Highlights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly the history being in a crappy little sidebar sucks, Seamokey's history is better, as it presents a different window with columns of information.

Do people really go trawling through their history so frequently that having that function available in the address bar is necessary? I doubt it.

I don't think you get just how shitty the history sidebar is/was. If you wanted to search for a site you had gone to but didn't remember the title? You could only order by last visited or site or popularity...none of which are terribly useful.

Now, you just have to remember a few keywords or such and that's all, removing the need to have to navigate through history at all. The way it should be.

It also adds a whole slew of functionality that isn't related to needing to view history, but is helped by history. Auto completion of sites I dont often visit works out better than having bookmarks, being able to choose from a list of sites relevant to a keyword that I may have searched in the past etc

No, it is not. It is totally redundant, as (almost) all the functionality it provides was already in the browser, if you know how to use the browser.

It is not redundant in any way, and actually ads new functionality and capability. Instead of dismissing it as chubbiness and noise, perhaps actually learn to use it. As I said, if you don't like it don't use and just type your URL as normal and press enter.

Now that is the biggest issue, it does. It's not clear, it's slower than the simple address bar. It presents lots of information, maybe even opening up opportunities for attack. It also presents irrelevant info: the bar doesn't know if you want bookmarks, history, a search, or if you are entering a new URL, so it does everything at once!

Not so. You can simply type in an address same as always and press enter, ignoring the list of relevant sites that it displays. It does not slow down the address bar at all unless you are actually using the feature and waiting for the sites to be displayed.

Don't spread FUD.

Useless to me

[frank249]

So according to Mozilla.org:

Firefox for iPhone
We do not have plans to build an iPhone browser due to constraints with the OS environment and distribution.

Firefox for Blackberry
Sorry, no plans. Due to its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components, Firefox is not compatible on the Blackberry OS.

Firefox for Symbian
We currently have no plans to develop Firefox for the Symbian platform.

So, not available for iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian? Thats what, 3/4 of the smartphone market?

Its a shame as the Blackberry needs a decent browser. Opera Mini 5 is ok but I guess I will have to wait for Skyfire for flash support.

Re:Useless to me

[mystikkman]

You can blame Apple for the iPhone part. Image if MS had banned competing apps. Firefox would've never taken off like it did. It's shit like this that makes me hope that the iPad dies in a fire, though the software and hardware are kinda cool.

Re:Useless to me

[hkmwbz]

I don't know about Skyfire... The Flash support is pretty crappy. Videos are like watching slideshows.

N800 Maemo Browser ROCKS!

[Anonymous Coward]

The N800 Maemo Browser ROCKS when compared to FF-Mobile or Safari/Opera-mobile/whatever-mobile. Mobile browsers suck, including iPhone-Safari.

I've never come across a site that didn't work, including Youtube with the N800 Maemo default browser. FF-m-1.x appears to be a resource hog on my machine. I pulled the RC3 down YESTERDAY and couldn't run it and any other app at the same time. Boo.

OTOH, with the Maemo Browser, I was able to start YouAmp, Maemo-Mapper, an xterm with an ssh session to a remote server and none were slow.

All within 128MB RAM. I must be missing the issue - why did anyone bother with FF on Maemo again? Plugins?

N900 already uses a Mozilla-based browser

[shutdown -p now]

With the Nokia 900 and Firefox Mobile 1.0, even Flash content including the normal YouTube site is working

Given that the browser that comes out of the box in N900 is already Mozilla-based (in fact, the extension install screen looks conspicuously like Firefox), and can already play Flash, and use ABP, what advantage does this thing have over it?

Re:N900 already uses a Mozilla-based browser

[Wesley Felter]

I have a N900. Firefox's UI is definitely better and it feels a little faster.

Re:N900 already uses a Mozilla-based browser

[sznupi]

That might have something to do with the thing that it "removes" some features...compare zooming implementation for example?

Re:Zzzzz...

[mdwh2]

But if people are setting up a website to return a mobile version for mobile browsers, surely they could do the same for the N900? How would you avoid them doing that?

Uh, netbooks anyone?

[drinkypoo]

The desktop versions are intended for development purposes only.

WTF? Uh, the N900 is a minuscule segment compared to netbooks, which need a lighter-weight browser (prism does not count) at least as much as the N900. FAIL, FAIL.

Re:Zzzzz...

[mejogid]

I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing - a full mobile browser is a full browser that has the bonus of mobility i.e. runs on a mobile device. Certain websites serving certain variations on their standard HTML to specific useragent strings reflects nothing on the capabilities or the type of the browser that renders them.

No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Hurricane78]

Firefox for iPhone
We do not have plans to build an iPhone browser due to constraints with the OS environment and distribution.

Firefox for Blackberry
Sorry, no plans. Due to its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components, Firefox is not compatible on the Blackberry OS.

Firefox for Symbian
We currently have no plans to develop Firefox for the Symbian platform.

I’m sorry. That’s just silly. Those are the 3 biggest platforms out there.
They are basically saying “Everyone can get Firefox. As long as he’s not using 99% of the platforms/phones out there!”.

I’ll stay with Opera, which already runs very nicely.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[mystikkman]

WTF? Don't blame Firefox for the iPhone part. Does Opera run on the iPhone? no? Didn't think so. Apple bans competing applications.

Firefox would've never taken off like it did and Opera would be stillborn. It's shit like this that makes me hope that the iPad dies in a fire, though the software and hardware are kinda cool.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[DrXym]

I'll stay with Opera, which already runs very nicely.

Which version of Opera runs on all of those platforms? As far as I can tell Opera Mobile is only available for Nokia & Windows Mobile platforms (same targets as Mozilla is aiming for).

Java systems are stuck with Opera Mini which is basically a dumb client with a server backend that does a decent job rendering but comes with a whole pile of limitations.

And both versions of Opera are in the same boat as Mozilla is for the iPhone. Apple's ridiculous restrictions prevent either browser being offered.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[zombie_monkey]

As far as I can tell Opera Mobile is only available for Nokia & Windows Mobile platforms (same targets as Mozilla is aiming for).
By "Nokia", do you mean Maemo or Symbian? As the GP poster said, Mozilla have no plans to support Symbian, which Opera does, and Opera does not have a Maemo version. So what do you mean by "same targets"?

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Hurricane78]

Ok, sorry. You are of course right on that one. Also: Don’t focus on the iPhone so much. Notice how I said “Symbian” in the subject? I am actually boycotting the iPhone myself. (Mobile software developer here.)
But nobody can ignore the fact, that they are a player that got even Nokia to sweat. They are still the smallest of the 3 above. But people are buying into the reality distortion bubble, just like with their MP3 player. That’s why I did not leave it out. (Also notice how the Apple fanboys would have modded me to oblivion if I had left it out? ^^)

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon my language, but... the fuck Symbian? I've never seen a Symbian phone in my life -- maybe Mozilla never has either.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Threni]

Opera on Windows Mobile is a bit crap. Mine (on the Touch Diamond) can't work out that opening a third link on the same tab doesn't require more tabs. It ignores clicks sometimes. It's impossible to click on thing around the edges of the page (sometimes zooming in to max helps, as this pushes links towards the centre of the screen). Plugins don't work. You can't post to Slashdot unless you have a lot of patience because after clicking `space` between each word the cursor randomly moves somewhere on the current line you're on. Etc etc. I mean, yeah, it's great when you first use it and zoom in/out, bookmark pages etc. It's better than Skyfire, because that doesn't work at all, but it's definitely on my phone simply because there is no alternative (ie sucks far worse), so I'm up for giving Firefox Mobile 1 a go.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Rexdude]

Why not Symbian? It's the most widely used mobile platform in the world, which is considerably bigger than the US.
And there's no lame restrictions on what can or cannot be done, there's a full Carbide C++ SDK for native apps (for S60) and there's been heaps of apps since 2002 that nobody in the USA has ever heard of.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maemo is an offspring of Debian Linux, so it was probably much easier to port linux firefox to a linux phone.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[hkmwbz]

Opera Mobile is available for Symbian, which Firefox will ignore. They also had an iPhone version, but Apple refused to let them add it to the app store. It's already on Android Market. And Opera Mini isn't just a dumbed-down version. It does incredible things considering the way it works.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[hkmwbz]

Which version are you using? Anything from 9.5 and up works fine. Opera Mobile 10 crushes everything else.

Re:No Symbian? Sorry, but: FAIL!

[hazydave]

Symbian OS is on more smart phones than any other operating system, world-wide, powering about 45% of all smart phones. However, it is practically unknown in the USA, I'll agree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS

Nokia has been the major proponent of Symbian OS, as well as their owner for awhile: Nokia bought Symbian Software Ltd. back in 2008, and they're still in the process of releasing it as an open source platform. Most of the other companies making Symbian powered phones also produced WinMo models; most of these are moving rapidly to include Android, some even as their now-main focus. Nokia, as well discussed here, has also been using Linux/Maemo for their high-end smart phones.

Of course, from the US perspective, the iPhone seems to be everywhere, but world-wide, Apple is behind Nokia and RIM in sales and installed base.

N900 potential Firefox UI proeblem

[WML MUNSON]

Maybe it's just me, or my N900, but I can't figure out how to click links in Firefox without repetitively stabbing at them with the stylus

Re:N900 potential Firefox UI proeblem

[blackpig]

A single tap with the stylus does it for me... Fennec is still a little slower than the built in browser but it's getting better quickly. If only it had the 'twirl to zoom' feature.

Not a huge fan..

[Doug Neal]

I know runs contrary to some of the other posts here but I found Firefox for the N900 to be frustratingly slow. The MicroB browser feels far more responsive. I ended up uninstalling Firefox in the end because I just didn't have any reason to use it over MicroB. But even MicroB isn't as fast as it should be - this is inherent in using Gecko, which everyone knows is slower than Webkit, and the difference is especially noticable on a mobile device. It seemed like a very odd choice for Nokia to make. Tear shows promise but is not quite there yet.

Room for improvement

[vinsci]

Overall I like it - it's obvious that a lot of good thinking has been going on. That much said, there are a few things to look at:

• No scrollbars on pages. This must be fixed! Microb does it right by fading them in and out of visibility, so that no screen real estate is lost.
• The setting to preload it should be an option in preferences, enabled by default (you can do this manually, search the comments here for "preload" for instructions). Perhaps also add way to remove the preload setting for Microb and to make Firefox the default browser. (There's an add-on for making Firefox the default).
• Slashdot is a great testing platform, with "dynamic discussions" on. This reveals several bugs, making Firefox mobile 1.0 painful to use. For example clicking on a the subject of a hidden comment does load and expand the comment correctly, but then scrolls the page elsewhere where the comment is no longer visible. Something similar happens when replying to a comment.
• How can I copy/paste page and link URLs to an email, for example?
• Javascript seems to kill UI responsiveness (seen on slashdot.org article pages, to the point where it is impossible to open a link in a comment).

Keep up the good work! You'll get there.

To those that complain here

[kurt555gs]

You obviously do not have an N900. If you did, you would know what it is like to have a full computer browser experience on a mobile device.

Breakdown of the iPhone developer program cost

[tepples]

I have not seen a $699.00 entry price for iPhone dev.

• Standard Program: $99
• Mac mini to replace your existing Windows or Linux PC because iPhone SDK is a Mac OS X exclusive: $600

Re:Breakdown of the iPhone developer program cost

[rinoid]

If you are only buying a Mini why not put the real cheapskate in your tool belt and just do a Hackintosh. Sakes man.

Further demonstrating Apple's malice

[HenryKoren]

Firefox joins Skyfire (http://www.skyfire.com/) in demonstrating that it's technically possible to run flash on a mobile device. Forgive this OT rant:

This demonstrates how Apples exclusion of Flash from the iPad and iPhone is not a mater of device stability, security or performance, but a mater of Apple's choice to try to destroy Flash because it is a threat to their monoculture. They claim that it runs the "whole internet" and has the "best web browsing experience", they falsified the iPad demonstration videos to try to make it seem like the Flash on the NY Times home page worked.

You can see a divisions in the ranks of the Apple Fanboys, on one side are those who criticize Apple wielding their power towards anti-competitive means, and the other side are the sheeple who rationalizes it, justify it, claim flash is obsolete, and actually wants flash to die because they want what ever the folks in Cupertino want.

This will not stand. Looking forward to a big settlement between Adobe and Apple once Adobe brings suit. Apple needs to be punished for their evil behavior.

Re:Further demonstrating Apple's malice

[hazydave]

Apple's real motivations on the iPhone have one common thread: to serve Apple.

No, Flash on the iPhone is not a matter of security, stability, or performance. It's a matter of someone alternate API being available for things that appear "application-like" rather than "web-page-like". If you can play a flash game on the iPhone, you might not want to buy a native game from the iTunes store. Apple makes no money from that flash game, they do make money from anything you buy through iTunes. So they only support as much of the web as needed to deliver a decent web browsing experience. Truthfully, when the iPhone came out, other mobiles devices were not exactly setting the world on first, web-browser-wise (I was using a Treo with Opera at the time... not too good).

Keeping out flash and java allows Apple to limit competition and control content, plain and simple. They offer a few other explanations to give fanboys some explanation they'll accept, but anyone here out to be capable of clearly seeing the truth. iPhones and their ilk as a very closed platform... we just aren't used to things being so locked up, but that's always pretty much been the truth, going back to the original iPod.

And I think there are plenty here who'd like to see Flash die. But that's not the point... Flash is required, today, to have a first class web browsing experience, since it is heavily used. Many mobile devices are working to support this. Apple won't, for nothing but their own selfish reasons.... Adobe would drop a nice, snappy Flash player on them tomorrow if Apple wanted to support Flash.

As for complaints about Flash dragging down a desktop, the only thing in a typical flash stream that can do that is a full HD AVC video running unaccelerated on a desktop PC. That's a non-issue for handhelds. They don't need to play back full HD... most are 480p or lower in resolution. And every major high-end smart phone has hardware acceleration for AVC playback. So it's not even all THAT battery draining.

Gets out MarketSpeak to English dictionary,

[mjwx]

Let me translate this for you.

Firefox for iPhone
We do not have plans to build an iPhone browser due to constraints with the OS environment and distribution.

Apple wont let us.

Firefox for Blackberry
Sorry, no plans. Due to its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components, Firefox is not compatible on the Blackberry OS.

Developing for WinCE from scratch is too costly. We don't believe there is enough demand from corporate BB users to justify this cost.

Firefox for Symbian
We currently have no plans to develop Firefox for the Symbian platform.

Unless someone throws a bucket of money our way, HINT, Nokia, give us some cash.

Developing for Maemo was a cheap way to get version 1.0 out the door and this gives them an actual product to leverage with. I'd wager that converting the X86 Linux code to ARM Linux code was the fastest and cheapest option. If there is enough demand (or donations) Mozilla would write for BB or Symbian (or Android) but not for Iphone due to Apple, now that 1.0 is out their plans or lack there of may change.

Re:Zzzzz...

[hazydave]

Hopefully they allow the mobile version if you want it. When you have a dinky device like an iPhone... a 480x320 screen, you probably want the mobile version most of the time. By the time you're on a 1024x768 or so tablet or netbook, you definitely don't. On my DROID, at 854x480, sometimes the standard version is good, sometimes the mobile version is better. And this can be occupational, too... am I sitting somewhere, where it's easy to zoom or pan if needed, or am I walking or otherwise engaged.

The real key is that a proper mobile browser should be capable of everything a desktop browser CAN do, but optimize it for the handheld. Zooming, while supported in many desktop browsers, is critical for a mobile device. I love tabbed browsing, use it on my mobile and desktop (no frickin' idea how iPhone users get along without it and still manage to suck up for much bandwidth... oh, I guess that's the constant reloading of pages as you switch to look at something else or run a different app), but you don't want the tabs in your face on the mobile device.. they take up too much space. Dolphin on Android (at least the old version) does this right, you swipe to move between pages, and you can pop up the tabs if you want to get at them.

In short, there are GUI differences that are important. The content should not be limited, particularly given that today's modern handhelds have more screen real-estate than VGA-era PCs.

Firefox mobile

[suzieque]

Congrats to firefox mobile, open source is the best way, I love it.