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Firefox Arrives On Android
Barence writes "Mozilla has launched a 'pre-alpha' version of Firefox for Android smartphones. The mobile version of Firefox, codenamed Fennec, has until now been restricted to Maemo Linux handsets. But following a surge in developer effort, Mozilla has unveiled a build for handsets running Android 2.0 or above. Mozilla is making no guarantees about the browser's stability. 'It will likely not eat your phone, but bugs might cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot,' writes Mozilla developer Vladimir Vukicevic on his blog. 'Memory usage of this build isn't great — in many ways it's a debug build, and we haven't really done a lot of optimization yet. This could cause some problems with large pages, especially on low memory devices like the Droid.'"
Why then would I want to replace my webkit browser with this? I understand this is an Alpha and that bug might be fixed, but again, why would I want to use this over my webkit based browser?
How can you have a pre-alpha release? I've always heard Alpha as a "feature preview", where it's not complete and there may be major bugs. Beta was when it was feature complete, but probably contains major bugs. And then Release candidates are for finding major and minor bugs, but should be production ready if none are found... Unless there's another definition I'm not aware of, how can you have pre-alpha code?
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
I like Firefox mobile on my n900. It works pretty well, gives me features not available in the default browser. I have not had memory leak problems with it. However, it does get sluggish if you turn on flash and visit pages with a bunch of flash ads. I should put adblock on it...
I want Firefox on Steroids!
Some of us don't like our data being proxied and processed off our phones. I know it's a fine line, but my Android browser has good JS support. Why would I want to throw that away for a little bit of speed?
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Probably not.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
...large pages like slashdot.org.
LRN 2 SWM
But I made the fatal mistake of putting it into landscape to get a better keyboard, and it brought my phone (Desire) to a crawl. I assume it was trying to rebuild the page layout, something bad happened and displayed a black page.
It Shows promise, it is not usable (obviously) but the UI design seems better than the inbuilt browser. With tabs off screen to the left, and navigation buttons off screen to the right.
Would of been nice to see pinch zoom working, and I am assume that it will (or a custom build that will).
From what I have seen, when it heads into a more stable phase, I would probably swap right away.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
The moment you start installing Firefox extensions, even well-tested ones like AdBlock and NoScript, Firefox's resource usage shoots through the roof.
Its memory usage is by far the worst of any browser these days. I'm currently on a new system I got a couple of days ago. I'm using Firefox 3.6.3, and the only extensions I have installed are AdBlock, NoScript and Firebug. I don't even have Flash installed.
My browser has only been running for about six hours now today, but according to top, its resident memory usage is over 3900 MB! Now, my system only has 4 GB of physical RAM, so it ends up swapping like crazy. I know some fools claim this is an "optimization" where Firefox intentionally uses all available physical memory, but they totally forget that sometimes people run other memory-intensive applications like Eclipse while also running Firefox... Regardless, I'm going to be installing Opera soon.
I just can't see how Firefox with those extensions will run reasonably on a device with very limited resources. Firefox seems to have a hard enough time on a modern system with plenty of RAM.
For that you have applications which serve as intermediate aggrators.
It're still phones, creating a "mobile experience" (quotes to emphasis the literal meaning compared to associated device) experience).
As a sidenote: I love how this sortof interaction is integrating better in an active lifestyle, we've been dreaming up these kindof things for decades as nerds, slaving away from behind bulky phosphorous screens in our basements, in isolation. While now, the "sharing" and reality overlay aspect helps to find, experience, inform and navigate ourselfs, very efficiently in the outside world without dependency on others almost: it's like being guided and navigated through a complex system and be able to interact with it, fully informed, while blindly trusting the experience (after googling it, entering a GPS coordinate, finding points of interests, documenting, sharing, trusting on information on your handheld device while navigating the unknown outside world.) In a way, it's a superhighdefinition (with near infity resolution) entertainment experience: "what do I want to see/experience today?" and you load up your guidance program on your device and navigate the ultra-HD show. It makes DVD look like lowgrade, uninspired and boring, doesn't it? In the ultrahd experience, actors are improvising on the spot. No crummy cliché plotlines, but kindof recurring clichées persist though until you move further away.
This is what, in my eyes, the geekculture has worked for the last decade to integrate this ideal thoughtbased "fantasyworld", the interwebs, into the real world and extrapolate that experience.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I can smell the momentum in the air with Android. I was one of the first people (suckers/early adopters) to buy a G1 handset from T-Mobile. At the time I had a 2G iPhone. Used the G1 for a week, went back to my unlocked, jailbroken iPhone because it had a bunch of great apps that worked well, better form factor, better touchscreen, and much more usable.
Fast forward 16 months, during which time the G1 has sat there and gathered dust. I've finally gotten fed up with my 3G iPhone, the closed ecosystem, the limited email application which is the dealbreaker for me (lack of IMAP IDLE still - msgpush.com is not an option for me, and switching email services to support the technologies Steve Jobs approves of is ridiculous). The other day I decided to blow the dust off my G1, update to the latest software (which on a G1 means running CyanogenMod since the official updates are still stuck at Android 1.6 for G1s, and CyanogenMod is a 1.6/2.0 hybrid - and despite rumors to the contrary, CyanogenMod is rock-solid stable on the G1) and see how much things have improved over the last 18 months.
The openness of the Android platform is what really is blowing me away. Running CyanogenMod, installing themes, downloading up-to-the-minute app releases and bug fixes from open source projects and vendors without having to go through Market is absolutely liberating after 2 and change years of iPhone usage, and having to clamor for every feature addition and update. On Android, if you want a new feature, you can usually find it or you can add it yourself - K9mail is the best living example of this itch-scratching driving innovation.
Anyway, more specifically on the topic - I don't know if Fennec/Mobile Firefox will be a winner or not in the short run. Most likely it will take a while to get there - remember how long Mozilla took to get to a usable desktop browser? But ultimately, more browser competition on Android will be a very good thing, and AdBlock would be sweet. The fact that we have these choices on Android drives innovation and competition, and is the reason that the platform is currently improving faster than the iPhone platform. And makes it a much more fun place to be as a geek than iPhone-land right now.
Now if carriers would just lower the cost of their data plans, maybe we could afford to try it out!
How does this technology work? Since the android gui is written in a java dialect, and firefox is written in C/C++, how does a C++ program run on a java VM? As one big native plugin?
anyway,having a runnin POC might attact other developers, that cannot be bad for fennec.
Probably not. But it supports hundreds of plugins, e.g. to block annoying ads or flash banners, to filter stupid foxnews headlines out of google news, you know, things that make nowadays internet actually enjoyable.
I just installed it on my rooted, custom ROMmed and overclocked Motorola Droid.... and it worked! I played with it for about 10 minutes. It didn't crash my phone, reboot my phone or damage my phone in any way.
It's absolutely alpha quality software at this point, so don't expect much from it. But it has lots of potential and I'm absolutely confident this will turn into a great browser on Android.
With so many android stories why doesn't slashdot start using the "official" android logo?
I see you're one of those people who knows a few testing buzzwords, and thus consider yourself an expert in the field.
Just so you know, "UAT" refers to user-acceptance testing, not "usability testing" like you've mistakenly claimed. Usability testing checks whether or not the program is convenient to use, whether or not it's accessible to people with handicaps, whether or not it works well with various input and output devices, and so forth.
User-acceptance testing ("UAT") refers to testing that the client or user performs in order to ensure that the system meets their minimum requirements in terms of functionality, usability, stability, reliability, performance, and so on.
Oh, and your breakdown of the tests applied to each release level are pure bunk. They don't even correspond to Firefox's development practices at all. Please refrain from spewing mountains of bullshit the next time you post. Thank you!
"Mozilla has unveiled a build for handsets running Android 2.0 or above."
So I can wait around for TMO to declare that 2.0+ will NOT be released for my G1. I'll have to root it.
Ok, one more reason.
And for you who ask 'why would I rerplace Webkit with this?', I offer you some reasons:
1. Rather than usae Steel, Firefox might let you set the user agent to 'Desktop' or equivalent, allowing you to get your regular fully-featured version of iGoogle instead of the neutered, 'mobile' version. Google has decided, in their infinte wisdom, to force mobile brwsers to use mobil renders of their pages wherever possible. This is, from a Google blog, 'intended to give mobile users a consistent user experience'. If I wanted a consistently mobile experience, I would have gotten a BlackBerry. I wanted a BETTER experience, so I got an Android phone. Evil, you are. Subvert, I will. Root, I must.
2. Better UI? Everything beyond typing in a URL or clicking requires the Menu button in the stock Browser. Steel gives you an onscreen crescent to go back/forward, swap windows, open new windows, or get bookmarks. I would expect Mozilla to do something like that in Fennec - but we do have to wait and see.
3. Faster? never know...
4. Even more malware blocking? I don't see anything that hurts my phone yet, and I use it to open stuff I distrust just to see what happens. Fennec might be even more fun.
5. It might actually clear the cache on exit, instead of growing like a weed despite having the setting 'clear cache on exit' selected. One can dream...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Fennec has been around for a while actually. Most of the speculating can be placed at rest from this site: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Projects/Mobile Unfortunately, if anyone is wondering, no there will not be a version for Windows Mobile phones, as there is no NDK (Native Developers Kit). I would prefer to use firefox on my phone, but i'm stuck with opera mobile 9.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
I love Firefox. I use it on all my computers as a browser. It offers me more features than Chrome, and more stability and security than IE.
That said, I don't want to use it on my Droid. My droid is a 500MHz piece with very limited RAM, and Firefox has a whole buttload of overhead. The browser that came with Android 1.2 is just fine for me. Does Firefox for Android add flash support? That would be the only reason I could ever bring myself to use it.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
You're confusing opera mini with opera mobile.
The mobile version of Firefox, codenamed Fennec, has until now been restricted to Maemo Linux handsets
O RLY? Perhaps submitters should check to see if they know WTF they are talking about before they add flowery language to their story submissions. Wouldn't hurt if editors checked their veracity (AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The opera UI sucks donkey balls on android is why.
He says the browser might require me to reboot my phone. Isn't this a sign of a flawed operating system? An application shouldn't cause the entire phone to freeze.
I was experiencing random glitches on my Motorola Droid. Verizon told me to do a factory reset because sometimes apps make the phone do strange things, hampering the phone's functionality. Shouldn't a proper OS keep apps from messing up the whole phone, no matter how crappy the app is?
Penny - plain text accounting
While it's true that I got my Droid for free, most people didn't. I don't see how not using FF on my phone implies a free ride.
It simply states "Fennec could not be installed on this device."
At one point I had three browsers on my N900:
1. MicroB, the stock Mozilla-based browser.
2. Fennec (RC version IIRC)
3. Iceweasel (Firefox), run via a chrooted Debian install
In short, Fennec had the poor performance. clumsiness and nonexistent system integration of Iceweasel (as run on the N900) with the reduced functionality of MicroB, so I uninstalled it. Now I use MicroB most of the time, and Firefox if I want to spoof user agents, visit iffy sites that could benefit from NoScript, or do anything else more advanced.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sure, because when a developer delivers untested code you should always believe him when he tells you what the worst case scenario is.
1. apps don't have the rights necessary to jack up the OS in Android
2. all user data is stored on the SD card and the app in question does not have rights to edit SD card contents
3. you didn't even read the fucking summary
GP was talking about his experience with Fennec (Mozilla Firefox for mobile platforms) running on an N900 (Maemo) handset. I tried Chrome on my N900 and found it nearly unusable. It was sluggish, felt underpowered and didn't present me with any immediate advantage over both the standard built-in browser or Fennec.
Fennec, even on Maemo (I'm assuming/hoping development and refinement hasn't stopped for that platform), still has some ways to go. I'll often use the built-in browser, which seems to share *some* codebase with Fennec, though I may be entirely wrong here, over Fennec. It has a smaller memory footprint, doesn't seem to bog down the system as easily as Fennec when you have a couple of "heavy" content pages loaded and packs all the features I need for my usual browsing habits -- especially after you download and install an ABP-like plugin/hack for it (the one that actually worked for me also has the side-benefit of blocking automatic playback of flash -- I have to click flash-based content for it to "play", which is a *huge* boon when you're on the go and don't have an unlimited data plan with your mobile provider [there's no such thing around here, not as such], even more if you're roaming).
Though both Fennec and Firefox *should* be lighter than they are, and you won't find many around here that'll dispute that, they still offer a Good Enough(TM) browsing experience that keeps them ahead of their competition in terms of many people's mindshare. Couple that with the complete customization you can achieve through the better breed of add-ons and you have a powerful combination that can't be had with any other browser. To each his own, I guess.
It's not Firefox and it hasn't really arrived because it's not even alpha (!?) and it only runs on 10% of Android phones. But other than that, the headline is exactly right.
In over a year of having Android phones I've never once needed to hard reset Android. It's an incredibly stable OS, even with the crappiest crashing apps on an aftermarket ROMs I've never made it lock up. So if they've managed to freeze Android that's quite an achievement.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.