Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Beta For Android, Maemo

Posted by timothy on from the comes-the-fox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released the first beta of its Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo. The browser is based on the Firefox 4 core and should be released in the same time frame as the big brother. The mobile browser includes Firefox Sync, a cloud feature that enables users to sync browsing history, passwords, form-fill data and bookmarks, as well as open tabs." Android news site Androinica also mentions the release, and provides a small tutorial on installing beta apps for Android.

4 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Nice changes by masterwit · · Score: -1, Troll

    I will not comment on the quality of the changes made, but here is a snippet from an article comparing what is new in nice layout.

    • Syncs bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and form data to and from your phone. Firefox Sync and the Firefox Awesomebar help you enter URLs and passwords with less typing, and move seamlessly between your desktop and your mobile phone.
    • Lets anyone write add-ons that can customize any part of the user interface. (Dolphin HD is another Android browser with some great add-ons, but its add-ons are provided by the browser vendor.)
    • Uses the Jaegermonkey JIT, which is getting faster all the time. It runs JavaScript much faster than the Android 2.1 browser, and is starting to overtake the Android 2.2 browser on benchmarks in the WebKit SunSpider suite and elsewhere.
    • Supports web technologies like SVG, ECMAScript 5, WebM, and HTTP Strict Transport Security. Firefox for Android currently scores 217 points plus 9 bonus points on html5test.com. (Warning: Those tests can be deceptive; use them as a starting point for comparison only.)

    More ways to leak memory!

    --
    We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
    1. Re:Nice changes by cheater512 · · Score: 0, Troll

      Technically yes, but thats 768 megs of accessible ram that most Android devices dont have.

      It does actually work exceptionally well. I've had 16 browser windows and a few chat windows open at the same time and its incredibly smooth.

  2. Re:MAAAAAAMOOOOOOOOOE !! by cpscotti · · Score: 0, Troll

    That's one damn well-informed Anonymous Coward!

    Get your news straight fella!

  3. Firefox still has memory leaks. Just admit it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    People like you are the reason why Firefox still suffers from memory leaks. I'm not talking about the memory leaks caused by extensions and plugins, either. I'm talking about the memory leaks we find when using a fresh installation of Firefox 3.6.10, for instance.

    Just yesterday I installed Fedora 13, and downloaded Firefox 3.6.10 from mozilla.org. I didn't install any extensions or plugins. Not even Flash! I browsed some news sites, Slashdot, Digg, and Facebook. It wasn't even 30 minutes of browsing. At that point I noticed my computer was getting slow, so I checked top, and the Firefox process was consuming over 5300 MB of virtual memory. Over 3800 MB of that was resident, too. It was causing my system to swap pretty badly, since I only have 4 GB of RAM.

    Deny it all you want, but that's caused by some pretty damn bad memory leaks. The leaks exist and are very serious regardless of whether you want to admit it or not.

    I've since returned to using Chrome. It doesn't leak memory like Firefox does. I know I'm not alone, because Chrome's share of the market keeps growing and growing at the expense of Firefox's share.