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Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Beta For Android, Maemo
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.
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.
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
Don't really care about browsers supported by giant corporations. It's Firefox forever for me
As to the whole notion that somehow the browser writer sees my bookmarks - I have big problems with that.
What the fuck is a maemo? Is it some sort of gump?
They should just jump to Firefox 8 to be on par with Microsoft IE and Google Chrome.
With Microsoft suing Motorola over "sync" features of their Android phone, I think it would be foolish for any phone maker to rush headlong with this browser suite.
The features are compelling, but it may be patent encumbered and may have the potential to embroil an OEM in litigation.
I hope it isn't patent encumbered, but I wonder if anyone has gone through the features with a fine toothed comb to determine the IP licensing requirements of manufacturers. That would actually be a pretty good resource to have.
What the fuck is a maemo? Is it some sort of gimp?
Let me know STAT!
Ugly font rendering and kinda jerky on my G2. Also uses a fuckload of ram and storage. I'm not impresses.
I just tried it and couldn't post here it was so aweful.
Font and/or font rendering was aweful (had to be much larger than either dolphin or default to be readable)
Double tap did not zoom enough (about 85 characters, I think it's keeping the pixel count true, but when I zoom I expect my characters to have at least one pixel between them, and many don't).
Slow, but I expected that as it's a beta.
The start page looks nice.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It just crashes on start... so much for being useful... I have Sprint's HTC Hero with Android 2.1.
Makes my over clocked 1ghz Droid1 come to a screeching halt. If i resize the webpage it just crashes out, after freezing up for a full 30 seconds... The UI (from what I saw of it before uninstalling) is impressive though. Each side is a swipe of the finger away and performs various functions. Very intuitive. Shows clear potential, but the size of the app and the CPU usage needs to come down hard and fast to be remotely usable....
I installed it on my Nexus One and tried posting this from there, but it's still way too unstable to do that (it didn't crash, but it kept scrolling/resizing in weird ways).
It's much improved over the Alpha, but one thing still bugs me.
Sync won't let you use your own server.
Firefox Sync is /the/ killer-app for me. It's really the only reason I'd want to use a different browser (barring EXTREME speed improvements), and they've neutered it to the point where it's, well, pointless. I've seen people request this feature ever since the pre-alpha days, to no avail.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
First big issue for me: the sync credentials page use some non-Android text box, so I can't copy my username/password from my password keeper and paste them in. I use large ugly generated passwords for stuff like that and I REALLY don't want to have to type them.
Waze does this crap too; why program *AROUND* the interface provided!? Seriously, your text boxes aren't precious snowflakes that are so special as to not use what the OS gives you (and supports).
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
Firefox on Android is a painful experience. The zooming is jerky. The fonts are ugly. It's not very responsive to clicks. Absolutely a horrible experience. That said, there are sites that just plain didn't work with the default browser that do work correctly with Firefox on Android, so I'll keep it around for that.
If you haven't had any sites fail with the default browser, skip this for now. If you have, try them with Firefox. You'll probably keep Firefox installed just for those sites.
Fox befriends Android, Android unable to feel emotions , Fox feels shunned and burns android's memory. The Droid police looking for "Fire" Fox...
Really slow and jerky on my EVO. Google maps didn't work, so I immediately uninstalled.
The beta release requires a newer processor than the Hero. See the system requirements page for details, and an experimental (non-optimized) build for older and low-end phones.
Really every application leaks memory. I use Firefox and will continue to use Firefox regardless of it leaking on my desktop. Sure the portable version leaked early in Alpha stage a bit more than preferred from what I hear, but what I said was meant as a joke not an insult towards the device. My comment...
More ways to leak memory!
...also was completely ambiguous in relation to the four bullet points above I have no idea why people rated it as a troll, until I read your comment:
Sigh, I wish that meme would die a horrible death.
hedwards, I really am only halfway in tune with the latest memes it seems and I can see how my comment could have been annoying if everyone keeps on saying that memory leaks memory leaks (sorry Slashdot, oops)
There is a little red line that tells me when I am an idiot and cannot spell. I need a blue line or some different color to tell me where potential meme infringement may occur...
cheers
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
The install file for Maemo won't install on an N800 (evidently, only the newer N900 - that is one thing I don't like about Nokia; when the newer version comes out, kiss support for the older versions goodbye).
The Android file might "work" on Android 2.0 or later, but it doesn't work on a Pandigital Novel - it looks like it wasn't built for ARM5.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Enough said... Want a decent browser for Android that reminds you of Firefox? Use Dolphin Browser HD.
The only difference is the lack of Add-ons, the rest is pristine.
I downloaded this tonight for my droidx and my first impression is not good. In about and hour of use i had to force close twice, the phone was horribly slow while it was running, and pages looked terrible. Maybe the next release ill give it another go.
If it's an Android Firefox maybe they should have name it Muffet, assuming a firefox is like a daggit.
I'll stick with Opera Mobile. It's clearly head and shoulders above the competition, and the only place where it isn't(Flash support) there are other browsers(like Skyfire) to pick up that little bit of slack.
It's a really huge application in the Android world, though.
I hope the RCs and the finale releases will be slimmer.
And I hope it will get its way to the market.
And I hope Google will release Chrome for Android as well, a main missing app there.
Welcome the the mobile browser wars.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Ugly font rendering and kinda jerky on my G2. Also uses a fuckload of ram and storage. I'm not impresses.
I've just installed it on my HTC Wildfire, but cannot start it. It crashes after several seconds, without error message.
You can install Firefox Sync on your own server (like I have), and then Mozilla won't even see your encrypted data.
http://tobyelliott.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/weave-minimal-server/
With the HTC Desire, when you enter the Sync Key the key is visible and what bothers me more, it get's stored in the keyboard dictionary as an unknown word. Why not handle it like a password as the desktop version does? And when visiting http://www.google.com/ I wasn't automatically redirected to http://www.google.com/m. I don't know if this works with other websites.
Just (re)installed what I thought was the Firefox-4 beta linked in TFA on my N900.
Error message "Fennec already installed".
Uninstalled the original Firefox for Maemo that I had, installed the linked version, and hussah!
Version information confirms the Maemo-Firefox is Fennec-3.6, not a beta of 4.0
So old news on the part of Maemo.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
Boot time (initial start of FF when not returning to it, but used a task killer) is as slow as booting my Ubuntu 10.04 desktop 64bit system with 8Gb RAM - not good.
Firefox does render a page nicely, without much difference from the desktop version, but renders it in fullscreen (entire page on screen).
No setting for "mobile view".
No easy setting for default zoom level. When following a link, the next page is rendered at the same fullscreen zoom, so new zoom is needed.
Click an Ajax link that updates a
and the browser returns to the top of the page - not optimal, but it didn't reset the zoom...
There aren't any customizations that are easily available, not enven enough to compare with a small fast browser like DB mentioned above or SkyFire. The general look/feel of FF for Android is a very basic app that should still be in alpha as the customization menu is very odd and not polished compared with other smaller and similar programs.
Mozilla, please don't make Android apps that divert from the way Android apps are supposed to do, use the menues, and respect the backbutton when pressed... aka kill your current download/render of a page if the backbutton is pressed, don't continue working on something that the user want's to stop.
My device is HTC Desire with latest HTC Android 2.2, so it is not an old G1 I'm using, though FF4 beta for Android feels like it is running on a G1.
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.
Click an Ajax link that updates a
and the browser returns to the top of the page - not optimal, but it didn't reset the zoom...
Should be:
Click an Ajax link that updates a <div> tag and the browser returns to the top of the page - not optimal, but it didn't reset the zoom...
Really every application leaks memory.
Unless you and I have very different definitions of "leaks memory" this simply is not true.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Your right, smaller well formed applications and languages that include automatic garbage collection (eg Java) may completely avoid this issue. You are right in saying that it isn't every application but many applications do leak small amounts (tolerable) of memory, like Firefox on my computer. I should not have used a universal qualifier there...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
When you first run Weave/Sync on a given machine, it asks you for a passphrase. It's going to be a problem if you don't remember it, since you'll need this passphrase to be able to read the data elsewhere.
My moment is running 2.1 Android and the app kept crashing. I uninstalled it.
I have nothing clever to put here...
I installed Firefox Sync twice recently. The first time it asked for a password and also a "secret passsphrase". A week later, the second time I created a new account for a different set of computers, it generated a twenty-letter key (like "xaedr-gterw-sfdfs-hryns" or something). I guess there was a change in between. If they did not generate a key for you, then the sync key is your passphrase. Apparently it's used to actually encrypt your data (as opposed to the password, which seems to be just for authentication).
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I love Firefox and Android, but unfortunately FF for Android is still huge and slow. I hope this improves over time, and it probably will, but I thought that maybe since the nightly builds they might have made some kind of breakthrough that warranted Beta status. Not so.
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