Mozilla Releases Fennec Beta 1

[Sammi]

Seems Mozilla have just released the first beta of the Fennec mobile browser: http://www.h-online.com/open/Mozilla-relea...1--/news/112876

Looks pretty, right?

Openpandora users might find this an able light alternative to Firefox, as it is in fact the official light version of Firefox :lol:

 

[bzar]

I am writing this on the new fennec beta. Seems to be working great! I could see myself using this regularly on my pandora.

 

[DigitalWings]

I am writing this on the new fennec beta. Seems to be working great! I could see myself using this regularly on my pandora.

Are there any drawback, things that Fennec lack in comparison to firefox?

 

[bzar]

I am writing this on the new fennec beta. Seems to be working great! I could see myself using this regularly on my pandora.

Are there any drawback, things that Fennec lack in comparison to firefox?

Not that I noticed, all the extensions seemed to work normally and the user interface had everything that, at least I, needed. One thing to note is the lack of flash support, but I guess it's just a matter of making a plugin, as with firefox. Using Fennec was IMHO like using FF3, but with a more mobile oriented UI.

 

[White Flame]

I don't know much about FF plugins and addons, is something like Adblock Plus written in javascript and portable to other platforms?

I'm dying to have that on a handheld. Ads are way too cumbersome on handhelds.

 

[Javacat]

Fennec broke my phone!

 

[urjaman]

Had to test, so now posting using Fennec (running on ArchLinux)

@B-ZaR: Did you run it on an N810 or a PC?

Anyways, seems very optimized for touch screen (stylus) usage, on a PC using a touchpad/mouse it was a bit odd to use at first, but i think this would work great in the pandora.

 

[perishabl]

I've been playing with it a little on my N800, and apart from still being pretty beta-ish it seems to be OK.

Having said that, I'm not sure I've figured out why I'd choose to use it on the Pandora over plain old Firefox...

 

[bzar]

Had to test, so now posting using Fennec (running on ArchLinux)

@B-ZaR: Did you run it on an N810 or a PC?

Anyways, seems very optimized for touch screen (stylus) usage, on a PC using a touchpad/mouse it was a bit odd to use at first, but i think this would work great in the pandora.

PC. The nearest n810 available to me is at work

 

[perishabl]

One thing to note is the lack of flash support, but I guess it's just a matter of making a plugin, as with firefox.

Flash seems to be working fine for me -- I have a YouTube video playing right now. Maybe a limitation of the PC builds? (I do see in the release notes a known issue with plugins under "some of the desktop builds"...)

 

[fischju2000]

It looks great, really something we need on the Pandora instead of the full firefox whose bars take up 1/5th the screen. I don't really like grabbing the screen and moving it to one side or the other to access the tabs/menu though. (I watched a walkthrough on the N810) - is there another way to bring those up?

 

[cobaltage]

I've been playing with it a little on my N800, and apart from still being pretty beta-ish it seems to be OK.

Having said that, I'm not sure I've figured out why I'd choose to use it on the Pandora over plain old Firefox...

One reason is that the browser design is meant to maximize use of the screen for the webpage while leaving controls easily accessible. Mobile Safari on the iPhone OS similarly lets the address window scroll off the page.

Also, I saw a video of the Fennec beta which demonstrated a Fennec add-on enabling gesture controls, so that drawing various shapes or figures with the mouse/stylus triggered certain actions and interface changes. It worked pretty well and is apparently available now for use with Fennec beta.

 

[Mithrildor]

Nice, hopefully. The plugin "Web of Trust" will be ported to fennec soon. And hopefully this will be ported to the pandora.

 

[marshal]

Installed it this morning on my Nokia n800.

I really think it's good to have mozilla do a mobile browser. The interface isn't bad, and being able to use extension is great.
Still, at the current stage I am not really that impressed. Maybe it's just because it lacks some optimisation / is a beta version but it wasn't faster than the firefox based browser that ships with the OS2008. Seem a bit buggy too: couldn't input password in a password field. Security certificate window has no "back" button, crashed on me once

 

[Sphinxter]

Thought the exciting part that might make a difference for the pandora could be the touch screen support for zooming and such.

 

[PoisonedV]

oh, good. maybe this one wont use more memory than fear 2.