blog.pavlov.net

We’re pleased to announce Firefox for Maemo 1.1 is now available.  Users already running Firefox for Maemo will receive a software update shortly.  Our focus for this release was to improve the user experience of Firefox and to make the browser easier to use.  This release builds on our 1.0 release which introduced add-ons, such as Firefox Sync and AdBlock Plus, to the mobile browser.

Some of the bigger features include:

• Portrait mode upon rotate
• New smart-tapping system that makes clicking on links, fields, and buttons easier
• Form assistant improvements, including autocomplete
• Redesigned start page
• Automatically updated add-ons
• Open links in a new tab and save images via our new context menus
• New web content theme for website forms
• Improved Site Menu
• Use volume keys to zoom
• Save page to PDF
• Built in Crash Reporter

Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download.  To learn more visit Firefox.com/mobile or the FAQ.

Our automated build machines have just started producing pre-alpha Fennec for Android builds with the latest changes from developers each night.  We have similar builds for the desktop version of Firefox and for the N900 to let testers have a way of getting the latest changes to provide feedback and report bugs.   There are many changes that go in to each build, causing quality to vary some from day to day, but we’re always working to improve and stabilize the builds.

As of today the builds are still pre-alpha quality, but they’ll continue to improve over time.  There are many exciting changes being actively worked on that will be showing up in the coming weeks.  We are keeping this page up-to-date with some of the larger known issues and what phones Fennec is currently known to run on, which will change over time.  We currently only run on Android 2.0 and above, and some bugs could cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot.  If you have installed our earlier build, you will need to uninstall it before this one will install due to a change in the way the builds are signed.  These builds do not auto-update yet, so you’ll have to manually grab a new build when you want to see the newest changes.

Since the post Vlad made a few weeks ago about our first pre-alpha Android build, we have made lots of improvements based on the feedback we’ve received.  We really value this feedback and look forward to more of it on these builds.

Vlad just posted our first version of Fennec for Android.  The work we’ve been doing on Android has only been going for several months, but Vlad, Michael, Brad and Alex have made really great progress!  This is a very early build (pre-alpha), and there are plenty of bugs and things to improve, but we’re excited to start seeing what it will become.  We’re hoping that people can provide us with feedback so we can continue improving the browser!

We have been building a version of Firefox for Windows Mobile for quite a while, with the expectation that Microsoft would be doubling down in the mobile market and hoping that they would put out a great new mobile operating system.  We’ve been following the Windows Phone 7 announcements quite closely for the last few weeks, and had one of our developers in attendance at MIX last week.   We know that the underlying platform for Windows Phone 7 is Windows CE 6, which is a big step up from the kernel used by Windows Mobile 6.5.  Windows CE 6 is a platform that we have been developing towards, and already run well on, leaving us well positioned to have an awesome browser on Windows Phone 7.

While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications.  Because of this, we won’t be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time.  Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold.

The work on this project that the community and our engineering, QA, build, and automation teams has done has been great.  I expect us to be able to use much of the knowledge and work for other platforms.  We will be disabling the builds and test automation shortly, and developers shouldn’t worry if the tree breaks.

While I hope that we do see Microsoft provide us with a way to build Firefox for Windows Phone 7, we will continue to focus on the things that we can control: building a great consumer product on both Android and Maemo.

We’re excited to bring you the third release candidate of Firefox for Maemo.  Since RC2, we fixed several usability bugs that were found, as well as addressed a number of performance issues.  Based on feedback we’ve received so far, we were able to find and fix several crash bugs.  To improve page load times and responsiveness, we tuned a number of preferences and improved several algorithms.  We’ve sped up zooming and made our panning even better.

If you’ve already got RC2 installed on your N900 or N810, you will be receiving a software update shortly.  Otherwise, if you’re viewing this on your device, you can install it from here.

We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for this release.  The Adobe Flash plugin used on many sites degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards.  If you wish to enable our experimental plugin support, you will be able to manually via about:config, but do so at your own risk.  We are working on an add-on that will allow the user to have control of which sites to enable plugins for, as some sites, like YouTube, do work quite well.

As always, we’re looking for feedback and suggestions.

Fresh from the factory, we’re happy to announce Fennec 1.0 Beta 3 for Maemo to the world!   This release features major improvements to performance and a fancy new theme.  We’ve made big improvements to kinetic panning and added the ability to scroll iframes.  A lot of work has been done to make our theme more robust, taking advantage of things like media queries to support various devices, orientations, and platforms which you’ll see more of in the next Windows Mobile release.  Overall, this beta is a major improvement to previous Fennec betas.

In addition to Maemo build, you can also download desktop builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

We’ve changed quite a bit under the hood to make things faster including putting in place a tile-based rendering system to cache the areas of the page you’ve been to.  Roy Frostig has a great blog post about this.  The work that Robert O’Callahan has done on compositor phase 1 has been a big help and is allowing us to do things with scrolling that were previously rocket science.

Moving forward, we’re going to focus on fixing polish bugs, rough edges, and taking advantage of things like our new tile system to help avoid the user seeing a checkerboard while panning.