The future of Fennec may make it a serious mobile browser contender
The mobile browser wars are on. The competition is between Opera, Mobile IE, Safari, Chrome, and the Blackberry Browser. So far, even iPhone haters would agree, Safari has yet to be touched. It only makes sense that one of the most popular browsers out there, Firefox, and their creator, Mozilla, would want to jump in on the mobile browser battle. A few weeks ago, Fennec, Mozilla’s upcoming mobile browser, was released to some beta testers but was only available for the Nokia N810 Internet tablet. While the programmers testing it out found a lot of bugs, they also felt there is a lot of promise for Mozilla’s latest browser offering. Jay Sullivan, vice president of the mobile division at Mozilla, says the reports from testers were positive and that JavaScript performance was on par with the browsers on Android and the iPhone’s Safari.
If anyone knows how to make a browser powerful, but user-friendly, it’s Mozilla. Fennec is going to be no different in terms of their end goal for the mobile browser. First, they intend to use every last bit of screen real-estate to the browser, removing all controls, tabs, and buttons that would take away from the body of the page. Sullivan says they want to “give over the entire screen of the device to the Web content, removing all user-interface controls entirely.” How will a user navigate, you ask? Certain screen controls and finger swipes (for touchscreens) will activate the UI controls in a snap. If that isn’t cool enough for you, future versions may also include support for haptic feedback. While this is all cool and snazzy, Fennec has its work cut out because the others (Safari, Opera, Blackberry, Symbian) have established themselves and are still making progress. For more info on Fennec and what its future holds, hit the link!
Thanks, Chris!
[Via UnwiredView]
Uh, okay… I don’t think anything you’ve raised is new or really disputed. Fennec now competes with WebKit, Skyfire, and Opera. Welcome to three weeks ago.
what a negative nancy.
thanks for the post BGR.
Yeah I think skyfire will be a contender. It has become my #1 browser since its latest update. I have a WM Moto Q
Umm, I’d have to give a BIG WTF, to Safari, not being touched. It is a crash happy browser.
To Price
There is no need for you to be a smart ass like that.
Opera Mobile 9.5 wipes the floor with Safari, AND supports flash lite 3.1.
Opera Mobile 9.5 vs Mobile Safari
Better rendering
Supports Flash
Cut and paste
Allows download to local storage.
You can set a home page.
Supports animated gifs of any arbitrary size.
Has an ad blocker built in.
http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=1605
The G1’s browser is the best in my opinion. Okay, you can’t “pinch” to zoom out, but the text of an article will auto-format so you can read it without moving the page left and right. Double-tapping on the iphone will make an article fit on the screen, but the words may be tiny. The G1’s browser leaves the text the size you want it to be and wraps the article as needed.
If we published an article like that, we’d have 25 comments saying the same. I would have pulled the article, and if I wasn’t the first commenter, I probably wouldn’t have given them the heads up.
That’s called professional courtesy.
Opera Mobile does that too.
I’ve been an Opera user for a long time so I’m a bit biased but there’s one option that makes their mobile browser so great for me. The ability to synch bookmarks, searches, history etc with my other computers is simply awesome.
I love how Marc goes through the entire piece and lists all the mobile browsers and in the end points out the ones that have established themselves…but completely neglects to mention mobile IE at the end like it was not the first one out there in mobile land. Same goes for how he says even iPhone haters think Safari is the best and clearly a lot of people are disputing that here…even people who love the iPhone at times agree Opera is better. Such an opinionated piece Marc.
Fennec should be great after it’s first year out though.
skyfire gives uthe web like ur pc
i agree with saying The android browser is the best on the market, i even did a side by sude comparision with my then unconvinced Iphone user friends, but i love how my g1 loads the whole page and not just the portion your viewing. Safari loads what you see and then when u scroll down fast you get a blank page until it loads, sometimes taking 5 secs, which is a small inconvience but still how can it be the best browser when my g1 beat my friends iphone 3g on 3g and still completely loads the page while the iphone doesnt, actually when iv been on EDGE before my g1 lost by mabye 2 seconds to a iphone 3g running on 3g, and mine loaded the page all the way.
multi touch is cool on the safari browser, how thats not really a browser feature but more so a hardware feature, g1 supports multi touch as well and when some one writes gestures for it, it will easily dominate. also when u load a page on safari it shows the whole page which you can even read unless you zoom in, my g1 loads the page and puts me at reading level right with text and makes it fit the screen, and the page will change if i switch to landscape mode. but i dont expect the android browser to get the best award because it hasnt been out very long, and hasnt puts its time in, but it will be acknowledged soon.
However aside from all that, what im most excited about is the competetion, i mean when all these companys compete for being the best browser it just further drives innovation and results in better products for nerds like us. i wont lie though, the mobile safari browser changed the game and the way we look at the mobile internet and lots of thanks has to go to those guys, they seen a oopportunity long before anyone else did.
Opera does more than touch Safari. Opera rapes and takes safari’s lunch money.
I don’t really consider Skyfire in this discussion because it doesn’t do the rendering on the phone; it renders remotely and then sends you the image. While this allows for stuff that looks like the real thing, it’s also a shit-ton of data back and forth.
I prefer local rendering, which excludes Skyfire. The order, in my opinion:
1. Opera Mobile
2. Safari
3. Chrome Mobile (still too raw)
3. Fennec (still too beta)
4. Syphilis
5. IE Mobile (still IE Mobile)
Christopher,
So if we all went to phone news dot com right now, we wouldn’t find any posts that were old news or useless? I don’t think anybody would confuse your comment with professional courtesy.
@Christopher Price
“If we published an article like that, we’d have 25 comments saying the same”
Give me a fuckin’ break. PhoneNews dot com never gets 25 comments on anything. ANYTHING. Way to spam this thread to try to get more hits. And as far as saying this news is 3 weeks old, welcome to the UPDATES. Look at the sources. 3 weeks ago was the announcement of Fennec. Now it’s been through a lot more testing.
Full disclosure:
Christopher Price is editor in chief at PhoneNews.
@Roy Orbison
I’m with you.
The announcement was 3 weeks ago, and I’ll take anything I can get. I use the Mozilla at home, and although I’m very happy with Safari, I’d sure give Fennec a try.
I’m not here to start a flame war. PhoneNews.com is a leading member of the mobile media, it’s my full time job… and I have the viewership to make it that job, just like the owner of this site does.
Beyond that, I won’t respond to childish (and vulgar) comments.
We gave BGR a heads up that they were posting stale news. We try to have good relations with all members of the mobile media, even if we take a little pleasure in lending a helping hand, on keeping the media at its best.