One of the main reasons many of us love Firefox is for the plugin support--there's everything from Better Gmail to Omnibar to SkipScreen, all of which fix the many pitfalls of the internet.

So it's with great excitement that we read AdBlock Plus will work with Firefox's new mobile browser Fennec (which is still in early development). 

For those who don't know, AdBlock Plus is a plugin that downloads a database of ads to block while you are surfing the internet.  In turn, web pages are less cluttered and more importantly for those with slow connections or who are mobile, it allows pages to load faster.  For every ad that you see, that is one more thing to download and one more server for your device to connect to, so reducing that increases speed.  Very cool.

Of course there are consequences to blocking ads.  Specifically you are hurting much needed revenue for websites, cutting off their life blood. So we suggest you selectively use AdBlock Plus on sites you visit, disabling it for those you support.  In other words, we ask you, nay beg you oh wise internet surfers, to not use it on WMExperts as you'll deprive some of us that morning cup of coffee and you know, would have to close shop.  Thaaaaanks!

The lines between desktop and mobile computing just got a little more blurry. (That's a good thing.) Mozilla's Weave service, which, in a nutshell, syncs your browser data — including bookmarks, passwords, history and even open tabs — just his 1.0 beta status. Why is this important for Windows Mobile, you ask? Because Mozilla's been working on its mobile browser (codenamed Fennec) for some time now, and Weave will play an integral part in it.

If you've been using a desktop browser sync, you already know what we're talking about. Your data is seamlessly synced between one or more computers and the cloud. Weave goes a step further, also syncing the data with the Fennec browser. I've been using Weave off and on with Firefox for a while now, and it's steadily improved. And v1.0b is even faster and more transparent. Now we just need to see Fennec get out the door (and get much faster), and we'll have a real browser war on our hands. [download Weave via Mozilla Labs]

The folks at Mozilla have released the Alpha 3 build of Fennec, aka the mobile Firefox browser.

Much-improved, says Mozilla's Brad Lassey (read our early Q&A with him) are start-up times, better panning, and some support for phones other than the HTC Touch Pro.

Go get the CAB file here, and if out there's running a brand-spanking new Touch Pro 2, let us know how it looks on there. (And remember, you can play with the Fennec lastest desktop emulator here.)

We're still eagerly anticipating the release of the mobile Firefox browser, and the boys and girls at Mozilla are hard at work. Vice President Jay Sullivan recently talked with Lifehacker about plans in the mobile space.

"What we're seeing happen in mobile is just what we've been seeing on the desktop for the last five years. That's migrating from more client-heavy applications to more web-based applications. Fennec is built on the latest version of our browser engine, and has support for offline storage and things called web workers, which enables threaded applications that can run faster. All these technologies make it possible to build a first-class, HTML5-based application."

And in case you missed it, we also had our own interview with Firefox mobile's Brad Lassey some time ago.

Lifehacker: Mozilla VP on What Firefox Mobile Means for Your Phone

When Firefox released the first Alpha build of its mobile browser -- aka Fennec -- in May, it left a lot of you underwhelemed. Hey, it was an Alpha build. Don't say we (and Mozilla) didn't warn you. But work has been progressing, and Mozilla just released the Alpha 2 build. Here's what's new in Alpha 2: [via Pavlov's blog]

• Improved panning performance
• Newly designed theme
• JavaScript error console is now built in
• Improved add-on support
• Numerous bug fixes
• Improved UI polish

As per the usual, Mozilla is developing for the HTC Touch Pro. So back up your info, and get to testing. Here's the download link. (Don't have a Touch Pro? Try out the desktop versions.) And let us know in the comments how things look.

Update: Here's one fairly big known bug worth noting:

Allow panning/scrolling in iframes - Websites that display large amounts of content in IFrames, including Google Mail and Reader, will be very hard, if not impossible, to use.

Work on the Firefox mobile browser — aka Fennec — has been marching steadily ahead, and the team has released an official Alpha build. The highlights:

• New Add-Ons Manager
• New Downloads Manager
• New CSS based theme
• TraceMonkey, Mozilla's new JavaScript engine
• jemalloc, the memory management library used by Mozillla.
• Faster application start-up time
• Faster panning
• Faster zooming
• Initial implementation of bookmark folders and bookmark editing

Just like with the pre-Alpha and nightly build versions, this was built and tested on an HTC Touch Pro, so there's where you're likely to have the most success. That said, this is Alpha, and bugs are likely.

Says Mozilla's Brad Lassey (read our interview with him here) in his blog:

It is not yet recommended to use this release for daily browsing tasks. Certain performance problems will become immediately apparent to the user. Panning has a noticeable delay between the user first touching the page and the page moving. We are certain that other less obvious bugs exist and we invite you to help bring them to light. You can find detailed information on how to file a good bug in bugzilla , our bug tracking system, here .

So remember, folks. This isn't a finished version, but a pretty big step in the process. Get your download on here (or here directly from your phone), and let us know in the comments how it works for you.

Update: Video of the Alpha release after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

The feature list for the Firefox mobile browser is steadily growing. In addition to the (soon-to-be) standard Firefox 3.5 engine, we're also expecting to see:

• Weave: The all-remembering password/bookmark/tab/add-on/everything sync feature.
• Geolocation: Your browser can tell where you are.
• Gesture browsing: Possibly. We've seen a cool demonstration.

And now, we see a prototype that could bring automatic Web site logins to the mobile and desktop browsers via Weave sync. It'll handle OpenID, as well as normal username/password logins.

Of course, all of this is still in the early stages, and work on the Firefox mobile browser continues. Check out the demo video of the auto log-in.

Mozilla Labs blog via Lifehacker

There's an old online real-estate joke with the punchline "Geolocation, geolocation, geolocation," and we've gotten word that geolocation will be supported out of the box with the Firefox mobile browser, aka Fennec.

Firefox will use Google Location Service and while it won't require an add-on to make it functional, it will ask your permission before giving your location to a Web site. (If you've ever used an iPhone or iPod Touch, you're used to this. But in Firefox's case, permission will be asked in a drop-down dialog box as seen above, and not in an obtrusive modal box.)

Triangulation will take place using GPS, WiFi, cell tower or manual entry, and geolocation also will be included in the upcoming Firefox 3.5 desktop browser.

From Mozilla's Doug Turner:

We are happy to announce that Firefox 3.5 and Fennec will be using Google Location Service. We found that we agreed on the many privacy concerns around location. Do check out Mozilla’s privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy. I am pretty excited about these policies I think they are going to be the industry standard when it comes to network based geolocation providers.

Doug does an excellent job of explaining the technical details of it all, including privacy concerns, on his blog, and Google's got more tech specs on its end.

And speaking of Firefox/Fennec, there's a new alpha nightly build available (HTC Touch Pro only, folks) that can now render pages, say some testers. Give it a shot, but be sure to back up your phone first. Update: As for the future of the Firefox mobile browser? Here's what Mozilla just gave us:

"We are on track for shipping an alpha in the near future and a beta sometime this summer, and are working toward a general release later this year. As with all our releases at Mozilla, we'll stick to our 'ship it when its ready' policy."

So the pre-alpha release of the Firefox mobile browser for Windows Mobile was hit by a pretty big roadblock, but our friends at Nokia Experts can now enjoy a beta release on the N810 mobile Internet tablet.

This is just about the best look at the browser we've seen thus far, though you'll have to imagined it scaled down a little bit for a smartphone. But we get to see it doing real browser stuff, and that's exciting enough. So sit back, relax and take a gander at what we can hope to see toward the summer.

Via Gizmodo

Work continues on the Windows Mobile version of the Firefox mobile browser (heretofore known as Fennec), but the Nokia version is farther along. And it's there that we take a quick peek at what we expect to eventually see in our version.

At the top of our list is Weave, which basically is a monster sync extension that will connect your phone's Firefox browser with your desktop version of Firefox.

If you use the XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) extension, you're already used to syncing bookmarks and passwords. Weave does even more, as you can see in the picture above. You also can sync cookies, tabs, history, forms and input.

Head on over to the Fennec blog and see more of Weave running on a Nokia N810.