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.

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

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.

My, my, these Mozilla folks are an ambitious bunch. We already know about a bunch of the goodies to expect when we finally get our hands on a working version of the Firefox mobile browser, heretofore known as "Fennec" or "Firefox Mobile."

We know that the browser should support things we're used to on the desktop version: Add-ons, tabbed browsing, and the coup de grace — support for Weave, which syncs bookmarks, add-ons, passwords and the like.

Now comes word from Mozilla dev Jono that the mobile browser will sync tabs. Fellow Mozillian Brad Lassey (check out our Q&A with him here) puts this into a real-world scenario:

Several use cases have been thrown around, but the one that rings the loudest for me goes something like this: You’re looking for a new restaurant to try from your laptop at home, find one and head out. Once you get to the neighborhood, you realize you have no idea where this hole in the wall place is. With tab syncing you can pull out your mobile device, launch Fennec and see a list of tabs open on your laptop (and all your other computers). You select the tab you need, and instantly are looking at the same content you had on your laptop.

Pretty cool, indeed. In other news, ZDNet UK [via] had a sit-down with Mozilla Mobile Business chief Jay Sullivan, who tells us that "Fennec" is just a code name, and the browser will simply be "Firefox," and not "Firefox Mobile."

So, you'll have Firefox running on your Windows phone, which in turn will be running Windows Mobile (be it 6, 6.1 or 6.5). Your desktop or lappy will have Firefox running on Windows, until such time as you choose to become mobile and — oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.

Unless you're a real dev-type, the "Milestone Release" of Mozilla's Fennec mobile browser likely was a nonstarter — it's a pre-alpha build and not at all intended to serve as a daily browser just yet. But what it does do is show us that work on the browser is progressing nicely for Windows Mobile.

We're serious about our excitement for Fennec from what we've seen in the desktop release. When all is said and done, it likely will give the iPhone's mobile Safari a run for its money. Javascript engine. Extensions. Cloud syncing for bookmarks and the like. We could go on. But if you're a desktop Firefox-lover, you know where we're coming from.

Fennec developer Brad Lassey, who joined the company in October 2008 to work on mobile products, agreed to answer a few of our burning questions about Fennec. Will it be available for non-touchscreen phones? What's up with Fennec for our cousins over at NokiaExperts? When might we see a proper Windows Mobile beta? And what can we do to help?

Lassey's answers, after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ask and ye shall receive. No sooner do we get another very cool look at what Fennec – Mozilla's Firefox Mobile browser – can do, the team releases the first "Milestone Release" for the HTC Touch Pro.

A word of warning: This is a "Milestone Release" and is not the finished product. As Mozilla's Brad Lassey explains:

Our focus to this point has been to have a working, usable browser. To get there in a hurry we have punted in a few places, and I’d like to point a couple of them out. First is the update mechanism (both for the browser itself and for extensions). After installing this release, you will not be offered updates automatically, so please stay tuned for follow up releases. Also, we have disabled plug-in support. This is one of our high priority items going forward. Finally, as I mentioned before, there is no soft keyboard support. On an HTC Touch Pro, you’ll have to slide out the keyboard to enter a url.

Lassey also takes on the recent "leaked" versions of Fennec that were floating around. (See our own "There's a Mad Fennec on the Loose")

Over the last week and half there have been several blog posts and “news” articles floating around the internet about leaked Windows Mobile Fennec builds. This has been fairly entertaining to those of us working on the project for a couple reasons. First, the builds that these posts have pointed to are the builds that I pointed to on twitter. They were intended to be used by the developers working on the project (or anyone else willing to deal with really buggy software) to find bugs before we pushed anything out to the general public.

While today's Milestone Release isn't the finished product, it's the first time most of us are going to get a good hands-on with the mobile browser best positioned to take on mobile Safari. So, back up your phone (we'll say it again — back up your phone) go download the CAB file here (again, HTC Touch Pro only, for now), and get to playin'. Let us know in the comments how it's holding up for you.

Update: Looks like the browser loads just fine, but the actual, uh, browsing may not be going so fine. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Update 2: Mozilla's on the case, as its own Ben Combee notes in the comments. Thanks, Ben!

We're still waiting for an official beta of Mozilla's Fennec mobile browser, and it now looks like it's targeted for later this month. [via] (Update: The Milestone Release is out now.) But in the meantime, here's some more to whet your appetite. One of the cooler features of Fennec is its ability to support add-ons, just like it's big brother desktop browser. Above we have a video from felipc, who's doing some very cool work with gesture inputs for the browser.

Obviously, this is a demonstration performed on a Mac, but you can imagine how powerful this could be on a mobile phone. We see demonstrated:

• Open a new tab: draw a circle
• Close a tab: draw an X
• Go to home page: draw a house
• Bookmark a page: draw a star
• Open a mini menu: draw a counter-clockwise circle

Get this on a properly equipped phone – it remains to be seen what kind of graphics/processing power it's going to need, though the Touch Pro was identified as a probable beta test platform – and it likely could become our browser of choice.

Despite a previous update from the Mozilla team, it now looks like the Firefox Mobile browser, codenamed Fennec, could be ready for a Windows Mobile beta as soon as next week, and they've chosen a phone to do the honors.

From this week's meeting:

We are targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February, targeting the HTC touch pro.

There you have it. And dollars to donuts once the kids at XDA Developers get hold of this, we'll see it ported to other HTC phones pretty quickly.

If you still can't wait and want to give Fennec a try on your desktop, hit us up here for a link to the emulator versions.

We'd had a fleeting hope that after last month's Alpha 2 release we might see an actual Windows Mobile beta build of Fennec, the upcoming Firefox Mobile browser, in the first couple of months of the year. Alas, it's not to be.

Mozilla's Fennec test plan notes Feb. 27 as the scheduled date for the Beta 1 release, then lets us down in no uncertain terms.

NOTE: this is a Beta1 for Maemo, not Windows Mobile or Symbian

So, work continues, and it sounds like they're making progress. Here are the WinMo notes from this week's Fennec meeting:

Building from trunk is blocked by NSPR, NSS and freetype font backend patches getting review. The font patch has been getting regular review and update, its being held up somewhat now because of conflicts with @font-face work. NSS and NSPR patches have stalled out.

Performance is improving steadily, once we can build from the trunk the focus will be on getting performance patches landed.

Patience, grasshopper.