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]

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.

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

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.

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'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.

Windows Mobile is all about having options, sometimes to a fault. If you want someone else to decide how you're going to use your device, go here.

That's why the advent of yet another browser for Windows Mobile is a time for celebration. Opera Mobile, Skyfire, Webkit — they all bring something to the table that Internet Explorer does not. And they're all different enough to make having more than one browser not seem silly.

We're eagerly awaiting the alpha release of Firefox Mobile, aka Fennec (we'll save you the trouble: It's a small desert fox), any day now. And after a quick read through Mozilla's mobile roadmap, we can sum up our excitement with a couple of points (after the jump).

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