Mozilla Fennec for mobiles, on the prowl
p2pnet news view | Mobiles:- “The Fennec Fox (Vulpes zerda) is a small nocturnal fox found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa which has distinctive very large ears,” says the Wikipedia.
The baby fennec fox on the right is from floridapfe’s Flickr site.
The one on the left is the logo for the first alpha release of the Mozilla Firefox for mobiles.
It’s been out and about for a few days, “at least for those lucky (/unlucky) sorts who pack a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet,” says Mobile Computer, going on:
“However, less widely reported is the fact that Mobile Firefox – which carries the codename Fennec, presumably after the miniature African fox – is also available for the desktop.
“Okay, so using a browser designed for handheld devices on the broad expanse of a desktop screen is fundamentally pointless but if you want a taste of what the Mozilla folks have in store for mobile users, it’s worth the download. Actually, at the moment, it seems what Mozilla has in store for mobile users is plenty of bugs but hey, this is an alpha.”
Mozilla cannily admits people will need, “compelling reasons to go out of their way to install Fennec,” when their phones already have a browser or two installed.
And, “Don’t take this to mean that we won’t attempt to work with manufacturers and carriers to get pre-installed on devices,” it emphasises hastily.
But, “let’s assume that we’re mainly installed by users themselves,” it suggests, going to list unique assets, ie »»»
- We can improve the usefulness of Fennec for each desktop Firefox user, especially if we adopt an online “bridge” to enable a mobile user to easily access bookmarks, history, form-fill data, and other browser metadata from his desktop PC.
- We can take advantage of our desktop footprint to make Firefox users aware of Fennec, and make it easy for them to send an installer (or installer link) to their devices
- We can use our position of authority in the realm of Web standards to play a key role in defining and driving standards that would benefit the mobile Web as a whole, for example, a standard approach to making location information accessible in the DOM with appropriate security; gaining broader acceptance of microformats acceptance and broad implementation on phones of links that can initiate phone calls; and many more
- We can leverage our position as the preferred browser of developers by making it a natural extension of their current development process to develop, test and debug Web apps for mobile devices
- Fennec will provide users and developers with a better experience by leveraging our unique technology, developer community and user community.
And one mentioned almost in passing:
“Any developer with skills in HTML, CSS and JavaScript will be able to develop for mobile.”
Mobile Computer – Try Mobile Firefox Alpha (Fennec) on the desktop, October 20, 2008
Mozilla – Mobile/FennecVision, October, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Wonder if Apple would approve this for distribution on the App Store???
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 am
I think that you should get more pictuers for your website if you like fennecs as much as I do,anyway the rest is all right.Thank you for making this website,because I need research for the fennec.