21
Dec
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16

Firefox 9 For Android Sheds Beta, Brings Tablet Interface And Faster Startup

Posted by in Applications, News

The team behind Firefox for Android teased the upcoming release with a tablet-friendly design back in late August, and the final version of FF9 just landed in the Android Market. The update not only features a specialized tablet interface, but also boosts performance and startup speed and brings some HTML5 tweaks to the scene, like camera input support and form validation.

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The tablet interface offers some nice features over its phone-centric counterpart, like full-screen browsing in portrait, optimized tabs for easy thumb-switching between open pages, and a quick access buttons on the Action Bar. The overall feel and functionality ...

16
Oct
11

Flash Isn't Coming To Firefox For Android Until 2012, But The Latest Nightly Builds Have It Now

Posted by in Applications, News

Firefox is finally getting flash support. Support for the plugin landed in the nightly builds a few days ago - meaning you can try it yourself, right now.

If you want to experience the magic of flash on Firefox, you can try out the latest trunk build right here (pick the .apk file). A word of warning though, it crashes. A lot.

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It really works!

Luckily they've got tons of time to work the bugs out. According to the bugzilla filing, it's not going to be ready until Firefox Ten. If the desktop version is any indication, that'll be ...

15
Oct
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6

Mozilla Set To Ditch XUL In Firefox For Android In Favor Of A Native UI, Better Performance

Posted by in Android OS, Applications, News

Jonathan Nightingale, Mozilla's director of Firefox Engineering, announced recently that Firefox's Android iteration will be moving away from XUL implementation in favor of a native Android UI. Nightingale, seeking to reassure users who may be wary of change, stated "Firefox on Android is a critical part of supporting the open web, and this decision puts us in a position to build the best Firefox possible."

For those not in the know, XUL stands for "XML User Interface Language," and is essentially a language that controls Firefox's front end architecture, creating various UI elements and instances. Mozilla's use of XUL in ...

30
Aug
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11

Firefox For Honeycomb Coming Soon, And It Looks Great

Posted by in Applications, News

If there is one thing that I'm always interested it, it's new browsers for my tablet. I can honestly say that I've used nearly every available browser in the Market - both optimized for Honeycomb and not. While I currently switch between Dolphin for Pad and the stock browser, I've been longing for a Honeycomb optimized version of Firefox for some time. It looks the Mozilla Mobile team heard my quiet cries, as they showed off some of the features of the upcoming browser in an official blog post earlier today.

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As you can see, it it has a very ...

08
Jul
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22

Firefox 6 Beta For Android Now Available - Brings Lots of Enhancements, Performance Improvements

Posted by in Applications, News

The newest version of Firefox Beta for Android is out on the Market now, and it brings a slew of UI changes, performance improvements, and other fixes and enhancements. Just check out this condensed changelog:

New in this release for Android:

  • New initial experience: Firefox starts faster and uses less memory. Get to your home page quickly and discover browser features on the side panels.
  • Higher-quality image scaling: View crisp Web pages and images with less pixelation
  • Enhanced Firefox experience on large screen tablets
  • Improvements to the form helper on Android
  • Fresh visual style on Gingerbread OS
  • Optimization for pages

...

21
May
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13

[Tip] Search The Android Web Market A Lot? Do It Straight From The Url Bar Like A Boss With This Handy Trick (Firefox, Chrome)

Posted by in Apps/Games, Tips

If you liked my speedy QR code tips before, you're going to love the tip I have for you today. Ever since the Android web Market was launched, I found myself loading the homepage just to make a search approximately 17 million times a day, give or take a few. As you know, the web Market homepage is quite heavy, so loading it just to make a search, especially while tethering on a slow connection, was starting to get kind of annoying.

In an effort to save both time and clicks (hello, Carpal Tunnel), I've created a much handier way ...

20
May
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10

Mozilla Launches Separate Firefox For Android Beta App To Test New Features Early

Posted by in Applications, News

Firefox for Android has come a long way since the project hatched as "Fennec" many months ago - there is no doubt about that. What started as a bloated, slow, and buggy pile of crap (really, it was bad), is now one of the greatest browsers Android has to offer (add-ons ftw!). Don't get me wrong - it's still lacking quite a few features - notably, Flash support, faster font redraw on zooming, better startup times, etc., but Mozilla knows this and is working hard on the next version - 5.0.

In order to test out new (but potentially buggy) ...

10
Jan
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3

Interview with Firefox For Android's Matt Brubeck

Posted by in Applications, Interviews, News
Last Updated: April 14th, 2011

Introduction

As a fan of Ubuntu, I really love using Mozilla Firefox. In my opinion, it is the best desktop browser out there (sorry, Chrome). It was because of my love for Firefox that I became elated when I first heard that Mozilla would be developing a browser for the Android platform.

Having followed the development of Firefox for Android from an alpha and now to a beta, I jumped at the chance to interview software engineer Matt Brubeck, one of the lead developers of Firefox for Android. In our time together, I got a chance to ask ...

07
Oct
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4

Firefox For Android Finally Hits Beta Status, Set To Silence Critics

Posted by in Applications, News

As we've seen in the last few days, The Artist Formerly Known As Fennec has really been hitting its stride lately. Riding on this wave of improvement comes a shiny new Beta status, making Fennec now, officially, Firefox 4 For Android Beta.

We won't labour you with details, as many words have been written before about F4FA's arduous journey towards usability. Just get out there and download it.

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You might also want to check out Mozilla's official blog post, and their little promotional video at the source link below. Sadly, our main man Matt Brubeck is not featured, but ...

06
Oct
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0

Fennec Dev Discusses Differences, Benefits, And Challenges Of Bringing Firefox To Android

Posted by in Applications, Dev, News

We've seen Fennec (or Firefox for Android as it's now called) gradually progressing over the last few months, reaching a state of real usability in the last couple of weeks. There are many excited by Fennec's journey and the ability have a browser with near-full-desktop functionality, but it seems that even more struggle to see a place for another browser on their phone. After all, the stock Android browser is lightning-quick and works well enough for a pretty satisfying web experience.

Mozilla mobile developer Matt Brubeck recently penned a blog post set to explain the reasoning behind Firefox for Android, ...

27
Aug
fennec for android
0

Firefox Mobile (Fennec) For Android Hits Alpha, Introduces New Features Including Electrolysis

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Mozilla Firefox for Android (also known as Fennec during development) has now reached a major milestone, with the release of the Alpha version being announced in a Mozilla blog post today by Stuart Parmenter. Joining Firefox Mobile as it enters the Alpha stage are a few more features than had been previously planned for implementation.

Amongst these features is Electrolysis, a very welcome addition to the latest builds, which separates the user interface and the content loading on the page in to two different processes, ensuring that the browser remains responsive even if a large page is being loaded. Stuart ...

16
Aug
Firefox
3

Send Links, Images, And Text From Firefox To Your Android Phone Using FoxToPhone

Posted by in Applications, Froyo 2.2, News
Last Updated: September 15th, 2010

Love Chrome's ChromeToPhone’s functionality? Want to achieve the same in Firefox? The world’s second most popular browser, Firefox, has an extension of its own to send links, images, selected text and clipboard from your computer straight to your Android phone with a click of a button.

To use the feature, you’ll need to:

  1. Download the ChromeToPhone app from the Market (meaning you will need Android 2.2) or by scanning the QR code below
    QR code for http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/downloads/detail?name=chrometophone-android-v1.7.apk&can=2
  2. Download the Firefox extension, which can be found here.

Quick tip for Froyo users: When you want to fill in that long password of yours,

...

13
Aug
0

Firefox For Mobile Gaining Greater Stability And New Features As Fennec Edges Towards Version 2 And Alpha Status

Posted by in Applications, News

It would be nice to say that Fennec has really been coming along of late. But honestly, from an end-user’s point of view, that’s not really the case; it’s still a massive memory hog, crashes seemingly at random, and takes up an inordinate amount of your phone’s internal storage. However, it is definitely growing gradually more usable, and beneath the rather sluggish front-end, some serious changes are taking place.

The Road To Fennec 2

If you've been following Mozilla Mobile dev @mbrubeck, you may have read about some under-the-hood improvements going on lately, as the internals of the browser ...

19
May
Get The Latest Version Of Fennec Every Day - Mozilla Now Making Nightly Builds Of Firefox For Android
4

Get The Latest Version Of Firefox For Android Every Day - Mozilla Now Making Nightly Builds Of Fennec

Posted by in Applications, News

Excited about finally having Firefox running on your Android phone? Not so fast - Firefox for Android, codenamed Fennec, is still in early alpha stages. However, an alpha build released a few weeks ago has given us a decent preview and instilled hope of a great browser to come.

After being quiet for some time, Stuart Parmenter and Vladimir Vukićević, Mozilla engineers, today announced that they had launched the Fennec nightly build system.

This means that every night the latest and greatest (or buggiest, depending on the day) Fennec build will be uploaded for everyone to ...

21
Nov
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16

Meet Firefox For Mobile [Video + Feature Highlights + More Info]

Posted by in Applications, Apps/Games, News, Videos
Last Updated: March 22nd, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

When I visited Mozilla's offices about 6 months ago, I saw a mobile testing station which included about 20-30 different phones lounging around, with their chargers plugged in. I knew something serious was coming soon. There were rumors about Firefox for Mobile for a while but nothing to really show for it. That was then…

Today, however, we know a lot more. Firefox for Mobile, codenamed Fennec, is coming ...