Mozilla Releases Alpha 2 For Their Mobile Browser Fennec

As we all know, the mobile browser war rages on and there has always been a personal preference to a certain extent as to which is better. At this point, it is safe to say that Skyfire is the most powerful, while Opera Mobile 9.5 is the nicest to use outside of longer page load times. (Skyfire renders on the server side). We all still use Pocket Internet Explorer because it is quick and easy. But when Mozilla announced that they would have a Mobile Browser called Fennec, things got interesting.

The first Alpha release of Fennec was just that, the first release with some bugs to work out with speed.

Mozilla developer Stuart Parmenter in a blog entry wrote:

"While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted, we’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance,"

Stuart goes on to say about the second Alpha release:

"We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading."

 

The Fennec Alpha 2 is available on Mozilla’s website for the Nokia N810 Internet Tablets, but if you don’t have the Nokia, you can have a look a Fennec from your PC using Windows, Linux, & Mac OS X. Just head on over to Mozilla to check it out.

Let’s hope that Mozilla gets the bugs worked out of Fennec and we can see it live sometime soon!

Stay tuned for more information.

Source: arstechnica.com via justanothermobilemonday.com

Jump after the break for what’s new in Fennec Alpha 2

New for alpha 2:

• Faster panning
• Faster zooming
• Improved responsiveness while pages are loading
• New content manipulation hooks for extension authors
• Look and feel improvements to improve usability

This builds upon the feature set of alpha 1:

Easy navigation to Web content:

• Bookmarks, including tags
• Smart URL bar ("awesome bar")
• Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
• Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
• Easy access to multiple search engines

Web content:

• Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
• Zoom in and out

Security:

• Instant Web site ID ("Larry")
• Password manager
• Popup blocker
• Clear private data

Devices services integration:

• Click on a phone number to initiate a call
• JavaScript API to get device location

Also:

• Searchable download manager
• Preferences pane