Firefox befriends Fennec

Image via Wikipedia

In case you do not have a zott idea about the headline, let me assist you with what wikipedia says about fennec.

The Fennec Fox (Vulpes zerda) is a small nocturnal fox found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa which has distinctive very large ears.

Firefox for mobile phones has been named Fennec. A very very early alpha release has been pushed on the web for users to try out. It can be installed on Nokia N810 tablet. Unfortunately, i am not rich enough to get my hands on one . There are a couple of videos floating around to give you a feel of how it looks like on the tablet.

Fennec Alpha Walkthrough from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.

It has some major UI changes over existing browsers on windows mobile, symbain, and other handheld devices. The tabs are on left side, and other back, forward buttons are on right side, and search is at bottom. Nokia N810 is a bit different from other handhelds, as it is supposed to be operated from both hands. The buttons are justified, as user would use her thumbs to browse. However, this should not be a standard, as and when ported to a different formfactor handhelds (my Motorola E8). Designing a UI for handhelds is a very big challenge, as there is an explosion of form factors as compared to Laptops/PCs (reminds me of automobiles ). It would be interesting to see how mozilla solves this problem.

The browser supports plugins, so youtube will be available as long as our Adobe friends are in line with our interests. Renedering seems good, and some sites report the jvascript engine to be 600% faster than existing mobile browsers.

Related articles on the web

• Download First Firefox Mobile Alpha Release [Firefox Mobile]
• Firefox for Mobile: What you need to know
• Mobile Firefox AKA Fennec is Here and Ready for Testing
• First Firefox Mobile Alpha Released
• Shots of FF Mobile (Fennec) on WinMo, 88 on Acid3
• Mozilla Gets Touchy and Feely With Firefox ‘Fennec’ Mobile