Mozilla has released new development releases for two of its supported platforms: Beta 2 for Nokia Internet Tablets (powered by Maemo), and Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile.
As noted in Stuart Parmenter’s blos post, these new releases feature a new theme that improves usability, better performance and reliability, and work has started to make web forms easier to use.
Mozilla has released the first public milestone of Fennec (mobile Firefox) for Windows Mobile devices.
Featuring a user interface and overall behavior similar to the more developed version for Nokia tablets (running Maemo OS), it is still an alpha and is not recommended for day to day use.
The video below, prepared by Madhava Enros, provides a nice overview of how it behaves on an HTC Touch.
Another version of Fennec for Symbian is also under development.
Mozilla has released the second development release of Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox for Nokia Internet Tablets (running on maemo, a mobile Linux platform).
As with the previous alpha, this release is also available as a XULRunner application which allows it to run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms.
As Firefox Mobile, code named Fennec, approaches its second alpha (due this week), Mozilla’s Christian Sejersen announced today that Mozilla will port Fennec to S60, Nokia’s Symbian-based mobile platform, and the most popular overall, currently commanding about half the total installed base, effectively quadrupling the number of potential users for Mozilla’s mobile web browser.
Together with the other supported platforms, Windows Mobile and Maemo (Linux for Nokia Internet Tablets), Mozilla will reach about 65% of the mobile market.
Development for S60 is already under way with some of the building blocks like Gecko, the JavaScript engine, and HTML parser already completed and ready for the next steps that include Necko (Mozilla’s networking engine) to get a functional versions by the end of March next year.
Firefox Mobile (codename Fennec) development builds will now sport its own cool logo based on the plain globe icon of unbranded Firefox builds with a large fennec fox head overlaid. A fennec fox is a small large-eared Saharian fox and, according to te Wikipedia, the only fox species that can be kept as a pet though not domesticated.
Aza Raskin, one of the human interface experts hired last year by Mozilla, has released a five minutes video of a very early prototype of what Firefox Mobile’s interface may look like.
As you can see in the video below, the design aims to overcome two of the most common limitations in mobile devices: a small screen that translates into small user interface elements and a small content window, and a handicapped user experience compared to desktop browsers.
In a post to Mozilla Security blog, Window Snyder, Mozilla Security Officer, confirmed a security threat reported a couple of days ago that has compromised Vietnamese language packs downloaded since February 18, 2008.
Apparentlly, the language pack author’s computer got infected with the HTML.Xorer virus which injected malicious scripts into Firefox’s localized help files to display unwanted ads. While not harmful at this point, the ads could be replaced with malware to compromise users’ computers.
A second take on Mobile Firefox UI’s design for touchscreen devices has been published. The new design picks suggestions made to the previous proposal and introduces a more subtle user interface that makes better use of portable devices’ limited screen estate.
As part of it mobile strategy, Mozilla has unveiled the first designs of what may become in time, Mobile Firefox’s user interface. The design considers two scenarios: touch screen enabled devices like most PDAs and smart phones and those were screen navigation is performed with a keyboard or similar, like most cell phones.
Perhaps the most noticeable change in these first previews is the aim for look and feel and even functionality consistency with Firefox 3, a true challenge for an application constrained to cell phones and PDAs limited computing resources.
