What makes Firefox for Maemo a product on its own is the efficient user interface designed from the ground up to  take  challenges like having no keyboard, less computing power, or a smaller display while taking advantage of tablets’ touch screens, and handling.

To maximize screen use, the location bar doubles as the title bar, and disappears when vertically scrolling a web page. Something similar happens with the navigation toolbar: it stays out of sight until you scroll it in from the right side.

Scroll from the left side and you get the simple interface to access multiple tabs:

To minimize typing, the awesome bar is available and search engines are also displayed among recommendations to quickly perform web searches. You can add more search engines from web sites that offer them (through the site button) or get them directly from Mozilla Add-ons or Mycroft.

Preferences are limited to a few important ones, and some features like private browsing are just not there. You can either clear all your private data or do nothing. There are no options to clear cookies, passwords, or downloads alone, by time range or, for a specific site.

Just like Firefox, it is extensible, making it the first mobile browser to market with this capability, and there are 40+ add-ons already available at Mozilla Add-ons. Some interesting ones like Hold4Tab which allows to open a link in a new tab by holding your finger on a link, should become default behavior in the near future.

Firefox for Maemo is integrated with Mozilla Add-ons so you can search within the add-ons page. You can install and configure from this single page as well.

Among add-ons, one of the most relevant is Mozilla Labs’ Weave which just reached 1.0 status. It takes mobile browsing to a new level  by keeping your desktop and mobile experiences synchronized: bookmarks, passwords, history, and even your tabs are shared via Mozilla hosted Weave server.

Once Weave is enabled a new Remote Tabs button in the tabs sidebar shows the tabs you have open in your desktops, making it pretty easy to continue any work you may have being doing.

Maemo users go to http://firefox.com/m to get it now in more than 30 languages.

Versions for Windows Mobile and Android are also in development (I just learned that the Symbian version has been dropped)

If you don’t have a Nokia Internet Tablet, you can download a Windows, Mac, and Linux (unbranded) version to try.

To celebrate the launch, here’s another great Mozilla poster designed by The Royal Order, Delicious Designs, and the Mozilla Creative team.

Feature wise, it is Firefox. You get the awesome bar, a download manager where you can pause and resume downloads, one touch bookmarking and tagging,  tabbed browsing, the site button for quick security checks, popup blocker, a password manager, the same rendering engine (HTML5, native Theora video, embedded fonts), spell checker, etc.

What makes Firefox for Maemo a product on its own is the efficient user interface designed from the ground up to  take  challenges like having no keyboard, less computing power, or a smaller display while taking advantage of tablets’ touch screens, and handling.

To maximize screen use, the location bar doubles as the title bar, and disappears when vertically scrolling a web page. Something similar happens with the navigation toolbar: it stays out of sight until you scroll it in from the right side.

Scroll from the left side and you get the simple interface to access multiple tabs:

To minimize typing, the awesome bar is available and search engines are also displayed among recommendations to quickly perform web searches. You can add more search engines from web sites that offer them (through the site button) or get them directly from Mozilla Add-ons or Mycroft.

Preferences are limited to a few important ones, and some features like private browsing are just not there. You can either clear all your private data or do nothing. There are no options to clear cookies, passwords, or downloads alone, by time range or, for a specific site.

Just like Firefox, it is extensible, making it the first mobile browser to market with this capability, and there are 40+ add-ons already available at Mozilla Add-ons. Some interesting ones like Hold4Tab which allows to open a link in a new tab by holding your finger on a link, should become default behavior in the near future.

Firefox for Maemo is integrated with Mozilla Add-ons so you can search within the add-ons page. You can install and configure from this single page as well.

Among add-ons, one of the most relevant is Mozilla Labs’ Weave which takes mobile browsing to a new level  by keeping your desktop and mobile experiences synchronized: bookmarks, passwords, history, and even your tabs are shared via Mozilla hosted Weave server.

Once Weave is enabled a new Remote Tabs button in the tabs sidebar shows the tabs you have open in your desktops, making it pretty easy to continue any work you may have being doing.

Weave 1.0 is pretty close to final release and already in plans for integration with desktop Firefox, and integration with Firefox for Maemo shouldn’t be that far either.

All in all, Firefox for Maemo delivers a great web experience in your hands.

The biggest disappointment with Firefox mobile is that it is only available for Maemo right now, which is used by a tiny fraction of the whole mobile landscape. However, Windows Mobile is next in the pipeline with Android and Symbian versions also under development which will make it available to a far larger audience.

For more details, check the release notes. If you don’t have a Nokia Internet Tablet, you can download a Windows, Mac, and Linux (unbranded) version to try.

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.

While both, Windows Mobile and Maemo versions are based on the same code base, the different version numbers reflect the different levels of maturity in usability.

Get Fennec for Maemo, or Fennec for Windows Mobile.

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.

According to the release notes, alpha 2 improves on:

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

Since most of the improvements have happened on the performance department, you will probably need to run it on an N800 or N810 to appreciate them.

The release still doesn’t include a Windows Mobile version which is under development and should become available soon.

Last week it was announced that Fennec will also become available for S60, Nokia’s Symbian-based mobile platform, extending Mozilla’s potential  reach to about 60% of the current mobile market.

For download links and more details check Fennec Alpha 2 Release Notes.

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.

While there are at least two major Symbian-based platforms (UIQ being the other), the port will focus on S60 Third Edition (based on Symbian 9.1) and later, which includes the N95, and other Nokia, LG, and Samsung smartphones.

Most interestingly, according to Christian’s post, Symbian is helping Mozilla with engineers to properly size and scope the project, while “Symbian houses”  are interested in contributing.

On other platforms, Christian commented: “There are a few other platforms: iPhone, RIM and Android that have or are gaining market share, where we for technical or licensing reasons can’t be deployed.”

There is also a simplified version to be used when a very small size is required.

Both versions were created by Nobox, the design firm responsible for the Firefox 3 robot, Operation Firefox, Firefox Campus Edition and other Firefox-related art.

John Slater, Mozilla Creative Director, notes that this logo “has nothing do to with the final Firefox Mobile branding” in the announcement post.

Fennec recently reached Milestone 4 with builds available for Nokia’s N800 and N810 Internet tablets and is expected to go final by year’s end.

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.

It borrows a few ideas from Safari on the iPhone and adds tab handling, Firefox’s location bar and most notably handy zoom in/out and access to the navigation buttons scrolling to both edges of the screen.

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.

As part of Mozilla’s security policies, all files uploaded are routinely scanned for virus, but HTML.Xorer wasn’t added to the antivirus database until after the infected languages pack was published. A full scan following a virus database update is being considered to mitigate this weakness.

It should be noted that the help files doesn’t contain the virus itself, so it won’t infect users’ computers or network peers. Also, Mozilla confirmed a full scan of the repository found the injection to be to the Vietnamese language pack alone.

Vietnamese language pack users should disable it via Firefox Add-ons Manager until a new, clean version is released in the next few days.

Instead of a permanent toolbar, just a translucent back icon is overlaid at the bottom of the current web page so it is always easy to perform web browsing single most frequent action.

An overlaid Firefox icon overlaid in the bottom limited activates the full toolbar when tapped.

The activated toolbar shows back, forward, bookmark and tab list buttons along with the location bar and refresh buttons. Another tap on the Firefox icon closes the toolbar.

Additional buttons and toolbars other extensions may add will be stacked on top  of the location bar.

Some navigational proposals includes tap for linking or panning, double tap for page zoom, touch and drag for panning, touch, hold and drag for fine zooming in and out; and touch and hold for link information, an important consideration since there is no status bar.

You can share your comments and suggestions on Doug Turner’s blog or Mozilla Wiki.

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.

The main window looks very clean with a thin title bar, a main toolbar that can be hidden by tapping on the title bar and features a refresh/stop button, a location/search bar and Firefox 3-style star/bookmarks button.

A tap in the location/search bar calls the device on-screen keyboard to enter either a web address or search terms. The press the Go button to visit the web address, the search button to perform a search or cancel. The location bar is as mighty as Firefox 3’s awesome bar displaying previously entered web addresses and titles that match the entered characters.

Additionally, the list of previously entered address can be displayed by tapping in a chevron inside the location bar.

As a page loads, the reload button changes to a stop button while the location bar shows the page loading progress in the background.

The star button displays the list of bookmarks on a single tap. Double tap to bookmark the current page.

A navigation toolbar is displayed in the lower part with back and forward button, zoom in and zoom out buttons which suddenly become very relevant on mobile devices and a cool tabs button that displays up to four tab previews on tap for quick tab switching. You will be able to pan amon tabs if more than four are currently opened and close them with individual buttons.

Zoom-In and Zoom-Out buttons do a full page zooming (images included) just like Firefox 3 will do. You can then pan a web page by tapping and dragging around.

For non touch screen devices a virtual cursor is provided and controlled with the keyboard navigational keys. Other actions are performed through menus and submenus.

Mozilla is also providing XUL prototypes, (I used the touch screen enabled one for the screenshots), so you can try the proposed interface on a working prototype with a few limitations though.

Of course the reason for this early announcement is to allow people to share their views and comments. I am not sure if there is a forum for that right now, but Mozilla Mobile’s Doug Turners’s post should be a good place to start.

Make sure to read the complete specifications.