5 ms·

Firefox 4 Beta 2 for Android and Maemo: Smaller, faster, new UI design

9 points by mbrubeck 16y ago

mbrubeck 16y ago
I'm a member of the mobile Firefox team, and happy to answer any questions about it!
- rkwz 16y ago
  Thanks for the great work guys! :)
- nkurz 16y ago
  I was going to ask for a brief overview of the architectural differences between Fennec, Webkit and Opera, but then I found your informative article here: http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/10/04/why-fennec-is-different.html http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/10/04/why-fennec-is-differen... That hit most of my questions. Thanks! Are there any other Android browsers that have cropped up since then that might be worth mentioning? I saw an announcement for Opera Mobile -- does that change the landscape? I'm currently using Dolphin HD, and am mostly satisfied with it. It's recent 4.0 upgrade helped a lot and took care of almost all my irritations with it. If only it were open source so the last remaining few could get fixed. But I'll check out Firefox Mobile soon and see how it compares.
- bni 16y ago
  I have tried earlier versions of Mobile Firefox on my N900, and I think it shows promise, with a very interesting UI. A couple of questions: Will you support the viewport meta tag with attributes for page zoom and scroll/pan behaviour? And also will you support the "Touch API" as implemented by Mobile Safari and the Android browser?
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    Yes, we support the viewport meta tag: http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta-viewport.html http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta-viewport.h... We don't yet support touch events. We're working on it, but it will probably not be reading until the next release after 4.0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544614 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544614 The newly formed W3C Web Events working group will be coming up with a standardized version of the various non-standard touch events invented by Apple, Google, and Mozilla: http://www.w3.org/2010/webevents/ http://www.w3.org/2010/webevents/
    - bni 16y ago
      Awesome, thanks
robotron 16y ago
Doesn't fit on my Hero (I know....) along with my other apps. Looking forward to trying out future versions.
bryanlarsen 16y ago
This caught my eye: "On Android 2.2, we’re now around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser." I was under the impression that main reason anybody would use Firefox would be for the features and plugins and doubted they'd ever be significantly faster. It's nice to be wrong. Granted, 2.3 comes out on Monday and will probably be even faster, but that won't help those stuck on 2.1 or 2.2...
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  We don't have continuous testing set up for ARM processors, but on x86, Mozilla's Jaegermonkey VM is faster at SunSpider even when compared to the latest development build of Google's V8: http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/

9 points by mbrubeck 16y ago

mbrubeck 16y ago

I'm a member of the mobile Firefox team, and happy to answer any questions about it!

rkwz 16y ago
Thanks for the great work guys! :)
nkurz 16y ago
I was going to ask for a brief overview of the architectural differences between Fennec, Webkit and Opera, but then I found your informative article here: http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/10/04/why-fennec-is-different.html http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/10/04/why-fennec-is-differen... That hit most of my questions. Thanks! Are there any other Android browsers that have cropped up since then that might be worth mentioning? I saw an announcement for Opera Mobile -- does that change the landscape? I'm currently using Dolphin HD, and am mostly satisfied with it. It's recent 4.0 upgrade helped a lot and took care of almost all my irritations with it. If only it were open source so the last remaining few could get fixed. But I'll check out Firefox Mobile soon and see how it compares.
bni 16y ago
I have tried earlier versions of Mobile Firefox on my N900, and I think it shows promise, with a very interesting UI. A couple of questions: Will you support the viewport meta tag with attributes for page zoom and scroll/pan behaviour? And also will you support the "Touch API" as implemented by Mobile Safari and the Android browser?
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Yes, we support the viewport meta tag: http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta-viewport.html http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2010/05/10/fennec-meta-viewport.h... We don't yet support touch events. We're working on it, but it will probably not be reading until the next release after 4.0: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544614 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544614 The newly formed W3C Web Events working group will be coming up with a standardized version of the various non-standard touch events invented by Apple, Google, and Mozilla: http://www.w3.org/2010/webevents/ http://www.w3.org/2010/webevents/
  - bni 16y ago
    Awesome, thanks

robotron 16y ago

Doesn't fit on my Hero (I know....) along with my other apps. Looking forward to trying out future versions.

bryanlarsen 16y ago

This caught my eye: "On Android 2.2, we’re now around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser." I was under the impression that main reason anybody would use Firefox would be for the features and plugins and doubted they'd ever be significantly faster. It's nice to be wrong. Granted, 2.3 comes out on Monday and will probably be even faster, but that won't help those stuck on 2.1 or 2.2...

mbrubeck 16y ago
We don't have continuous testing set up for ARM processors, but on x86, Mozilla's Jaegermonkey VM is faster at SunSpider even when compared to the latest development build of Google's V8: http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/