Mozilla has released its Firefox 4 beta 1 for Android and Nokia's Maemo. It includes features such as Firefox Sync and improved performance, according to Mozilla.
Mozilla has released its Firefox 4 beta 1 for Android and Nokia's Maemo.
The mobile-optimized browser can be downloaded from
this Mozilla Website. It
includes features familiar to users of Firefox's desktop version, including
Add-ons and the cheekily named Awesome Bar, which displays frequently visited
and bookmarked URLs. By tapping the Awesome Bar, users can access the Awesome
Screen, which displays history, bookmarks and tabs.
Firefox 4 beta also includes Firefox Sync, which encrypts and stores
individual Firefox data on servers for later retrieval. "Firefox Sync makes it
easy to surf the Web on your PC, get up and go and have everything (open tabs,
saved passwords, browsing history and bookmarks) waiting for you on your phone
just the way you left it," reads a
Firefox Sync FAQ.
"And what's more, the sync is two-way. So if you bookmark a great new site on
your work computer, Firefox Sync will make sure that bookmark shows up on your
computer at home."
But for Mozilla, much of the focus was on speed.
"A major focus of this release is to increase performance and
responsiveness," Stuart Parmenter, director of mobile engineering at Mozilla,
wrote in an Oct.
7 posting on The Mozilla Blog. "Two of the big architecture changes are
Electrolysis and Layers." With the former, the browser interface runs "in a
separate process from the one rendering Web content, resulting in a much more
responsive browser." Meanwhile, Layers improves "overall performance and in
graphics areas such as scrolling, zooming and animations."
Dense technical details of the release can be found on Mozilla Mobile team
member
Matt
Brubeck's blog. In a recent posting, Brubeck suggests that Firefox 4 for
Android and Maemo offers features not present in other browsers for Android,
including the ability to let anyone write add-ons to customize the interface.
In addition, Brubeck writes, the release "supports Web technologies such as
SVG, ECMAScript 5, WebM
and HTTP Strict Transport Security."
"Early Firefox for Android builds were very slow compared to the stock
browser," Brubeck added. "Performance is critical in a mobile browser, and our
work in this area is starting to pay off. The new beta version is much
speedier, and we have plans to make it even faster."
Considering Google Android's market-share gains in smartphones over the past
few quarters, it seems logical that Mozilla would make a speedy browser for the
operating system a high priority.
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