Fennec – Form Assistant & Password Echo

Firefox for Maemo (Fennec) beta 5 has been released! This release packs in a lot of good stuff. I’ve been trying to highlight a few of the new features. This time, I want to tell you about some web form features.

Entering data into web forms using a small keyboard on a small screen can be painful. This release of Fennec has a Form Assistant to make it easier to fill in forms. Whenever you tap on an input or select field, Fennec will attempt to zoom in on the element and also display a small UI ribbon for moving between other input fields. If the input field has an associated label, we try to make sure the label is visible too. Context is important when entering text and other data into a form.

fennec-form-assistant

Beta 5 also has a new Gecko feature, enabled for mobile platforms – Password Echo. Entering a password can be a tedious task on a mobile device. One common solution is for the system to show the last character you type as plain-text and after a short delay, convert it to a hidden password character. Echoing the last character really helps reduce errors when entering passwords.

Take Firefox for Maemo for a spin and let us know what you think.

2 Replies to “Fennec – Form Assistant & Password Echo”

  1. Be _very_ careful with that. The autozoom on the Palm Pre is horribly annoying and sometimes you need to read the page while filling out the form (like on this forum) so you don’t want to be zoomed in so you can only see the form.

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