The Mobile Team has been hard at work on the 1.1 release of Firefox Mobile. This release will mainly be a Nokia Maemo release, but the current Android builds are based on the same front-end.
For the 1.1 release, we are focusing on some UI features we didn’t have time to put in the initial release. We are also using your feedback to help improve the browsing experience. You can see the list of planned features on the planning page. As you can see, we have completed much of the work and the beta release is quickly approaching.
Some of the bigger features that have already landed include:
- Form assistant improvements, including autocomplete
- Start page redesign
- Auto update add-ons
- Portrait support on N900
- Context Menu with Open in New Tab and Save Image
- Web content theme update
- Manage site preferences (clearing passwords and others)
- Clean up site menu
- Use volume keys to zoom on N900
- Save page to PDF
Screen shots of the some new features:
Form Assistant with Autocomplete:
Start Page:
Context Menu:
Page Menu:
Looks great. Too bad it won’t be available on Windows Mobile.
Very exciting features! I know you guys have received a lot of press lately for what you’re NOT doing (e.g. continuing WinMo development), but for those of us with N900s it’s what you ARE doing that really counts. Thanks for the excellent work!
One quick question – you mention “…we are also using your feedback to help improve the browsing experience…” Going forward, what’s the preferred way for users to submit Firefox Mobile feedback?
Well I hope Mozilla takes in the feedback that some N900:s cant even open their program.
My question is what name are you going to go by Fennec or Firefox Mobile?
You guy’s seem to be using both interchangeably. I myself am fond of the Fennec brand. Although, II figured you guy’s would call it Fennec: Mobile Firefox or something until people were familiar with it.
Very nice. At this rate, 1.2 would probably surpass MicroB. 😉
Any word on performance? That’s the only drawback with Fennec/Mobile Firefox vs. MicroB.
I hope the update will work on my Nokia N810 too
@Michael – What kind of problems do you have? Can you file a bug with some details?
@Jeffery – “Fennec” is the code name for the project. “Firefox” is the official name.
@Andy – Some performance improvements can be seen in 1.1, but the largest improvements will come in 2.0 when we ship from the latest version of the Mozilla platform.
@Soh Kam Yung – Fennec 1.1 will still run on N810s
Will it actually become usable on N900? “Usable” defining as “not hanging the whole system for seconds at a time as you are trying to scroll”?
good creativity,i believe it can work on some SGH phones.
What keeps most people from using FM over MicroB is its slowness – are you going to fix that?
When’s v2 due then ? There’s not much point (for me) in adding new features when it takes a minute or so to be usable (though the GUI starts earlier, seems to be downloading a lot of favicons for the first page or something; Hangs anyway).
This sounds great! Thanks for the update!
But I agree with @Jeffry. If Fennec is just a code name, you should stop using it (like you do in the start page screenshot). Please have a look here:
Also, I really hope that you will add a search functionality soon. And maybe you could work with Nokia to get some of the code that makes MicroB so much faster than Firefox/Fennec.
@Tanner H: Maybe trough this plugin? http://ahdesai.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/introducing-the-website-problem-reporter-for-fennec/
Looks like it’s making great progress. One really useful feature for the link context menu, as well as open in new tab, would be “copy link location”. The N900 has great multitasking capabilities and it makes sense to be able to copy a link to be used in a SMS, Twitter post or Xterm session.
why do i get the feeling that MicroB will be replace as the offial browser for MeeGol devices goinf forwards?
But i for once aint complaining, i love Firefox on my desctop and once 1.2 is released for the N900 i will switch from MicroB, saving pages and print document as PDF is a big deal for me..
keep up the good work guys!!!
quick question: what version browser will u use on a MeeGo Tablet once it comes out?
Very glad to see portrait-support for version 1.2, thanks for that. 🙂 However, I’m still wondering, that will there be support for virtual-keyboard, since it wasn’t supported on Firefox Mobile 1.0? This (and the fact that the browser had to restart itself when started and was slow as hell) was the most disappointing missing feature to me (and miss of Flash but as far as I know it will be included on version 1.2?) and thus returned me to MicroB.
These features look fantastic – thanks very much for all the work the team is putting in to making Firefox work on the N900.
@Dave – Yes, we made the context menu ready to support add-ons. “Copy Link Location” would be a nice example.
@Børge – “Fennec” is the name of the unreleased, nightly version. We don’t plan on stopping it use.
Whoops, I got mixed with version (thanks to Maemo 1.2 PR). So yes, I meant 1.1.
thanks a lot for the great browser.
winmo seems to die anyway.
i really like my n900 (coming from iphone) almost everything is better on the N900
the only thing i miss is:
the double tap on the status bar of the safari browser that takes you to the top of the page and with that back to the menues…
keep up the good work – thanks
@Mark Sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t mean that you should stop using Fennec in/about the nightlies. I’m just saying that you’re not being clear enough on the naming, and it’s confusing. And I forgot the link. Here: http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla/topics/firefox_for_mobile_has_too_many_names
Btw: it wold be very useful if there was a keyboard shortcut for switching tabs, like Ctrl Tab on the desktop. And it would be very nice if we could have the same type of spiral zoom functionality as in MicroB.
Oh, I forgot to say that I totally agree with @Dave about “copy link address”.
I really appreciate the love you are giving to the Maemo 5 platform. I use Firefox Mobile a lot, and I go through periods of using it exclusively. The thing that stops me from using it all the time is the performance in application loading speed, page loading speed and scrolling responsiveness and slickness. I see that you won’t be addressing that now, but in 2.0… I’ll look forward to it.
In the mean time, I am very pleased with the ideas you are proposing and think that when performance is better we may well have the best browser in the market. Right now, it certainly is the most feature rich browser and am looking forward to version 1.1. Please keep them coming 🙂
Great news, I cannot wait for it! However as well as some others I think the performance is one of the biggest issues now and it often limits me from using Fennec despite all of its super powers. With two tabs open in Fennec one can hardly have other program running alongside. (I know that’s the norm out there, but we’re not on iPhone, right?)
The only missing features I can think of are
– a tool for selecting content on the page
– search as you type feature.
Are those planned afterwards?
BTW have you considered optional tab=window behavior? Since Maemo has the best window switcher around it would make perfect sense and reduce number of clicks using the phone.
Please make an option to be able to disable the autozooming when inputting data in fields. Some people might like that feature, but I think it’s distracting, because I can’t see the rest of the page anymore.
@Silviu Marin-Caea – Fennec 1.1 has a preference to disable form assistant auto-zoom. You need to use about:config to change the setting. The setting is “”formhelper.autozoom”
@ombng You can select words/letters by tapping on the place where you want to start your selection, press and hold Shift, and press left arrow.
It’ll be great, if volume keys can be used for scroll page up/down in portrait mode
Hi Mark,
will there be a close button in the adress bar? Or how can I quit the application without using a hardware button?
Thanks,
Holger
@Børge A. Roum Thank you, will try that!
How can we get the 1.1 beta version? I thought it would be out yesterday, but I don’t seem to get an update… Should I go to some specific site or simply wait patiently?
TIA!
Can’t wait to try it!! 🙂
Don’t forget, as per microb on n900, people want the volume keys to do volume not zoom, when running flash video.
congrats for the always great work!