Fennec 2.0 – New and Notable

It’s been a while since I posted about news things happening in Fennec and now I have a backlog! Let’s jump right into the list of new features you’ll find in the Fennec 2.0 nightlies:

• Awesomescreen: The Awesomebar Awesomescreen redesign merges the existing Search and Bookmark UIs while adding History and Desktop (via Sync) into a single UI. It’s part of our goal to keep data close to you when you need it. The Awesomescreen is all about helping you navigate to the pages you want, as fast as you can.
• Moved Search Providers: The list of search providers was moved from the bottom of the Awesomescreen results to a button on the right side of the URL bar. This was done to maximize the available space fro the Awesomescreen results.



• SiteMenu and ContextMenu APIs: We made it a lot easier for add-ons to extend the SiteMenu and ContextMenu by adding real APIs around the functionality.
• Awesomescreen Badging: We added the ability to “badge” URLs shown in the Awesomescreen with helpful meta data, like unread inbox counts. We also added an API to the feature so add-ons could add badging to any URL (website), not just the ones we built into Fennec.



• More Context Menus: We added support for more context menus (long tap menus) in places like Bookmark list, Awesomescreen results and the element in web content.
• Android Notifications: We use the native notification system on Android for things like downloads, add-on installations and application updates.
• Right-to-Left Support: We made the Fennec support RTL locales much better than it did, and we also want to make sure we don’t break RTL locales as we land new features.