Posts

2012

Firefox for Android: Remote Debugging is Here Aug 6

Lucas blogged a while ago about some of the initial work on creating a remote debugging system for Firefox on Android. The desktop patches Lucas mentioned have landed, and remote debugging Firefox for Android is now possible.

Firefox for Android: Docs for Building Add-on Jun 13

I have talked about how add-ons interact with the new Firefox on Android, but we didn’t have any easily accessible documentation. Now we have some guides and code snippets:

Firefox for Android: Fx & Mobile Work Week Apr 29

The Mobile team spent last week in not-so-sunny Toronto, pushing Firefox for Android closer to beta-level release criteria. We are getting very close. There is a lot of amazing work landing, especially in graphics. The Graphics team is working with Mobile to integrate GL support into the Gecko rendering system. It’s taken some time, but the results are really starting to look good in Nightly builds.

Firefox for Android: After the Reboot Jan 23

I was asked to give a presentation on the recent developments in Firefox Mobile for the Mozilla Vision 2012 conference in Tokyo. It gave me a chance to reflect a bit on what we did, why we did it and how things are going. The “what” in this case is rewriting the UI for Firefox Mobile using native Android widgets. The “why” can be summed up in the following goals:

2011

Firefox for Android: Where's the Error Console? Dec 1

The new native Android UI version of Firefox does not ship with a dedicated Error Console. Instead, all console messages are redirected to the Android system log - also known as logcat. If you have the Android SDK installed, you already have a way to view the logcat:

Firefox for Android: Using the Android Emulator Nov 23

Firefox for Android, both the XUL and Native versions, currently requires an ARMv7 CPU. We are looking into adding support for ARMv6, but the ARMv7 limitation had one painful drawback: We could not run Firefox on the Android emulator since it only supported ARMv6.

Firefox for Android: Nightly Channel Switches to Native UI Builds Nov 23

We have been talking a lot recently about the new native UI version of Firefox for Android. Built using native Android UI widgets, packed with major speed improvements and large memory reductions. We have not been working on the project very long, but we have been making solid progress. We decided it’s time to move the native builds into our nightly delivery channel.