Fennec – The Command Line

feeds | grep links > Mozilla Concept Smart Phone, Progress in Fennec Nightlies, and Other Non-Mozilla Links

Posted onSeptember 24, 2010September 24, 2010Leave a comment

Once again, crushed for time so only offering up some links without comment. Going to see the favorite angry liberal of mine and my wife’s, Lewis Black, later this evening after a nice dinner out in the heart of DC.

IBM demos single-atom DRAM, Slashdot
First installment of Xiph.org’s digital video primer for geeks, Slashdot
Mozilla Labs re-imagines the smart phone, ReadWriteWeb
Public.resource.org secures funding from Google’s 10^100 grant program, O’Reilly Radar
Nightly builds of Fennec, Firefox’s mobile sibling, improving rapidly, Wired

New Alpha Release of Mozilla’s Fennec

Posted onAugust 27, 2010August 27, 2010Leave a comment

Fennec is Mozilla’s mobile browser, currently targeting the Nokia internet tablets and the Android operating system. This latest release still bears the the alpha tag signifying users should try it with the utmost caution as all bets are on in terms of reliability. The prior alpha truly looked unusable but as Frederic Lardinois at RWW explains, addressing performance was the top priority informing this fresh update.

The video is well worth a watch, giving a sense of where the browser’s speed is at but also highlighting Fennec’s interface. I cannot wait to get a mobile friendly version of Firefox’s awesome bar. The search engine integration in Fennec’s awesome page is a nice touch.

One of the reasons I am particular interested in getting an Android MID as my next mobile gadget is the possibility of running Fennec. I am an immense fan of Firefox, the full browser, both for the software itself but also for the principles of an open web on which it is built. Fennec would bring that same openness to the mobile web, not to mention the recent data sharing via Sync that has shaped up to be a killer feature across most of Mozilla’s offerings.

Mozilla Fennec, First Browser for Android with Support for Add-Ons, ReadWriteWeb

Mozilla Fennec Available on Android

Posted onApril 28, 2010Leave a comment

I first linked to some speculation about a year ago that Mozilla might use the then new native SDK for to bring Fennec to the Android platform. More recently, there was some video circulating of a development build of Fennec running on an Android phone. Now, even though it is labeled as “pre-alpha”, Fennec is available for anyone courageous enough to give it a try on their Android based device.

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb was one of many folks to pick up the announcement. She clearly itemizes the warnings for anyone excited to try Mozilla’s mobile browser. Even though the release is heavily qualified, hopefully subsequent builds will improve rapidly. I wish I had an Android device to help test and give feedback to fuel that. If you have a Droid or Nexus One running Android 2.0 or later, consider helping out. Perez has some good tips at the end of her article one how best to deal with Fennec when this early stage build eventually crashes.

Fennec development has previously focused on Maemo, a Linux based OS used on the Nokia N-900. I don’t know how much code is shared between the two builds but I hope it is a sizable fraction. Otherwise, I fear for the cost of pushing development for two different smart phone platforms, even though both are Linux based. I am sure the GUI stacks are significantly different between the two and would hate to see development crawl or completely stall out because of the combinatorial load of support two platforms. I don’t know how comparable the effort is to support Firefox proper on multiple OSes but maybe that is cause for some optimism.

I am thrilled to see that Mozilla’s Weave is already supported on Fennec for Android. I already use it heavily to synchronize saved passwords, history, and tabs between three browser instances on two different OSes. Unlike a lot of other synchronization solutions, Weave can potentially work with all kinds of data, not just the usual suspects when talking about browser sync. That and all of the data is encrypted by the browser so the Weave server has zero knowledge. I believe the openness of Weave also extends to the possibility of eventually being able to run your own Weave server.

I hope other add ons are soon supported by the mobile browser, both ones developed by Mozilla and third party developers. In particular, I’d love to see the also heavily experimental Account Manager add on working in Fennec.