Firefox Mobile 7 already shaping up

Mozilla may have been slow to get into the mobile game but it is making up for that now. The non-profit organisation behind the Firefox web browser has already released Firefox Mobile 7 into early testing, even though the official version 5 release was only made a few weeks ago.

Earlier this year Mozilla announced its plans to speed up its release schedule and since then has already shipped versions 4 and 5 of its browser while version 6 is in beta form and version 7 is in the recently created Aurora channel, the new home of pre-beta development releases. Although version 7 of Firefox Mobile won’t be available for a while yet, here are some of the features fans can look forward to.

Like the desktop version of Firefox 7 the mobile version gets some much-needed memory improvements. These optimisations should make running Firefox on Android noticeably smoother and with fewer restarts.

Mobile-specific improvements will include better copy and paste. Copying and pasting text on a cellphone is notoriously difficult. Without the use of a mouse, capturing the text you actually want can be pretty hit and miss. Firefox Mobile 7 will have some serious improvements in this area which will make it easier to long-tap the screen to select text and control what is selected with Android-style handles. Because Firefox Mobile doesn’t use Android widgets, says developer Mark Finkle, the team had to implement these drag-handles themselves.

Something that will make browsing much easier is the integrated session restore in Firefox Mobile 7. Most importantly this includes the support for individual tabs to have their back and forward histories restored if the browser is forced to restart.

Language wise, the new mobile browser will include an option to choose a preferred language on start up. For errant dialogue boxes there will now be an integrated “Quit” button so users can close dialogue boxes they don’t need.

Firefox Mobile 7 will also naturally include the features being prepared for version 6 of the browser. Among those are features to improve start up speeds, an integrated Gingerbread theme, and Android menu improvements.

Firefox Mobile 7 is a very pre-beta release but the brave can download it from the Aurora Channel. The current Firefox Mobile beta release can be downloaded from the Android Market.