It’s been in development for more than a year but now Firefox 4 for Mobile has been released. The long-awaited release of the browser was made by Mozilla late in March 2011, and so far the reviews have generally been positive.<\/p>\n
First, some details. Firefox4 for Mobile, also known as Fennec, was originally built for the Maemo-powered Nokia N900 but is now also available for most Android-based handsets. Although built for the smaller sizes of mobile phones, the underlying platform is the same as that used in the desktop version of the Firefox4 browser.<\/p>\n
Doing the hard graphics work for Fennec is version 2.0 of the same Gecko rendering engine. This mobile browser also includes many of the same features included in the desktop version, including the so-called “Awesome Bar” smart URL bar, HTML5 support, tabbed browsing and copy and paste.<\/p>\n
Firefox 4 for Mobile runs on versions of Android newer than 2.0 (which is most modern devices) and includes Firefox Sync, so keeping bookmarks and browsing histories synchronised across platforms should be a snap.<\/p>\n
Resource-wise, Firefox 4 requires around 17MB of storage space (though this can be on the phone or on an external storage card) and 512MB of memory is recommended, though not obligatory. Firefox 4 doesn’t support ARMv6 processor-based phones such as the HTC Hero, HTC Magic and others. A list of supported devices can be found on the Mozilla Wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n Users that don’t have a compatible mobile phone can still download a version of Firefox 4 for Mobile from the Mozilla site<\/a> which can be used to test the new browser on Linux, Windows or OS X.<\/p>\n Although built for smaller devices, Firefox4 for Mobile is still a big browser. The bulk of its features are hidden behind the sliding bars on the left and right of the browser window. Most of the time these are invisible to the user but slide out to reveal settings, bookmarks, and the many other settings available. What’s left when they are hidden away is a clean, simple interface. The URL bar operates nicely as both a standard URL bar as well as a search bar with presets to search Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and others.<\/p>\n Open tabs are managed by sliding the left-hand bar out where new tabs can be opened or existing ones can be closed. Bookmarks are managed in the right-hand bar. Sliding that out and hitting the star icon bookmarks the current page. To retrieve bookmarks and history, tap the URL bar once. This brings up the input page which includes links to bookmarks and other stored data.<\/p>\n Naturally, Firefox 4 for Mobile includes options for add-ons, so many of the add-ons that users have become used to on the desktop can also be used on their mobile phone.<\/p>\n The most impressive thing about Firefox 4 for Mobile is its apparent ability to cram truckloads of information and preferences into something that ultimately is very compact and gives the impression of being very simple.<\/p>\n Firefox 4 for Mobile can be downloaded from the Android Market or from the dedicated Firefox for Mobile<\/a> website.<\/p>\n