Firefox For Maemo Updated To Beta 5
The Mozilla team just announced a new version of ‘Fennec’, which is also known as Firefox for Maemo. The new version, Beta 5, includes several updates, listed below. I’ve tried Fennec on various Maemo devices, including the N800, N810, and now the N900, and this version is the first that I would consider even remotely usable. It launches in seconds, rather than minutes, which is a first step towards usability.
This new browser for the Nokia N900 is still somewhat slow, even over my home WiFi network, though the interface is, in my opinion, much nicer than the built-in browser. After a bit of loading, this new version has no problems rendering the full version of Maemo-Guru.com, in fact.
One cool thing about Firefox for Maemo is the Weave add-on, which allows you to synchronize information between your desktop and N900. This is one of the things that was missing in every one of the previous Maemo devices, and I’m really glad to have the ability to easily sync bookmarks and tabs with my device finally. The implementation is still somewhat buggy, but I’m still glad to see someone working on it. I would also like to see Xmarks.com update their add-on to support Firefox for Maemo in the near future, as well.
Here’s the list of improvements from the Mozilla team:
- Firefox official branding, with Firefox name and logo
- Support for multiple locales, currently including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Russian
- Flash sites such as YouTube now work
- The viewport meta tag is now supported by Firefox on mobile sites using it
- New form assistant to make filling in forms easier
- Improved panning and zooming performance and behavior
- Numerous other bugs and polish issues addressed
Not bad, though I can’t help but wonder how many betas we’ll have before we get the finished product. You can get Firefox for Mobile installed on your N900 by going to http://www.mozilla.com/m in your device’s browser.
