FireFox Mobile ready for Nokia N800
Mozilla Labs is offering a “Milestone 8″ Linux release of and it’s primarily aimed at the Nokia N800. The final release of the mobile browser, named “Fennec”, should in the next few weeks.
Let’s take a look at some of the goodies on offer:
- iPhone-like “kinetic” scrolling
- Mac-like “expose” tabs feature
- optional geolocation (geode)
The Fennec browser, in developmnet since last, has been designed to bring “bringing a true web experience to mobile phones and other non-PC devices,” - with the inclusion of up to date security and asthetics. According to Mozilla, Fennec utilises the core Gecko engine that is currently used in Firefox which means there will be full compatability when it comes to migrating all your settings from your desktop to your mobile device. This also means that, in theory, FireFox extensions should work on Fennec without any problems. Like I said, in theory.
More interestinlgy, the work on Fennec seems to be in response to Microsoft’s work on Windows Mobile - Mozilla developer Mark Finkle wrot on in his blog, “Work on Windows Mobile has heated up quite a bit. We should be getting some Fennec builds for Windows Mobile soon.” Usually, it’s a case of Microsoft following the lead.
Geode, the geolocation API, has been included in Fennec allowing a website to request a user’s location. A popup bar will ask how much information you want to give away to site you’re visiting i.e. your location, neighborhood, city or nothing at all. In addition, Geode can use WiFi geolocation to give your position to within 10 - 20 metres. I’ve yet to see this working. My own experiences with WiFi geolocation have shown it to be pretty crappy - in one instance I was given my location “…to within 1800m”!! But, with accuracy claims like those above, I’ll be keeping my eye on this.
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