mozilla

For the last few years, Mozilla, makers of the king of indie browsers Firefox, have been working on a new mobile OS called Boot2Gekko. The OS was built around HTML5 and CSS coding tools and it tended to look very much like Android and iOS—that is it was a collection of icons laid out in a grid with some notifications.

Today, in a somewhat surprising move they announced the re-naming of the OS to Firefox OS and they intend to put it on phones next year. In a press release, the company noted that it had deals with TCL Communication Technology (Alcatel) and ZTE to make the hardware for new devices with carrier partners Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica and Telenor are all backing the initiative.

What caught our eye though was Sprint. The company who has the HTC Arrive, who claimed sales are miserable and were “thinking about” Windows Phone 8 but who were the only major US carrier to not publicly endorse it after the recent Summit.  This is the same company now throwing their hat in with Firefox OS which no one has even seen yet let alone knows what’s unique about it. Yet they can’t sign on with Microsoft and their one-two punch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8? Yeesh

In fairness, Firefox OS looks to be aiming for low cost handsets, the same market that Windows Phone Tango wants to grab but can't. Even Android evidently can't go as low as Firefox OS though OEMs are certainly trying (don't forget, Android licensees have to pay Microsoft to use Android). Both Google and Microsoft have publicly commented about the "$99" smartphone--referring to the cost to manufacture, not sell. Just today Microsoft reiterated the flexibility of WP8 and its ability scale up as well as down for low-cost hardware.

Early screenshots of Firefox OS

Although we have a soft-spot for the Mozilla Foundation and we think they have made the internet world a better place, we can’t help but wonder if this will go anywhere. Microsoft, with all of their money, large ecosystem, media tie-ins and strong partnership with Nokia are barely making waves. Most people have already written off RIM with Blackberry 10 and that’s a company with an established track record and valuable IP—what chance does Mozilla have with Firefox OS?

So 2013 will be an interesting year of the giants, Android and iOS with the juggernaut-in-waiting Microsoft dominating the smartphone market, while Blackberry 10, Firefox OS and Bada all fight for fourth place.

We’ll let the free market decide this one but we know where to place our bets. As for Sprint, if they don’t say something soon about Windows Phone 8 or we don’t start to hear rumblings of new WP8 devices, we seriously suggest you ditch them and look at T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T or US Cellular for your next-gen handset.

Does Mozilla have a chance for the prepaid/pay-as-you-go market or will Android and Windows Phone get there first? Should Microsoft be worried? Let us know in comments.

Source: Mozilla

Mozilla's Director of Developer Relations, Christopher Blizzard, sat down with Gizmodo to discuss Firefox's mobile browser (formerly known as Fennec). Blizzard took the opportunity to reaffirm the company isn't developing for Windows Phones. This isn't anything new but it's more so how Mr. Blizzard make the affirmation that caught our attention.

"[On Windows Phone 7] they said, 'You can use stuff in Silverlight if you want, but you have to come through our app store, and we get to veto.' We're not going to bother. They're gonna ship some version of IE, which is gonna be terrible..."

We will assume "they" is Microsoft.  In referring to Windows Mobile Blizzard said,

"We were going to do Windows Mobile because Windows Mobile really needed a good browser, but they shut down their platform.".

We can't blame for Mr. Blizzard presenting Mozilla's mobile browser as the best thing since sliced bread but there are good browsers out there for the Windows Phone. Skyfire and Opera come to mind.

So, can a Windows Phone 7 ever survive without Mozilla's mobile browser? Are the current crop of browsers on Windows Mobile that bad? Personally, I think Mr. Blizzard is well off the mark. How about you?

One of the main reasons many of us love Firefox is for the plugin support--there's everything from Better Gmail to Omnibar to SkipScreen, all of which fix the many pitfalls of the internet.

So it's with great excitement that we read AdBlock Plus will work with Firefox's new mobile browser Fennec (which is still in early development). 

For those who don't know, AdBlock Plus is a plugin that downloads a database of ads to block while you are surfing the internet.  In turn, web pages are less cluttered and more importantly for those with slow connections or who are mobile, it allows pages to load faster.  For every ad that you see, that is one more thing to download and one more server for your device to connect to, so reducing that increases speed.  Very cool.

Of course there are consequences to blocking ads.  Specifically you are hurting much needed revenue for websites, cutting off their life blood. So we suggest you selectively use AdBlock Plus on sites you visit, disabling it for those you support.  In other words, we ask you, nay beg you oh wise internet surfers, to not use it on WMExperts as you'll deprive some of us that morning cup of coffee and you know, would have to close shop.  Thaaaaanks!

We're still eagerly anticipating the release of the mobile Firefox browser, and the boys and girls at Mozilla are hard at work. Vice President Jay Sullivan recently talked with Lifehacker about plans in the mobile space.

"What we're seeing happen in mobile is just what we've been seeing on the desktop for the last five years. That's migrating from more client-heavy applications to more web-based applications. Fennec is built on the latest version of our browser engine, and has support for offline storage and things called web workers, which enables threaded applications that can run faster. All these technologies make it possible to build a first-class, HTML5-based application."

And in case you missed it, we also had our own interview with Firefox mobile's Brad Lassey some time ago.

Lifehacker: Mozilla VP on What Firefox Mobile Means for Your Phone

The feature list for the Firefox mobile browser is steadily growing. In addition to the (soon-to-be) standard Firefox 3.5 engine, we're also expecting to see:

• Weave: The all-remembering password/bookmark/tab/add-on/everything sync feature.
• Geolocation: Your browser can tell where you are.
• Gesture browsing: Possibly. We've seen a cool demonstration.

And now, we see a prototype that could bring automatic Web site logins to the mobile and desktop browsers via Weave sync. It'll handle OpenID, as well as normal username/password logins.

Of course, all of this is still in the early stages, and work on the Firefox mobile browser continues. Check out the demo video of the auto log-in.

Mozilla Labs blog via Lifehacker

My, my, these Mozilla folks are an ambitious bunch. We already know about a bunch of the goodies to expect when we finally get our hands on a working version of the Firefox mobile browser, heretofore known as "Fennec" or "Firefox Mobile."

We know that the browser should support things we're used to on the desktop version: Add-ons, tabbed browsing, and the coup de grace — support for Weave, which syncs bookmarks, add-ons, passwords and the like.

Now comes word from Mozilla dev Jono that the mobile browser will sync tabs. Fellow Mozillian Brad Lassey (check out our Q&A with him here) puts this into a real-world scenario:

Several use cases have been thrown around, but the one that rings the loudest for me goes something like this: You’re looking for a new restaurant to try from your laptop at home, find one and head out. Once you get to the neighborhood, you realize you have no idea where this hole in the wall place is. With tab syncing you can pull out your mobile device, launch Fennec and see a list of tabs open on your laptop (and all your other computers). You select the tab you need, and instantly are looking at the same content you had on your laptop.

Pretty cool, indeed. In other news, ZDNet UK [via] had a sit-down with Mozilla Mobile Business chief Jay Sullivan, who tells us that "Fennec" is just a code name, and the browser will simply be "Firefox," and not "Firefox Mobile."

So, you'll have Firefox running on your Windows phone, which in turn will be running Windows Mobile (be it 6, 6.1 or 6.5). Your desktop or lappy will have Firefox running on Windows, until such time as you choose to become mobile and — oh, no, I've gone cross-eyed.

We'd had a fleeting hope that after last month's Alpha 2 release we might see an actual Windows Mobile beta build of Fennec, the upcoming Firefox Mobile browser, in the first couple of months of the year. Alas, it's not to be.

Mozilla's Fennec test plan notes Feb. 27 as the scheduled date for the Beta 1 release, then lets us down in no uncertain terms.

NOTE: this is a Beta1 for Maemo, not Windows Mobile or Symbian

So, work continues, and it sounds like they're making progress. Here are the WinMo notes from this week's Fennec meeting:

Building from trunk is blocked by NSPR, NSS and freetype font backend patches getting review. The font patch has been getting regular review and update, its being held up somewhat now because of conflicts with @font-face work. NSS and NSPR patches have stalled out.

Performance is improving steadily, once we can build from the trunk the focus will be on getting performance patches landed.

Patience, grasshopper.

While you were off last week gnashing your teeth over whether to desert Windows Mobile for that other soon-to-be released device, Mozilla released an early demo of what could ultimately become the Firefox Mobile browser.

Aza Raskin, head of User Experience at Mozilla Labs, warns us that the demo features an extremely experimental UI and is likely to change significantly before the Firefox Mobile browser is released. And more change seems likely, if you compare this latest demo to a previous peek. Also, this latest demo only focuses on touchscreen devices, meaning Windows Mobile Standard need not apply, though it does appear in the earlier demo.

Here are a few highlights:

• "Tabbed" browsing exists as separate browser windows floating in space.
• Pages feature kinetic scrolling, "Just like on the iPhone," Razkin says.
• The UI is based on touchscreen, but is not multitouch.
• Tabs can be dragged throughout the canvas and arranged however you like
• Forward, back, address bar/search bar and bookmark controls are hidden in the side of the browser window and appear when you drag and pan a page horizontally.
• At the bottom of each page is a row of extensible buttons that could be used to "digg this page," "send e-mail link," etc.

At this point, just about anything is better than Microsoft's Pocket Internet Explorer. And with the expected release of Opera 9.5 and Skyfire still a popular beta Firefox Mobile could prove to be another strong option when it's finally released.

Check in after the jump to watch Raskin's demo video of Firefox Mobile.

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