The Mozilla Blog

News, notes and ramblings from the Mozilla project

Posts by Stuart Parmenter

New Improved and Easier to Use Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo

We are excited to release the newest Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo. The beta is now available in the Android Market, which you can find by opening the Market application on your phone and searching for “Mozilla Firefox.”   The Maemo builds are available for download here . This beta release is not feature or performance complete, but with the help and feedback from our community of testers we’re building an amazing browser. (Note: To ensure smooth updates, we ask existing beta users on Android to please uninstall previous Firefox betas before installing this release.)

With Firefox on mobile devices, we aim to offer an effortless and optimized experience, while also solving the pain points of mobile browsing. Based on feedback from beta testers, we made a number of changes to the look of Firefox 4 Beta, made discovery of add-ons easier, added the ability to save websites as PDFs to read later, fixed some keyboard issues and included support for complex scripts such as Arabic and Persian (on devices with the appropriate fonts). You can find more details on the user experience updates from Lead UX Designer, Madhava Enros.

We design Firefox on mobile devices to minimize typing because typing on phones is difficult and time consuming. Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo now has support for “copy and paste” in the URL bar. We also simplified the setup process for Firefox Sync to reduce the amount of typing needed to securely access your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords from your desktop to your phone, making it easy to get to (and even log in to) any site with minimal typing.

We continue to focus on performance, responsiveness and usability in future releases and have a lot more to come for graphics, JavaScript, add-ons and more.

Feedback from our beta testers is extremely useful in fixing bugs and making improvements to Firefox 4 Beta. We keep a close eye on the feedback people submit and watch the crash report data closely to ensure that we continue to improve stability over the previous betas.

Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.

For more information, please visit:

Firefox 4 Beta for Mobile is Now Faster and Sleeker

We are happy to bring you the latest release of Firefox 4 Beta for mobile. The beta is now available for download in 10 languages on your Android or Maemo device.

We received a lot of great feedback on the previous beta and addressed many of the issues reported, including reduced memory usage, improved text rendering and a 60% install size reduction on Android (from around 43 MB to 17 MB). There is still room for improvement and we’ll continue to make the install size smaller. (Note: Due to some technical limitations on Android, upgrading won’t remove some of the old files that are no longer needed. Therefore, you must uninstall the previous beta before you will see the size improvements.)

A few new things you’ll see in this release include a new theme that gives Firefox a fresh new look, the ability to easily share links with your friends from the Site Menu and the ability to undo closing a tab. Learn more about the Firefox UI improvements from Madhava Enros, our Lead UX Designer.

In this release we also worked to make Firefox 4 Beta faster. Actions like panning and zooming are faster and smoother, and page load times are reduced from our previous beta. On Android 2.2, we’re now around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser.

We are working to minimize changes that affect add-on functionality. We would love to see our awesome community of add-on developers building exciting new add-ons, especially ones that consider mobile specific use cases.

We will continue to improve usability and performance in the next release. We’ll add hardware acceleration to make scrolling and zooming even faster and will enable HTML5 video to bring a more rich browsing experience to your phone. We are also working to improve browser responsiveness while Firefox Sync completes the initial sync of your data.

In this beta, there is a new “Feedback” button in the Browser Controls panel to make it easy for you to let us know what you like or dislike. While the overall stability of Firefox improved in this release, we also added easy-to-submit crash reporting, similar to how it works in desktop Firefox.

We need your help testing this beta to build the best Firefox mobile browser. Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.

For more information, please visit:

Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo is Now Available

Our first Firefox 4 beta for mobile is now available to download and test. It’s built on the same technology platform as Firefox for the desktop and optimized for browsing on a mobile phone. Firefox beta for mobile comes with many of your favorite Firefox desktop features like Firefox Sync, Add-ons and the Awesome Bar.

A major focus of this release is to increase performance and responsiveness. Two of the big architecture changes are Electrolysis and Layers. Our alpha contained Electrolysis which allowed the browser interface to run in a separate process from the one rendering Web content, resulting in a much more responsive browser. This beta brings the Layers pieces which improve overall performance and in graphics areas such as scrolling, zooming and animations. For more technical details, see Mozilla mobile engineer Matt Brubeck’s blog.

Firefox 4 Beta includes Firefox Sync to create a seamless Web browsing experience between desktop and mobile. With Firefox Sync, you can take your browsing history, bookmarks, tabs, passwords and form-fill data with you anywhere so you never have to retype passwords or long URLs again. Your Firefox data is completely encrypted end-to-end between your computers so that only you have access to it. (For those using Firefox Sync, be sure you’re up to date.)

This release delivers a rich set of features, including pinch-to-zoom, which is now supported on multitouch-capable devices, and the Awesome Screen, which instantly gives you access to your recent history, bookmarks and tabs just by tapping in the Awesome Bar. See the release notes for a full list of features included in this release.

Firefox 4 Beta for mobile is significant step forward in sharing a personalized, seamless and encrypted Web experience across devices. Developers have the power to use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to to build fast, powerful and beautiful mobile apps and add-ons that can reach millions of devices. We are excited to see the innovative and valuable mobile add-ons that developers will build for Firefox.

Meet the Firefox mobile team and watch the demo:

We need your help testing this beta to build the best Firefox mobile browser. Get involved with this beta release and Go Mobile.

For more information, please visit:

Fennec Alpha Released for Android and Nokia N900

The Alpha release of the next major version of Fennec is now available for Android and Nokia N900 users to download and test. Fennec (codename for Firefox mobile) is the first mobile browser to offer add-ons and is built on the same technology that powers desktop Firefox. The latest version of Fennec builds on the rich set of features from the previous release and makes it easier for you to bring your Firefox experience with you anywhere.

Fennec Alpha now creates one fluid Web experience between desktop and mobile devices by providing Firefox Sync built-in into the browser, which provides seamless access to Awesome Bar browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs.

The main focus of this release is to increase performance and responsiveness to user actions. This is being implemented using two major technologies, “Electrolysis” and “Layers.” This Alpha release includes Electrolysis, which allows the browser interface to run in a separate process from the one rendering Web content. By doing this, Fennec is able to react much faster to user input while pages are loading or CPU intensive JavaScript is running. The upcoming beta release will start taking advantage of Layers to greatly improve performance in graphic intensive actions like scrolling, zooming, animations and video. We’re also working to optimize these actions using the hardware-accelerated graphics rendering capabilities showing up in today’s mobile devices.

Watch the demo:

This first Alpha release of Fennec for Android is an exciting first step in bringing browser choice and customization, along with a seamless Web experience across devices, to a leading open mobile platform. Now, developers have the power to use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to to build fast, powerful and beautiful mobile apps and add-ons that can reach many millions of devices.

See the release notes for a full list of features with this release.

We value your feedback and will work to incorporate it in future versions of the browser, so please test Fennec Alpha and let us know what you think.

Stay tuned for updates in our newsletter.

Get Firefox Home on Your iPhone!

We are happy to announce that the wait is over.

Firefox Home, a free application, is now available for download on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Firefox Home provides access to your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone. Get up and go and have exactly what you are looking for on the Web on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Firefox Home uses your browser data, securely synced from Firefox on your desktop to the cloud, to let you search and browse quickly and efficiently. You can view the sites you want directly in Firefox Home, open them in Mobile Safari or share them with friends via email. Your Firefox data is private and only you have access to it.

Quick Start:

If you have Firefox Sync on your desktop, skip to step #3.

  1. Install Firefox Sync, a free add-on for Firefox, on your desktop.
  2. Restart Firefox and follow prompts to create an account with both a password and a secret phrase.
  3. Go the App Store on your iPhone and search for “Firefox Home” or install it directly from iTunes.
  4. Launch Firefox Home on your iPhone. You’ll be prompted to enter your Firefox Sync account info. Enter your username, password and Secret Phrase and tap “Done.”
  5. Enjoy!

More detailed set-up instructions are available, as well as a answers to frequently asked questions.

Tell Us What You Think

Take this quick survey, or if you have a question or comment please visit the Firefox Home Forum.

Stay Connected

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Firefox Home Submitted to Apple App Store

We’re happy to announce that moments ago, Mozilla submitted our new iPhone app, Firefox Home, to the Apple App Store.

Firefox Home is a free application that provides access to your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone. Firefox Home enables access to the websites you need on the go by picking up where you left off with your desktop browsing. Firefox Home uses your browser data, securely synced from Firefox on your desktop to the cloud, to let you search and browse it quickly and efficiently. You can view the sites you want directly in Firefox Home, open them in Mobile Safari or share them with friends via e-mail. Your Firefox data is private and only you have access to it.

If you don’t already have Firefox Sync set up on your desktop or laptop, we recommend you install it now, so that when Firefox Home is available, you’ll be ready to go!

Firefox Home helps give you the information you need, when you need it! No need to type long URLs. Bookmarks take you to your favorite websites with one tap. Your Firefox history starts working for you the moment you fire up your iPhone.

  • Are you on the go all the time? Run to a meeting, or catch a cab to the airport without thinking twice. Just pull out your iPhone and access the list of tabs you just had open on your desktop.
  • Looking for the confirmation code to your flight? How about the time and location of your dinner reservations you just had open on you desktop? Start typing in the Awesome Bar finds your recently and frequently visited sites on the desktop.
  • Bid farewell to typing the full URL of a website that you’ve visited several times from your desktop!

Once Firefox Home is accepted to the App Store, we’ll post and let you know how to install it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

For more information:
Firefox Home
FAQ and Release Notes