Late last week the Fennec team announced its first significant milestone for the Windows Mobile platform, with the release of Alpha 1. Brad Lassey introduced the milestone and highlighted exciting features of the release in a blog post, which was then quoted in quite a few pieces of press coverage.

To date there have been more than 20 original pieces of coverage, with the majority of tone being positive toward the release. There has also been widespread understanding in the community that this is an early developer release, really intended for testing purposes.

CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt comments on the technical features of the release, “For the techies, Mozilla built its interface for Fennec Alpha 1 for Windows Mobile using CSS. This will help the app adjust to various screen sizes and resolutions, says Mozilla. The Mountain View, Calif., company also divulged that this Fennec build shares Firefox’s memory management library, JeMalloc. This resource-sharing is another indication that Mozilla is striving to create a mobile product as identical to its desktop offering on its back end as is technologically possible.”

Sean Michael Kerner from Internet News sums it up nicely, “Yes, there is a long way for Fennec to go before its final. But it is moving in the right direction with new platforms coming on early in the process. As mobile device vendors continue to open up their own platforms for application stores, I can see a huge opportunity for Fennec.”

Coverage highlights:

IT Pro, Heise Online, Phones Review, Silicon.com, Mobile Choice UK , Personal Computer World , PC Pro, ZDNet, Pocket-Lint, LifeHacker, Mobile News Direct, Trusted Reviews, Linux Insider, Geek.com, InformationWeek, ZDNet, The H, Mobile Marketing News, Phones Review, TechWhack, engadget, IntoMobile, Unwired View

Firefox 3. Beta 4 was released on Monday. It’s gotten much attention in the press given this release likely represents the final beta for Firefox 3.5. Coverage has been positive, focusing on improvements around speed and performance, private browsing, and geolocation.

Mike Beltzner spoke with TG Daily’s Wolfgang Gruener and commented about the significance of a beta release. Wolfgang writes, “While Mozilla releases nightly builds of the browser on a continuous basis, each new beta may not be as interesting to users as those rare betas for Safari and IE. ‘It is a fundamental difference in the way how our culture works,’ Beltzner said. Mozilla believes that its beta software is a crucial tool for developers, while other browser makers are using their beta browsers for marketing purposes. ‘Internet Explorer has such a long upgrade cycle. And when a beta is released people end up installing that software since they believe it is the latest and greatest.’”

U. S. coverage highlights include:

CNET,  ComputerWorld, ReadWriteWeb, TGDaily, InternetNews.com, Lifehacker, Mashable, PC Magazine, BetaNews and InfoWorld