Mozilla has released the updated version of Firefox mobile internet browser for Android and Maemo devices. In the world of tabbed browsing, it competes with Opera Mobile but I guess Opera Mobile is more popular especially on touch screen devices. Here is what you get in the new version, [Click the image above to get the latest version of Firefox for Android and Maemo]
- Improved support for Android keyboards, both hardware and on-screen
- New Android-style menus
- Fixed a bug in opening links from other apps
- Support for uploading files
- “Save as PDF” command in the site menu
- Fixed rendering of Arabic and Farsi text (on devices with Arabic/Farsi fonts installed)
Firefox Sync
- New UI for simpler setup
- Support for custom Firefox Sync servers
- Full-screen open video
- Improved audio performance
In the world of mobile Internet browsers, browsers like Bolt, Opera are really doing well. Especially, Opera as a mobile browser has gained a lot of popularity in the last few months, thanks to its tabbed browsing and server side page compression approach (tabbed browsing is available in Opera Mobile Beta Versions). One more browser, which is very popular among mainstream Internet users is Mozilla's ever improving Firefox. Firefox recently came up with Firefox Mobile 1.0, which can be downloaded for the Nokia N900 Maemo based tablet. It uses the same engine as the Firefox 3.6 Internet browser. It's in Beta and can be downloaded by going to Firefox.com/m from your N900. As of now there is no availability of Firefox Mobile on a wide variety of phones but with the kind of features it sports, it will soon become one of the popular browsers for hardcore mobile Internet users. Firefox mobile as of now is available in 15 different languages. So you might be wondering what are the things that can make Firefox mobile a different experience? Well, features like, Tabbed Browsing, Awesome Bar, Advance Search, Add-ons, Weave Sync etc. As it is currently supported by Nokia's Maemo based N900, it is optimized for touch screen usage.
With something called "Awesome Bar", the browser makes sure that you reach your web destination without much of typing. It does the rest of the work by searching automatically the URL, tags or names of the sites you are about to type and presents you with an address of your web destination (Something, which I have also observed in Opera Mobile Beta versions).
The "Search" feature in Firefox Mobile also makes sure that you get what you are looking for. When you type your search term in the Awesome Bar, you can use Google as your search results provider or you can send your query to different sites like Wikipedia, Amazon etc. It also lets you customize your search experience. The browser is optimized for touch screen usage with swipe functions, one touch bookmarking, one touch zooming etc.
I am not saying that these features are not available entirely on other mobile Internet browsers but guys its Firefox and I am sure it will gain significant popularity when its available on a wide variety of mobile devices running on different OSs.
