Mobile Firefox "Fennec" Becomes 1.0
After one and half years in development, the Mozilla project is now releasing its first stable version of its mobile Firefox, code-named Fennec. The target platform is initially Maemo.
The mobile Firefox version easily adapts to the smartphone environment with its one-touch bookmarking and new tabs, Weave synchronization add-on to work together with a desktop, and webpage thumbnails for orientation. Fennec is now released in its first stable version.
Users will unfortunately have to wait for plugins such as Flash, as the "Developer Questions" in the release notes indicate. These functions are disabled in the Maemo Firefox in that having them enabled slows down the surfing experience. The project is, however, planning an add-on in the future whereby users can enable and disable plugins.
Apart from Maemo on the Nokia N900 smartphone and N810 tablet there are currently no other supported platforms for a stable mobile Firefox. An alpha version is planned for Windows Mobile. A version for Android is also planned, but not yet implemented. The project has already declined the Blackberry and iPhone, mainly because the Blackberry OS doesn't provide any native components and the iPhone OS is too closed. Even Symbian phones have no Fennec in sight, according to the project. All phones belonging to the "smartphone" class (minicomputer and phone in one) don't have enough system resources to power Fennec.
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