Firefox Mobile - Truncated header background
Update: A couple of days after I originally wrote this piece, Firefox Mobile RC3 went golden as Firefox Mobile 1.0. As far as I can tell their were no code changes between RC3 and 1.0 so the content of this piece is relevant to the initial this the first non-Beta release of Firefox Mobile. There have however been updates to some of the extensions most notably "Weave". I've also found the elusive "Tabs From Other Computers" are hiding and updated the piece to reflect that
Talk about good timing! Just as I was about try Firefox Mobile (aka Fennec) on the N900 I have on loan from WOMWorld, Mozilla released a new version. It's RC3 - which a few days later RC3 was re-released as Firefox Mobile 1.0. It's said to include significant performance and stability improvements, however Flash is disabled by default in this release because, according to Mozilla, it "degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards". If you are using a N900 or N810 and have an earlier version of Firefox Mobile there is an update to 1.0 waiting for you in the Maemo Application Manager, otherwise can download it here.
Although both MicroB and Firefox Mobile are based on the Gecko engine there are major differences between them in terms of performance, user interface and extension support.
Performance
I hadn't used any of the earlier releases of Firefox Mobile as I didn't have a compatible device until now. But I'd heard complaints about sluggish performance with earlier versions of the browser. So I was pleasantly surprised when I tried 1.0 and pages seemed to load as quickly as with MicroB. Startup time and scrolling speed were a bit slower than with Nokia's browser and there were occasional "hangs" where the browser seemed to be ignoring clicks or scrolls.
FireFox Mobile's page rendering is good, sometimes better than MicroB's and sometimes worse. Many sites, like IntoMobile use tabbed top navigation menus. In Micro B the tabs tend to wrap and overlap (image below). Firefox Mobile (image above) gets that right but prematurely truncates the blue background behind the banner image and search box.
MicroB - Menu wrapped and overlapped.
User Interface
Firefox Mobile has a UI like no other browser. Instead of dropdown menus and toobars, you slide a finger toward the sides of the screen to bring up various UI elements. Slide left to see open tabs, slide right for back and forward buttons, bookmarks and browser options. Sliding in either direction also brings up the URL bar, which Mozilla calls the "Awesome Bar" because it does auto completion based on your browsing history and bookmarks. The Awesome bar has the reload and stop icons and an icon for the Maemo task switcher.
I wanted to hate Firefox's user interface but after using it a bit I'm mostly OK with it, at least the touch portion. Common tasks like bookmarking a site, switching tabs or bringing up a menu require fewer or the same number of taps as with MicroB. Although Firefox Mobile's UI is unusual, it seems more intuitive than MicroB's quirky combination of gestures, hidden toolbars and the main menu hidden behind the page title.
Holding Ctrl and tapping a link opens it in a new tab in the background (without switching tabs). This is a big improvement over the convoluted dance that MicroB requires to do the same thing: first a long press on link for the
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posted by Dennis Bournique
January 28, 2010 @ 4:04 pm
7 View Comments
