Previewing Mozilla Firefox OS, an HTML5-based interface

The upcoming Mozilla Firefox OS is slated for a Q1 of 2013 release, but how is the development coming along? Here's our hands-on preview.

In attendance at the Pepcom Holiday Spectacular in New York City last night was Mozilla Firefox, and we got some hands-on time with the operating system the open-source web browser is currently developing. The Firefox OS (working name, as far as we know) is still in a heavy beta mode, and is built entirely on HTML5. The rep we spoke to demoed the OS using an unbranded ZTE phone, noting that Firefox has stripped the Android out of the phone and created its own operating system from the ground up.

What what we can see, the OS is fully web-based in that every app and functionality runs off the web browser. Making phone calls is equivalent to calling on Skype, taking pictures is akin to snapping flicks with Apple’s Photo Booth, searching straight from the homepage is like having a shortcut to the Firefox search tool bar. There’s also a cartoony game built into the phone that uses a tap to perform actions interface, and it’s clear that the OS still has a bit of a way to go before its scheduled release date early next year.

Mozilla even tried to build a glasses-less 3D rendering that you can see, touch, and move… but this feature was still a bit buggy and did not respond too well to touchscreen interface just yet. We’ll cut it some slack considering it has several months to go, but web developers should definitely gear up for some fun programming time once the open source OS becomes available for your modding pleasures.

The Firefox OS is all part of a collaboration between ZTE and Mozilla to roll out its own system that doesn’t rely on Windows or Android. The finished OS is slated to arrive overseas first, with mobile network operators Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, Smart, Telecom Italia, Telenor, and Etisalat backing the experimental platform, reports Reuters. We hope to catch up with the development team in a few months and see how their work comes along, and whether it’s got something entirely different to offer that truly distinguishes it from the rest.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Firefox 15 for desktop and Android released

Mozilla has released yet another update for the Firefox browser for the desktop as well as for Android. The major change in the desktop browser is that it now supports silent, background updates, which means just like Chrome, Firefox will now download the latest updates in the background and install them without any user intervention.

The Android version, on the other hand, brings an optimized UI for tablets. Other features include faster startup time, redesigned Awesome Bar, enhanced search, ability to close tabs by swiping on them in the tab view, ability to import bookmarks and history from the default web browser, ability to request the desktop version of a website, Find in Page option and support for SPDY networking protocol v3.

One of my main complaint with Firefox for Android remains, however, and that is the weird font rendering, especially on smartphones. Firefox makes all the text absurdly large, which breaks the page layout. You just have to open up reddit and compare it with the font rendering on the stock Android browser to see the difference. Even Chrome does this to some extent but it’s not as bad.

Anyway, you can download the desktop version of Firefox from here and the Android version from here.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Mozilla rolls out Firefox 15, updated Android tablet app

Continuing to focus on the development of the modern Web browser, Mozilla launched Firefox 15 with significant improvements.

Detailed within a post on the official company blog earlier today, Mozilla announced the launch of Firefox 15 in addition to a revamped version of Firefox for Android tablet devices running Honeycomb. Among the variety of new features in Firefox 15, this version of Firefox finally adds background updating. After upgrading to Firefox 15, all future upgrades to the Firefox browser will be conducted automatically without the need for any user action. This feature has been widely available within Google Chrome for quite some time and simplifies the updating process for the novice user significantly. The new updating feature basically allows Firefox to automatically download updates to the software, apply the update while the browser is currently in use and load the updated version after the user eventually restarts Firefox. 

In addition to silent updates, Mozilla has also optimized Firefox 15 for any user that has installed a large amount of add-ons by preventing the majority of memory leaks. Prior to this update, memory leaks from both high quality and suspect add-ons would dramatically slow down the browser for users.

According to a blog post created by Nicholas Nethercote, he stated “Over the past year, Mozilla has made great progress in reducing Firefox’s memory consumption.  However, the excessive memory consumption caused by add-ons with memory leaks has remained an ongoing problem. Firefox 15 fixes that problem.  We have confirmed, via in-house testing and from real-world telemetry data, that it prevents the vast majority of leaks that occur in existing add-ons.”

Beyond the memory improvements, the development team behind Firefox 15 has improved support for game creators working with WebGL. After adding support for compressed textures, game developers should be able to utilize higher-resolution textures within 3D games that have been built to play within a Firefox browser window. To prove the concept of 3D gaming within a browser window, the team at Mozilla created a demo of a 3D first person shooter called BananaBread; a game which was running in the Firefox browser without the help of any plugins. However, the game is also playable within any browser that offers the same features; Google Chrome for instance.

On Android tablets, Mozilla has launched a new version of Firefox that offers a significantly faster start-up time as well as faster page loading. After Firefox users upgrade to the new version currently located on the Google Play Store, they can use Firefox Sync to link up personal details from their desktop version of Firefox and find information like bookmarks, browsing history and passwords on the redesigned Awesome screen. 

In addition, Mozilla has added a feature that allows a user to switch between a mobile version and Web version of a site more easily. Within the browser menu, users will find a setting called “Request Desktop Site” and that can be tapped to bring up the Web version of any particular site. Other features that have been added to this new version of the Firefox browser for Android tablets include the ability to use ”ctrl-F” to find something on a page, a tool for selecting text and tabs that can be closed with a simple swipe.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Move over Chrome, preview of Firefox for Windows 8 expected in September

Mozilla will release a preview of Firefox for Windows 8 in September, complete with Modern UI styling and windowless Flash.

Mozilla already announced plans earlier in the year to offer a Modern UI (formerly known as Metro) version of its popular browser, but now new details are beginning to emerge, including a few carefully placed screenshots like the one above.

Brian R. Bondy, a developer working on the project, posted an update to his blog outlining Mozilla’s progress and goals for the fall release.

“Work on the Metro style enabled desktop browser has progressed steadily and things are looking really good,” Bondy writes.

According to Bondy, a preview version of Firefox will be available first as a beta release, planned for later in the year. The preview will be styled as a “combined classic + metro browser” with classic desktop user interface elements for tabbed browsing and navigation.

The Mozilla team still has a lot of work to do before beta release, but a few features have already been successfully implemented. Some are of little interest to the average user, referring to programmer-specific details. But others like a built-in PDF viewer (no need for a plug-in), an option to view a page on the desktop when in the Metro version, windowless Flash, and auto-populated search results below the URL bar are all promising.

Add-ons will not be included in the initial release when in Metro-mode — much like IE’s Metro browser — but Mozilla hopes to enable them eventually. Syncing between the desktop and Metro versions of the browser is also in development. Bondy hopes to find some sort of local sync functionality requiring zero set-up, but says he and the rest of the team can always default to the current syncing solution if needed.

Based on some screenshots posted by developers working on the project, Firefox for Windows 8 will borrow a little inspiration from its Android version with a sprinkling of Modern UI on top. The simple URL bar at the top of screen makes the design look neat and clean, though it’s oddly located at the top rather than the bottom — Microsoft’s preferred position. The tiled bookmarks are a welcome addition as well, an improvement over the traditional drop-down menu.

Google may have beat Mozilla to the punch on Windows 8 with a Chrome dev release tailored to the Modern UI design, but from what we’ve seen and read so far, it seems Firefox will do a much better job of competing with Internet Explorer’s tiled interface than Chrome, which basically ported its desktop design to Windows 8. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com