Two new development versions of Fennec mobile browser (based on Mozilla engine) were just announced to be available for free download. Fennec is the mobile version of the Firefox browser, currently compatible only with Windows Mobile 6 operating system and OS2008 (”Maemo”) software platforms, running on the Nokia N810 Internet Tablets. The new releases of Fennec are intended only for testing: Fennec1.0 Beta (Maemo) and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 (Windows Mobile).

Innitially, the direction of Fennec development was oriented to implement the Firefox design principles alongside various interactions appropriate for mobile phones, like touch screen support.

These two milestones were focused on increasing the application stability and performance, as well as on improving the overall user experience: “For these releases we have worked on improving the user experience, replacing our old theme with a much nicer looking one and fixing numerous usability issues. We’ve continued to increase performance and responsiveness. We’ve revamped how you install Add-ons, improved our download manager and the whole look of the application. We’ve started work on making forms on web pages easier to use, providing a nicer combo box UI than before.”, explains in a blog post Stuart Parmenter, Mobile Team Technical Lead, Mozilla Corporation.

The two new versions of Fennec mobile browser, Fennec1.0 Beta (Maemo) and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 (Windows Mobile), are identical in functionality because they contain the same code for the front end and back end, while their labels denote different stages of development (usability).

If you do not have a mobile device compatible with Fennec browser, there are also provided similar desktop versions for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X users.

These are the main new features added for Fennec1.0 Beta (Maemo) and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 (Windows Mobile):

- Newly designed theme
- JavaScript error console is built in
- Improved add-on support
- Numerous bug fixes
- Improved UI polish
- Improved panning performance (Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 only)

Fennec1.0 Beta (Maemo) and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 (Windows Mobile) are ready for free download from the Mozilla.org website.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 4:25 am and is filed under Freeware that rocks, IT News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.