We’ve known for a little while that Mozilla had plans to design a mobile browser, and now we are getting some insight as to where they are headed with it. As it turns out they are actually designing two different mobile versions, one for touch screen devices (iPhone-style) and another for smaller screens (like cellphones).
From what I’ve seen they both look really nice, and with Mozilla’s existing fanbase I’m sure the browser would get adopted rather quickly. The one designed for smaller screens doesn’t really introduce anything that we haven’t already seen, and for that reason I wanted to really point out the one designed for touch screen devices. It, well, appears to have borrowed a lot of design ideas from Apple’s Safari browser on the iPhone:
(Click to Enlarge)
I guess Apple should look at this as quite a compliment since the Mobile Firefox will be inheriting many of the design considerations put in place by Apple. What I’m anxious to see is whether Mozilla has plans to release an iPhone version of the browser once the iPhone SDK is made available.
From what I gather the mobile browser’s bookmarks will be synchronized with the desktop via the Weave service that was recently introduced. This is a smart move by Mozilla, but they aren’t the first to do that either (*cough* Opera Link *cough*).
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on these projects to see if Mozilla can help define the mobile browser market as much as they have done for the desktop browser.
[via Mozilla Links]
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Software, Mobile, Mozilla
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I like the design, but it’s like a copy of Apple’s mobile Safari. I don’t mind that and would probably use it since it’s so similar and I like Firefox more. And maybe there would be a way to install extensions too? I hope so…
I would hope for the ability to install extensions, but it could be difficult for them to do since there are so many different platforms for mobile devices.
I would probably try the mobile Firefox on my iPhone, but I have a feeling that I would go back to Safari. By the time this is released the iPhone’s Safari will be a rather mature product with most of the bugs hopefully squashed.
They already have a mobile browser called minimo, if you want to try that out. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/
We’ve covered that here before, but they are stopping development on that browser in favor of the Mobile Firefox. Minimo is also just for Pocket PC’s whereas Mobile Firefox will be available for cellphones and stuff too.
Design is good lets see when it releases i would love to use it stages of beta…but after being a fan of opera mini i cant say how much i will like it.