Is Mozilla's Fennec Mobile Browser Upon Us?

by Sam Dean - Oct. 08, 2008Comments (0)

Is Mozilla's upcoming mobile browser, dubbed Fennec (it means small fox), more imminent than we think? That appears to be the case, as JKOnTheRun is taking note of. It seems Mozilla's CEO John Lilly has told Linux Insider that alpha versions of Fennec are only weeks away. This could be a major development for mobile devices based on open source platforms--and not just handsets.

We've written about Fennec a number of times. In the video linked to here, you can get a sense for the new browsing metaphors that Fennec will probably have (although the interface seen is not a finalized one). This post illustrates the fact that Mozilla has been doing much work to optimize performance in its small, mobile browser, and Mozilla has also posted information about touch-screen interfaces it is working on.

Here's what Mozilla CEO John Lilly told Linux Insider:

"We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We're working on that, and we'll see some alphas in a few weeks."

Hopefully, Mozilla will deliver Fennec in a finished version by the end of the year, and deliver it for the Mac, Windows and Linux, with support for extensions. That would keep its mobile browser competitive with what are likely to be moves by Google to make Chrome a mobile browser. I've written before about how we should expect that to happen.

The fact that Lilly was talking to Linux Insider when he made his comments implies that we are likely to see a Linux version of Fennec. If so, that could become the browser of choice on LiMo and Android phones.

Not long ago, many were saying that Mozilla wouldn't be able to take its Firefox code base and make a browser small and fast enough for mobile use. It looks like Mozilla means business about proving those assumptions wrong.