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Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet asks an interesting question today: Where Should Mozilla Go From Here? It's hard to believe that the company's Firefox browser turns only five years old today. Stephen Shankland also weighs in on where Mozilla and Firefox should head next. I'm in favor of Mozilla becoming a more independent company, so that it can push its own initiatives in flexible ways, and I also think it has a huge opportunity in the mobile browsing space.

We've written about Fennec, Mozilla's mobile browser, a number of times. It's now in its fourth public beta, and GigaOm reports today that Mozilla CEO John Lilly wants it to be just as disruptive on mobile devices as Firefox is on the desktop. ?We wanted to build a browser that did everything ? Javascript, CSS, Flash, SVG, video and audio, says Lilly. What that meant was we had to wait for a while for devices to get better to handle this modern browser.? Check out more at GigaOm.

As we've covered many times, one of the primary reasons for the growing success of Mozilla's Firefox browser is the thriving ecosystem of useful extensions for it, created by the user community. Mozilla is also generating increasing buzz with its innovative, open source mobile browser called Fennec. As we covered here, Fennec is available in an Alpha version for Windows Mobile, and you can see it in action in a video here. One of the big questions surrounding Fennec has been whether Mozilla will try to replicate the success of extensions for Firefox with useful extensions for Fennec, which could make it more flexible and extensible than other mobile browsers. Now, it looks like Mozilla has that goal squarely on its radar.

We've written before about Fennec, Mozilla's innovative open source mobile browser. For quite a while now, Fennec has been in beta testing on Maemo-enabled Nokia Internet Tablets, but now there is an alpha version available for testing on Windows Mobile 6. It should put the pre-release browser in front of many more people, even though it is intended for developers and testers. You can find a download link and installation notes here. There is also a video of Fennec for Windows Mobile here, which is definitely worth watching.

Back in November, we took note of the progress that Mozilla has made in ramping up its Fennec mobile browser.? Now, Fennec is available in an Alpha 2 test version for Windows, the Mac and Linux desktop users. Yes, it's a strange concept to test a mobile browser on desktop systems, but that's how Mozilla will leverage the largest possible community behind Fennec. Quite a few reports are coming in about how Fennec's interface works, and, although I intend to wait to use it in a more stable version, I'm very encouraged by what the earliest testers are saying. Could this open source project redefine how people think about mobile browsing?

Yesterday, on WebWorkerDaily, I noted in a post that the first extension has been created for Mozilla's Fennec mobile browser (Fennec means small fox). Mozilla quietly reported this news in a blog post. With this in mind, and for several other reasons, I think many people are underestimating the impact Fennec will have as a mobile browser. Here is why.

Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release.

Geode uses web-based tracking, which tends to be faster than the traditional GPS geolocation methods. This would enable Firefox to sense the user's location and give information, for example, on local businesses, or quick access to local news.

As we wrote about the other day, Mozilla has reached a sixth developer milestone for its Fennec browser--intended for mobile handsets and platforms. Fennec (the word means small fox ) is a very critical browser in Mozilla's overall strategy, and we've written about why before. It's slated to be available for the upcoming wave of Linux- and Android-based mobile handsets due out later this year, where it could be a key open source application for them. As part of its concept series of videos and screencasts, there is a screencast illustrating how some of the user interface for Fennec may work in the final version. Here's what it looks like.

Mozilla has a whole roster of news headlines related to its browsers out today. In its about:Mozilla newsletter, the company has announced that a new version of the Camino browser is available (it's developed by the Camino Project, but is based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine). Many Mac users love Camino for its lickety-split performance. Mozilla has also confirmed that a sixth milestone version of its upcoming mobile browser, dubbed Fennec, is out. And, as ZDNet reports, the beta of the next version of Firefox--version 3.1--has been delayed from August 19th until September 9th. Here are the details.

You may have seen our recent coverage of Mozilla's work on a new mobile browser, dubbed Fennec.ﾠ It has tremendous promise, in some people's eyes, as a svelte browser that can deliver a Firefox-like experience on upcoming Android- and Linux-based phones. Over on our sister site, GigaOm, Stacey Higginbotham has an interesting rebuttal, though: She says it may be too late for Mozilla. She argues that Webkit-based browsers are farther along, and points to the success of Opera Mini as a mobile browser. Check it out.