Many of you have heard or already experiencing the Firefox browsing experience on your Android Phone or Tablet. We hope your experience has been a great one, and continue to look forward to your feedback. The engineering team is taking it a step further and porting Firefox to a Native Java Application, which promises similar features you’re used to, but with a handful of improvements!
Development is already in progress, and many features have already landing. You can find out more details in our weekly newsletter , as well as specific areas to test and focus on. There has already been significant improvements in startup performance, responsiveness, and a much more fuller, native experience on the phone. Native Firefox Android is estimated to launch in Q1 2012. Here’s a nice recent writeup by Ryan Paul at Arstechnica.com
In the meantime, there is a Testday tomorrow (Friday, Nov 11th) that you can join! We are looking for folks interested in a first look, alpha feedback, and want to share their comments and bugs around our product. If you are a firefox user, and own an Android device, you don’t want to miss this event!
UPDATED: If you’d like to download and test:
- Check Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources [Checked]
- Download the Nightly APK builds here (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-birch-android/)
November 10, 2011 at 11:39 pm
http://arewenativeyet.com/
November 11, 2011 at 12:40 am
the load time is impressive
the bug list is long, but who care, its fast. its very fast.
now if scrolling and zooming could be as fast.. and the UI mimic the XUL UI a little (tabs on the side)
November 11, 2011 at 12:52 am
hi zorb, thanks for the feedback. curious, what device are you using? We’re interested in what people’s perception is on “older/slower” devices (eg. Armv6 chipset, 384Mb Ram, < 480 reso.
The scrolling and zooming experience is a P1 priority before things land. If you're interested, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=695448 tracks the dependent work on it.
Tabs on the side is not part of the Native Design. For more details on the spec, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fennec/NativeUI.
November 11, 2011 at 2:32 am
i’m using a SGS2 and a GalaxyTab 10.1
So both rather fast devices.
XUL UI is blazing fast on the SGS2 as well but loading is pretty slow.
XUL UI is slow on the GalaxyTab (i guess neon lack?) and loading is even slower. XUL UI is basically “decent” on the SGS2 and “crappy” on the Tab.
NativeUI loads instant on both devices. Really instance. Gecko becomes responsive after 1s on both, which, well, could be better but that’s on par with the competition.
Finally, general scrolling and so on is faster on the SGS2 on Native UI but not nearly as fast as it should. Quite choppy on the tab.
Hope that helps somehow. Been actually following the bugs
Unfortunately my oldest device is a Galaxy S which is, well, rather fast as well…
I’m guessing you could ask the guys on some channels of freenode such as #project-voodoo or the #cmsgsteam channels as they’re quite into firefox and many own nexus 1s and similar devices.
November 11, 2011 at 2:16 am
1.
The zooming functionality is not consistant to other browsers.
There should be a zoombar as in dolphin hd, unless FF guesses the zoom rates according to the touch, which leads to awkward results.
I was really getting angry when it passes me back the 5th time i am zooming to a specific paragraph, and then because of it’s width i am touching to position the element to be readable or entered some inputs, and it passes back.
It is happened at the Facebook’s sharing page.
Android eclair 2.1, 800MHZ 512MB ram., 800X480! physical pixels.
Quite slow, takes 7seconds to get up.
2.
Please no synch bookmarks.
Support Google Bookmarks.
I don’t want to install yet another program.
Otherwise i share links with myself on Facebook.
My rate for overall performance of FF on android is 2,2.5 in a 5 point scale.
Thanks,
Zludany
November 11, 2011 at 2:35 am
Google Bookmarks are you mad
Firefox Sync is the only way to go. It could have an import option tho, that would import the android bookmarks!
Google bookmarks doesn’t respect your privacy, and well, Firefox sync syncs with desktop Firefox so its a no brainer. It also has instant sync, aka things such as tabs are instantly sync’d.
Finally, 7s to start sounds really super slow.. are you sure its NativeUI? Do you get the “loading” screen?
November 11, 2011 at 3:06 am
Thanks for that comment. Yes, I admit Firefox Sync is a little involved in setup, but when it works, it Works! Privacy is ultra important to Mozilla, and with that, all of your sync’d data is encrypted and read locally.
That said, here’s a preview of what Sync for Fennec Native will look like: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Services/AndroidSyncFP
November 11, 2011 at 3:11 am
Zludany, the startup time is ridiculously fast on native Fennec. We’ve been benchmarking warm start times on pages to average about 2.5-3.5 secs, which is comparable to dolphin and Android Stock browser. Previously, XUL Firefox (or what can be downloaded in Android Market now), would clock these pages around 6 seconds.
If you are running Native Fennec, then i’d like to hear more. otherwise, be sure to give it a spin by downloading it from: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Fennec/NativeUI/Nightly.
Thanks for the feedback. We’re working to get your star rating to 5 .
November 11, 2011 at 3:53 am
[...] Source: Dknite’s blog [...]
November 11, 2011 at 5:43 am
I do want to participate
November 11, 2011 at 6:49 am
Great! Will you be able to attend our live testday on friday? (real-time all day gathering to cover features and testing) If not, you can always try out features on your phone on your own time, and give us feedback afterwards. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fennec/NativeUI/NightlyFeatures for details.
November 11, 2011 at 1:31 pm
where is the link to download on my phone
November 11, 2011 at 4:18 pm
updated post to reflect download location
November 11, 2011 at 6:40 am
Hi, I upgraded to FF 8 on my new android phone. And while installing it restarts my device …!!! FF7 worked. And beta too works. will try native.
I am on Moto charm. 512MB ram. And some internal mem. (rooted, link2sd installed
)
Hope it does not brick my phone….how risky this is ? Since its called “Native”
November 11, 2011 at 6:54 am
hi Jigar,
“Native” alludes more to Firefox mobile being rewritten using native Android elements in Java. The previous version of Firefox was designed in XUL. Don’t worry, it will not brick your phone. Nor will you need to uninstall FF 8, as installing this should work side by side with your current install. (you can always uninstall later it if you want)
Remember to check “Install from Untrusted Sources” in your System settings, since this alpha build is hosted on mozilla servers.
November 11, 2011 at 6:58 am
you should be a bit more realistic in your description of the native firefox. you don’t even mention that most (all?) of the current extensions will stop working when Fx10 ships (the primary differentiation from the competition)
November 11, 2011 at 7:06 am
Hi Tom,
i left out Addon support and compatibility because that story still needs to be written, as feature prioritizing is still changing right now. But there is no question that Addons is one of the central pieces to the Firefox experience. Addon support is on the priority list upon launch.
Here’s a spec in progress: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Fennec/NativeUI/addons
November 11, 2011 at 10:56 pm
The side tabs is a greatest feature of mobile FF. Why shoud I use FF if it looks as other browsers on android? The side tabs are the killer fature.
November 12, 2011 at 1:13 am
Just downloaded the latest APK. It is much much faster (e.g. crazy fast) compared to the bloated XUL variant, but the screen does all sorts of bizarre things in terms of floating around and not resizing easily. I’m sure that’ll all get teased out as we move further into development and eventually a stable release. So far I like what I see, but I’ll need to keep using the browser bundled with CM7 for now (e.g. stability reasons). Keep plugging away Mozilla.
Device: HTC EVO 4G ROM: CM7.1.0
November 12, 2011 at 2:59 am
installed, phone then rebooted, freezes once booted, even freezes in safe mode, how do i uninstall this so my phone will work again
November 12, 2011 at 7:02 am
hi chris,
what device do you have? this is the first i’ve heard of phone freezing, so i am very curious to know more. You can always uninstall the application (“Fennec”), but going to Manage applications > uninstall.
November 13, 2011 at 5:41 am
the phone freezes before i can even get into the menu, it freezes the second i unlock the screen or about a minute after boot, whichever comes first, I have the droid x btw, also does the same thing when booting into safe mode
November 12, 2011 at 10:30 am
Epic……although very bugging finally some smooth scrolling, and fast to boot. Keep up the great work guys ….. (nexus s…rooted running stock2.3.4)