Firefox 1.1 beta for Maemo goes live

The N900 already features one of the best pocket browsing experiences we've ever seen, but it looks to be getting a whole lot better today with the beta release of Firefox 1.1. Major new features include portrait browsing (awesome), form auto-complete, a context menu, volume key zoom, and -- this is pretty neat -- the capability to save pages straight to PDF, so it seems like the kind of thing you'll definitely want to download, even if it's not quite solid enough to earn gold build status. Oh, and if you don't have an N810 or N900 handy and you're amped to play around, you can download the little guy for Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, too.

[Johnny Rockets Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:30PM]

Awwwww, Maemo.

How cute.

[JFH Posted Apr 30th 2010 4:35AM]

@Johnny Rockets

Hey Johnny, first you ask to have exclusion functionality in engadget mobile, then you start trolling all Nokia threads. Do yourself, and most readers, a favor. Just do not read them, or pain your cute little brain to spit out these nonsensical shallow turds.

[hoodcrist Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:32PM]

Wake download skyfire has flash for android user nexus one

[wakeup Posted Apr 29th 2010 10:47PM]

@hoodcrist

too bad SkyFire sucks.

[hoodcrist Posted Apr 29th 2010 11:42PM]

@wakeup its pretty good

[JFH Posted Apr 30th 2010 4:36AM]

@hoodcrist

It sucks ass and does not hold a candle next to the browsing on the N900. Not sure how much better fennec is though.

[hoodcrist Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:33PM]

Wack

[hoodcrist Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:34PM]

To laggy for me try skyfire has flash

[JFH Posted Apr 30th 2010 4:37AM]

@hoodcrist

That is brilliant, and not a differentiator vis a vis the N900 in any way. You know, N900 does flash out of the box. So again, why skyfire? If we can run full or semi full desktop browsers on the device?

[wako Posted Apr 29th 2010 9:43PM]

oh that would explain why the mozilla repository has been down for awhile

[fast Posted Apr 29th 2010 10:24PM]

Nice. n900 is kick ass. This just helps top the full web experience on it.

[metalgrx Posted Apr 30th 2010 4:17AM]

N900 proved to be very successful for nokia. I might get one soon.

[JFH Posted Apr 30th 2010 4:40AM]

I love the N900, but I still have to wait to get rid of my BB on contract, and by the time that is up, I am hoping its succesor is there! I am not a camera person (would take the N8 otherwise) but from what I hear, the N910 (or whatever the number is) is going to sport a brandnew ST-Ericsson SoC with really crazy specs. I_cannot_wait!

[emaildejan Posted Apr 30th 2010 10:23AM]

I think Mozilla.org should rename Fennic (aka Firefox Mobile) to something a bit more obvious and along the same line as the other Mozilla.org products (e.g., Thunderbird, Firefox). Personally, since it's a smaller version of Firefox, wouldn't the logical thing be to refer to this mini-Firefox as "Lightning bug" or "Firefly"?

Just my 2 cents worth.

[Munk Posted Apr 30th 2010 11:07AM]

@emaildejan Fennec is the development name.. When you try to dl it show's as Firefox (mobile).

------

Hopefully its gotten much better than v1.0 since that was not only a resource hog but the performance was far inferior than the built in microb browser on the n900.

[emaildejan Posted Apr 30th 2010 11:41AM]

@Munk
Yeah, I hear ya. And I have read about the resource problems that Fennec (sorry about my blunder in spelling it earlier with an "i") has. Hopefully that will be corrected. What I'd love to see is Fennec (or whatever it will actually be ultimately called) become just as reliable and robust as Opera-mini is currently. Yes, I'm a Firefox fanboy (more or less), and I've used other browsers...sorry, Opera isn't my cup of tea. Still, back to point, it will be interesting to see how Fennec fairs with future releases. I'd love to mate it with say an iDEN/WiMAX handset (yes, I'm a bigtime NEXTEL fanboy) running Android OS. Hey, a guy can dream can't he? And, yes I know Sprint sucks. ;)

[Munk Posted Apr 30th 2010 10:32PM]

@emaildejan Never been a firefox user on the desktop (ie & chrome) but I have no problems using it on the mobile if there was a compelling reason. Used in on my n900 for a couple of days and as I said, it wasnt as good as the built in browser (which is based on Gecko & other Mozilla tech). If on any platform they can bring better browsing experiences than the available alternative then great :).

Opera, as good as it maybe is a completely different beast. Opera mini does not "load" on the device, you type in an address - it is sent to the opera servers which send a cached/optimized copy to your screen. Hence it remains light weight and fast.