last week(oct8) I wrote that Firefox Mobile Browser (alpha) will be coming “in a few weeks”.
Yes,Mozilla has released the first Alpha version of Fennec, the mobile web browser which currently runs on the Nokia N810 internet tablet, and which will soon run on Windows Mobile. Fennec is just a code name. Eventually the browser will probably be called something like Firefox Mobile. If you can view web content in Firefox, you can pretty much view it in Fennec.
Mozilla pitched the alpha as “an early developer release” suitable for “testing purposes only,” its typical description for its prebeta editions. However, according to Mark Finkle, Mozilla’s platform evangelist, the company is looking for feedback from as many people as possible.
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To that end, Fennec has been released not only for the one device it currently supports, Nokia Corp.’s N810 Internet Tablet, but also in versions for desktops and laptops running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
“We are also releasing desktop versions of Fennec,” said Finkle in a post to his blog late last night. “That’s right, you can install Fennec on your Windows, OS X or Linux desktop too!
Fennec includes touch-screen support, includes a password manager and pop-up blocker, offers a Firefox-style tab-browsing interface.
To run Fennec for Windows, all you have to do is download and unzip an 8MB file and click on Fennec.exe. Up pops a small web browser with nothing but a URL bar visible. Type in an address and away you go. You can scroll up and down on a web page by clicking and draging the page. And you can zoom in on the content by double clicking
The browser navigation menus are hidden to the right and left of the main window. If you want to see a list of open tabs or open a new one, just click the screen and drag to the right to pull up a tab menu on the left side of the screen. Likewise, dragging the main window to the left will bring up a menu on the right side of the screen that lets you access bookmarks, go forward or back, or adjust your settings.
You can enable javascript, enable or disable images, and decide whether to save cookies and/or passwods or not. There’s also an option to enable plugins and it also has pop-up blocking option.
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Still to come, said Mozilla in the alpha version’s release notes, will be an implementation of TraceMonkey, the company’s turbocharged JavaScript engine, and support for geolocation, a feature embedded in the Gecko 1.9.1 code base that has also surfaced in Firefox.
Download Fennec Alpha 1 from Mozilla’s Web site.
also check out Installation details here