Mozilla Launches Firefox 4 for Android

http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/03/29/mozilla-launches-firefox-4-for-android-allowing-users-to-take-the-power-and-customization-of-firefox-everywhere-2/

by Garbage • 15 years ago

128 85 15 years ago

blog.mozilla.com

gkoberger2• 15 years ago

My two favorite features:

- Tabs are actually usable.

- With Sync, you can walk away from your desktop and have your tabs (and history/bookmarks/passwords) on your phone.

(Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla, but have nothing to do with mobile.)

windsurfer4• 15 years ago

I want to use Sync, but I'm really concerned with the security of it. How do I know my data is safe?

Can I install a sync server on my own domain?

arthurk• 15 years ago

You can.

Source code: http://hg.mozilla.org/services/sync-server Instructions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Sync/1.1/Setup

sp332• 15 years ago

Data is encrypted client-side, so even Mozilla can't read it. If someone hacks Mozilla, they could get your encrypted data, but without your passphrase, they won't be able to read it. On the downside, if you forget your passphrase, you won't be able to read your data either (you have to wipe your account and start over).

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

>- Tabs are actually usable.

What does that mean exactly?

scotth• 15 years ago

That tabs generally aren't on smart phones?

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

Mobile Firefox lets you switch between tabs by pulling out a sidebar on the left side of the screen, so you can access them quickly, and you can see the current page and the tab list at the same time: http://support.mozilla.com/kb/how-do-i-use-tabs-mobile

absconditus• 15 years ago

Less powerful hardware does not seem like the best place for Firefox.

cryptoz• 15 years ago

There are plenty of Android devices that have dual core CPUs with more RAM and storage than most netbooks. Just because we still call them "phones" for some reason doesn't mean they aren't pretty powerful.

ZeroGravitas2• 15 years ago

Independent test by people like Microsoft and Cnet seem to indicate that Firefox is doing well with resource usage. What makes you think otherwise?:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/28/browser-power-...

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20047314-12.html

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Microsoft is an independent source? What?

lukeschlather• 15 years ago

You obviously haven't used Firefox 4.

ralphc2• 15 years ago

It works as fast as any of the other browsers on my Galaxy Tab.

IgorPartola3• 15 years ago

A couple of open tabs on moderately complex web pages (no web apps though) runs it at around 75 MB on my phone. Seems perfectly snappy on the Atrix, but I don't know about older devices.

IgorPartola3• 15 years ago

It actually seems to flow pages better than the stock browser (Atrix running Froyo). Specifically, http://www.linux.org.ru has tab on the left in the proper position in Firefox while the stock browser puts it after the main content div.

The mobile tabs are awesome. And I really like the fact that I can get to the address bar while being half way into the page. The Awesome Bar is also, well, awesome. I thought I might not like it, coming off of an iPhone, but it actually works really well.

My only complaint so far is that spell checking does not appear to be turned on, and capitalization does not work by default. Very frustrating when trying to post comments to HN...

Set it to the default browser in a heartbeat.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

The benchmark numbers seem great, but actual browsing perf doesn't seem any better if not worse than the stock Nexus S browser. Just curious if Mozilla spends a lot of time optimizing benchmarks or the top 1000 sites?

I'm just having trouble reconciling their incredible benchmark numbers with how it feels to simply browse the web.

ZeroGravitas2• 15 years ago

They've been working on a variety of performance indicators:

http://blog.lassey.us/2011/03/29/mobile-firefox-performance-...

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

Yeah, that's the page I had read and was expecting perf that killed the Nexus S stock browser. But I'm not sure if its any better. Do you see better perf on your device? Are there some pages that show the perf delta more than others (besides Mozilla built showcase pages?).

doron2• 15 years ago

oh a Saviour has come. Adblock plus for mobile. This is the one killer tool i have been waiting for.

GeneralMaximus• 15 years ago

If you have a rooted phone, you can always use AdFree. It adds entries to your /etc/hosts so it blocks ads in all apps.

doron2• 15 years ago

Thanks, i will try it out. I am actually ok with most ads on apps, i dont find them as intrusive, the browser on the other hand is a nightmare.

trezor• 15 years ago

Dolphin HD may not be free, but it has supported ad-blocking for a long time trough extensions.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I trust closed-source browsers from China about as far as I can throw them. I'll be sticking with Moz.

ck23• 15 years ago

Does contentEditable/designMode work on it by any chance?

If so, it will be the first mobile browser to support it.

Basic test here: http://html5demos.com/contenteditable

or much more advanced here: http://ckeditor.com/demo

IgorPartola3• 15 years ago

Just tried it. It does!

ck23• 15 years ago

Wow this is huge news!

Others might not appreciate it but that means it's the first mobile browser that rich, WYSIWYG editors like CKEditor and TinyMCE will finally work!

(iPhone and native Android do NOT support contentEditable despite being a webkit branch)

This is history repeating itself where Mozilla/Firefox competition will force other browsers to finally improve their game.

cdr• 15 years ago

Kind of a bummer that they require an ARMv7 processor - won't install on lower-end but still very decent models like LG Optimus S/V.

chihiro• 15 years ago

I have a HTC. Does it uses an ARMv7 ?

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

See the list at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Req...

ddlatham• 15 years ago

Can anyone compare it to the Dolphin browser?

acconrad• 15 years ago

i second this

aw3c23• 15 years ago

I switched from the last beta to Dolphin some months ago because (iirc):

Firefox did not support gestures. It was very slow to start. It did not reflow text (properly or at all?).

At least the reflow seems to be included now so I guess I try again.

edit: Installed it. Tried zooming in on reddit, hn and metafilter. Failed to reflow on all of them. Reflowing after zoom is enabled in the options, at least I think it is (the stupid apple slider shows the yes in blue, I guess that means it is on. Or does it switch on if I press it? I never got the design of those buttons.)

Apparently no way to exit the application.

Takes guesstimated 10 seconds to cold-start. 3s for Dolphin.

starwed3• 15 years ago

Yeah, those buttons always bugged me... the design could have been a lot cleaner.

I'm not sure if Firefox Mobile has the same support for theming that the desktop does, but if so I imagine they'll be some nice themes for it eventually. :)

trotsky2• 15 years ago

Does anyone know what the hardware requirements are? The market will let me install it on a samsung galaxy but not an lg optimus. Is it the cpu speed of the optimus or something else? I can't seem to find a list of requirements anywhere.

EDIT: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Platforms/Android#System_Req...

It is the CPU generation. "Release builds of Firefox require a phone with an ARMv7 processor" and the Optimus has an ARMv6.

Is anyone from mozilla or otherwise familiar with how badly it would run if I built it myself with a v6 target?

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

Hi, I'm a member of the mobile Firefox team at Mozilla.

Building for ARMv7-only lets us use the Thumb-2 instruction set, which results in code that is smaller, faster, and uses less memory.

We used to have ARMv6 builds available, but at this point the browser is not really optimized enough to run well on older (or low-end) devices. And since we were not actively testing or supporting those builds, the code now has some crashing bugs (probably related to the JavaScript JIT) that show up only on ARMv6 builds. Without fixing those bugs, you can't actually run Firefox on ARMv6.

We continue to reduce memory and CPU usage, and if it it gets good enough to support these devices then we might start working on it for a future version.

trotsky2• 15 years ago

Thanks very much for the straight dope!

jmillikin• 15 years ago

I've been using the beta for a month or so, and it's miles better than the stock Android browser. Notable features:

- supports <video> and <audio>

- fixed-size divs (used for multiple scrollable page sections) work properly

- Pages are rendered practically identically to desktop Firefox/Chrome; the Android browser sometimes does weird things to pages with complex CSS.

While I haven't noticed any improvements in page rendering speed, but the browser UI itself is more responsive.

karl_nerd• 15 years ago

It also supports using the accelerometer in javascript! http://karlwestin.posterous.com/javascript-accelerometer-on-...

suprgeek2• 15 years ago

This is awesome news..just trying it out. Minor quibble why is the installer a Huge 14 Mb in Size? On a desktop FF4 is a 12Mb download so what gives?

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

On Android, we ship all the locales in one package (since the Android Market doesn't have a simple way for us to deliver different packages to different locales). That accounts for part of the difference in size.

We're working on various ways to reduce the size, including moving the locale files into separate files that are downloaded at installation time.

suprgeek2• 15 years ago

Thank you for the answer. Please implement this quickly, I want to recommend FF to pretty much everybody and a huge honkin download is not a good sign on a mobile phone.

blinkingled• 15 years ago

It's great to have another credible browser for Android and Firefox 4 kinda works OK on my Xoom but there are two issues that make me hesitant to use it - Fonts - there is some "non-nativeness" there - they look blurry and - Heaviness - the native browser on the Xoom is just insanely light and fast (couple crashes everyday aside) but Firefox feels heavier to use. Part of that might be drawing, part may be slow startup and some just general UI element sizes.

aw3c23• 15 years ago

Can somebody find a direct download link for the .apk file? I tried using the Mozilla website but ended up in eternal redirection and flashy pages. I really do not want to waste 14MB (!) of my precious bandwidth on a browser installation. That would be 5% of my monthly bandwidth.

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

You can download the APK directly from here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/a...

You can also search for "Firefox" in the Android Market on your phone (connect to WiFi if possible, if you want avoid cellular data charges).

(By the way, if you literally ended up in a redirect loop, please let me know so we can fix it.)

aw3c23• 15 years ago

Thank you!

No "HTTP redirect", I meant navigational/logical/mentally.

spravin• 15 years ago

Here's an easier url (goes to the same .apk): http://j.mp/firedroid

ck23• 15 years ago

By the way, I discovered there are desktop version of the mobile build available for developers (Windows, Mac and Linux)

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/

Windows http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/w...

Mac http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/m...

Linux http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/4.0/l...

100tonmantis• 15 years ago

Wow. I wish I could use this on my netbook but it doesn't seem to be useful for much more than testing right now. Configuration and keyboard use is pretty limited.

Really fast though.

ralphc2• 15 years ago

I assume that add-ons need to be written specifically for the Android browser - no delicious add-on listed, will need to stick with Dolphin HD for now.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

Anyone else having user-agent issues? Google reader, for example, shows up as what looks like the dumb phone mobile site, not the smart phone mobile site (which is great) or the desktop site. And I can't find a setting to change the user-agent.

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

This add-on will let you change the user agent: https://addons.mozilla.org/mobile/addon/phony/

For Google Reader, you don't need to change the useragent; you can just go to http://www.google.com/reader/i/

Reader works well in Firefox, but many of Google's mobile sites use WebKit-specific markup, and will not work correctly in Firefox if you change the user-agent header to iPhone or Android.

pandeiro2• 15 years ago

No text reflow and no text selection turn the web into a giant set of PDFs. Tab mechanism is cool. Otherwise disappointing. Uninstalled.

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

There's a text reflow option in the preferences.

pandeiro2• 15 years ago

I saw it and activated it, without any tangible effect. And reflow is probably the single most useful feature of a mobile browser.

manveru• 15 years ago

I have no idea why nobody mentions that copy&paste in forms isn't implemented.

It's of little use for me without that.

mbrubeck14• 15 years ago

That's because copy/paste in web forms is implemented. It was fixed after beta 5, but before release candidate 1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611741

akamaka• 15 years ago

How does it compare to Safari on iPhone?

skbohra123• 15 years ago

Damn, I need 512MB RAM for a browser. Feels so bad.

Osiris• 15 years ago

I downloaded the browser and installed 3 small extensions. It asked to "Restart", which I assumed meant the application. Instead it reboot the phone.

After that, it just hung on the Loading screen sucking up 100% CPU. I searched to see if I could manually delete the extensions, but they aren't saved on the SD card from what I could find, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the application and now it actually loads.

They really need to put some safeguards in place to make sure extensions don't crash the browser like that. Having to uninstall and reinstall just to remove a bad extension is really problematic.

Mozilla Launches Firefox 4 for Android

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