The slow red fox finally jumps on mobile
Talk to most people (other than iPhone and iPod Touch owners) about their experiences browsing the Web on their cell phone or handheld and you’ll get a lot of sighs and rolled eyes. Aside from Apple’s beautiful implementation, even the best of the current mobile browsing options feel crude and clunky compared to what folks are used to online. So it’s encouraging to hear that the folks at Mozilla are now making it a top priority to design a version of their Firefox browser for mobile devices. Why now? Mozilla’s Mike Schroepfer says Apple has raised the bar and mobile devices are finally getting enough memory and processing power to deliver a positive Web experience. At an even more basic level, TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld says, “The decision to throw Firefox into the mobile ring is just one more piece of evidence for something that is becoming increasingly clear: The phone is the computer.” There’s no release date targeted yet, but if the Mozilla team can bring the open-source, extendable goodness that is the full-size Firefox browser to the small screen, it should be worth the wait.
Opera mini does a decent job of this, though https was a big omission. Listening Moz?
dilly, Opera Mini now does support secure browsing, enabling you to browse your banks website, eBay, etc.
Daniel
Opera Software
I am not holding my breath. The Firefox as it is now is a quintessential memory and cpu hog, in which unnecessary levels of abstraction hinder the possibility of programmers to make the application reliable even in such simple tasks as copy-paste. I switched to Opera, there are obviously better programmers (but they do have a little problems making basic features straightforward — they think too geeky).
Anyway that’s my opinion why Opera Mini already exists, and Firefox for mobiles… you’ve got the idea…
John, you’re quite a bit behind on cell phone tech stuff, eh?
Let’s put this into perspective with the much over hyped iDumbPhone. Loading the same Mercury News article on my AT&T Sammy Sync with Edge connectivity only using Opera 4 mobile and on my coworkers iPhone at the same exact time shows that Opera loads the Merc article twice as fast as Safari mobile can. Plus, Opera resizes the column width and zooms into the article with one button press. iPhone needs the double tap and nothing can be done if the column width is too wide for the screen; you have to pan left and right. My friend who works on the Safari team hates it when I mention these deficiencies, but the fact is Opera is the king of the mobile browsers. Edge wouldn’t be so bad on the iPhone if it could only run Opera mobile. Sorry Steve! (fair disclosure, I own macs & pcs, plus an $299 iDumbPhone- wife’s phone)