Firefox Mobile is Currently Under Development for Windows Mobile

[Kris Kumar]

<p><img alt="" border="0" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/spt/auto/1196568738.usr266.jpg" /></p><p>According to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.christiansejersen.com/blog/2007/11/20/mobile-goals/">Christian Sejersen</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/dougt/archives/018749.html">Doug Turner</a>, Mozilla has officially ended the Minimo project which continued for over an year and failed to deliver version 1.0 Mozilla based browser for the mobile devices. Now, Mozilla claims to have <a target="_blank" href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/schrep/archives/2007/10/mozilla_and_mobile.html">learned from the Minimo experience</a> and is channeling its energy to develop Firefox Mobile. Christian Sejersen, recently the head of browsers at Openwave, has been hired to be the lead for this project. While no time-lines have been mentioned, Christian did mention in his blog that Windows Mobile 6, possibly the HTC S730, and Linux based Nokia N800 will be the target devices for the first round of development. According to the post, the N800 version is already functional. Let's hope that we will soon be hearing about the availability of a new beta release for the Window Mobile platform. Personally I am fed up with the Internet Explorer on my smart phone and Opera Mobile is too pricey, hopefully Firefox Mobile will be free and better than both.</p>

[frankenbike]

I'm hoping they can get it working on the skimpy 68megs of RAM most devices have (25 or less available).

Hopefully for the Win Mobile devices, they'll also get with the current "finger friendly" mode of operation, rather than the stylus centric mode most browswers currently have.

[badbob001]

Opera Mini 4 is free and works pretty well especially since it goes through Opera's proxy. Some recent developments have practically allowed this browser to be your default browser for all links.
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=2334&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

But still, would be nice to have a modern browser on the os that can be a platform for all sorts of widgets and ajax stuff.

[mboone]

Good find on the Opera Mini 4 default browser article - very nice!

[Menneisyys]

Agreed with badbob001 - forget all other browsers, use Opera Mini 4. It's especially well suited for the Smartphone platforms because of the numerous dialpad shortcuts, which make the experience seamless.

[Menneisyys]

I'm hoping they can get it working on the skimpy 68megs of RAM most devices have (25 or less available).

Hopefully for the Win Mobile devices, they'll also get with the current "finger friendly" mode of operation, rather than the stylus centric mode most browswers currently have.

Well, taking into account that Minimo 0.20 occupied 16 Mbytes of RAM... :/

(See my Web browser Bible here at SPT for more info.)