In the beginning of this month Mozilla Corporation released the Firefox 1.1(code named Fennec), for Nokia N900 and a new update making it compatible to be used on Nokia N810 Smartphone’s. The new browser is aimed at further improving the usability of the Nokia smartphone series.
Landscape and portrait
Firefox 1.1 is build on the same platform engine as the desktop version of Firefox 3.6, keeping in mind the optimise use of it on mobile phone. “As a result, polishing the user interface and improving UI responsiveness and performance is at the heart of this release”, says the Firefox team in the their release notes. The browser lets you view in both landscape and portrait and the zoom in/out feature of the speaker locker is very enticing .
I believe what I liked the most is the personalized start page which enables me to let me continue where I dropped off the last time. There are over 60 Add-ons which are available to be downloaded from the website or directly from the Add-on manager feature in the browser. Smart tapping features comes in very useful and the accuracy level while tapping links or widgets is certainly comment worthy.
Current issues
There have been complaints from users with the clarity of images while enlarging. Images when stretched appear with black dots and/or lines along the sides and towards the bottom of the image. There has also been cases reported while a zoomed page is been switched from its portrait mode to landscape the screen will displace the tab sidebar, which can be annoying at times.
However, what I find most frustrating is the inability to scroll down a lengthy webpage with the keyboard. I hope it is fixed soon by the team and they are certainly aware of this drawback.
On the bright side
For the readers who does not have either Nokia N900 or N810, Mozilla team has announced that they are in their early development phase to enable users throughout all series of smart-phones.
The Browser is still new but packed with several beneficial features even enabling the save to PDF option, where by those important documents can be downloaded and directly saved. Users can also save or delete the passwords to sites they no longer use, enabling a higher security and the add search engine in the site menu will help add / remove a search engine. Also, the context menu lets us open new tabs and save images with just a slightly prolonged tap and holding a link. So the new browser is certainly download worthy and striving towards helping us improve our Nokia N900 and N810 phones.
