Discovery functionality of Fennec, the little brother of Firefox

[JCAddy]

Fennec

The first beta version of Fennec, the declination of the Firefox browser for smartphones and mobile terminals of the Mozilla Foundation, which is supposed to compete with Opera, Apple and Google on the mobile Web site is online for a week.

For now, the only mobile terminal is the Nokia N810 tablet, which is driven by Linux Internet Tablet OS2008 - the Mozilla Foundation is also developing a port to Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian - but Fennec can also be tested on a computer with three trial versions for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows Vista.

An interface to the extreme reduced to maximize the display

Designed for mobile devices whose screens are smaller than those of computers, Fennec differentiates itself through an interface reduced to essentials so as to maximize the display area. At launch, only the address bar appears at the top of the screen with a button to reload the page and another providing access to favorites. You can easily dodge by sliding up the screen to browse the page in full screen.

Other functions of the most common browser - forward and back buttons, creating a bookmark settings and browser settings - are available on a banner retractable, hidden by default, which is displayed to the right of the screen when the dragged on the screen to the left.

In the same way, a hidden bar to the left of the screen gives access to the list of sites already open (the equivalent of the tabs in Firefox). Just click on a thumbnail to switch to the partner website.

[JCAddy]

The Smart Address Bar to the rescue to minimize input

In addition to maximizing the display area, another priority of the Mozilla Foundation is to limit the entry of characters, often delicate operation on a mobile terminal. Developers to reuse this the intelligent address bar that made the success of Firefox 3.

A click on the address bar displays the recent history of sites frequently accessed. As in Firefox, just start entering text into the address bar to find previously visited sites containing the characters entered.

History accelerate research, a list of engines (which can change) appears at the bottom of the screen (Google, Yahoo, etc.). Simply click on after entering a keyword in the address bar to launch the associated application. Concerning the display of Web pages, developers have taken up the rendering engine of Firefox. The presentation is the same as that obtained on a PC except that when browsing, an automatic adjustment is carried out regularly to display a maximum of content while remaining legible. Fennec automatically zooms in on a field in a form to facilitate the entry of a log-in and password, for example.

90/100 in Acid3 test

As might be expected, the younger brother of Firefox is very respectful of the standards. Beta gets 90/100 in Acid3 test, slightly lower than the current beta of Firefox 3.5 (the current version of Firefox stands at 71/100).

Acid3 test of Fennec

The browser is also very fast for the execution of Javascript because it incorporates Tracemonkey, the new JavaScript engine of the future version of Firefox, the 3.5.

Fennec also inherits technology management modules, which made the success of Firefox. Extensions are already supported, and there are some interesting applications, such as Gestures Fennec 0.2 which allows you to predefine shortcuts associated with movement of stylus or finger on the screen. One can, for example, draw a circle to open a new tab or draw an X to mark the site.

The beta also takes charge of the main plug-in multimedia (PDF, Flash, QuickTime, RealPlayer, etc.), But during our test, the video display was faulty. On YouTube, for example, must be content with the soundtrack videos. We can guarantee that these problems will be resolved before launching the final version expected by the end of this year.