Mozilla releases mobile Browser Fennec

Oct 20, 2008

Mozilla.org offers an early developer release of the mobile version of their web browser Firefox called Fennec. A fennec (Vulpes zerda) is a fox subspecie, which can be found in North-African Sahara and the Sinai. It features huge ears and a extra large tail, making that little night active critter look extremly cute. Thus, so far for the donator of the name, let’s go technical.

The features are:

Bookmarks, including tags
Smart URL bar (”awesome bar”)
Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
Integrated Web search - built into the URL bar
Easy access to multiple search engines
Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
Zoom in and out
Instant Web site ID (”Larry“)
Password manager
Popup blocker
Clear private data
Click on a phone number to initiate a call
JavaScript API to get device location
Popup blocker
Clear private data
Searchable download manager
Preferences pane

The mobile desert fox now only runs on OS2008 (”chinook” or “diablo”), like the Nokia Internet-Handheld N810, but there are versions for Windows and Mac OS X available, too.
Mozilla now wants to gather feedback and plans “further alpha releases which focus on performance, including projects like TraceMonkey, speculative parsing, and many Fennec and Gecko optimizations.”