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.”