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Firefox Mobile Beta on the Nokia N900
By admin on November 3,
 2009 at 00:00,

Firefox Mobile Beta on the Nokia N900The Nokia N900 is going to be quite a device, we’ve covered some very interesting hacks, applications, and add-ons. However, a video has surfaced this week that showcases Mozilla 3.6 running on the Nokia N900. Read on after the jump to find out more...

While Apple, Google, and RIM are all building browsers that use WebKit, which currently has the largest share of the mobile browser market, there is, unfortunately, one small problem with this - WebKit isn’t actually a browser. It’s merely a rendering engine, which is why Mozilla have developed Firefox for mobile.

Essentially, Mozilla Firefox for mobile will allow you to download the browser in much the same way you would do on your PC. However, the similarities between mobile and PC don’t end there, with Firefox beta for Maemo 5 utilising all the things you love about Firefox, such as the “awesome bar” and extensions.

Nevertheless, Mozilla Firefox for mobile, which is currently still in beta, has a few other tricks up its sleeve. For starters, you can resume viewing web pages that you were browsing on your PC on your Nokia N900 once you have left the house, as your PC and N900 will sync up seamlessly through a process which Firefox call “weave.”

This also applies to downloads, so if you’re downloading a text document but you have to leave the house, it’s not a problem, as the download that began on your PC will finish on your Nokia N900, which is a seriously cool feature.

The idea behind the Firefox Mobile browser is to bring proper PC browsing to the mobile domain, and if this is anything to go by, it looks like Mozilla are bang on the money as usual.

Check out the Video below of Mozilla running on the Nokia N900:

Tags: Firefox Maemo Mozilla N900 Nokia
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  • Lee

    “While Apple, Google, and RIM are all building browsers that use WebKit, which currently has the largest share of the mobile browser market, there is, unfortunately, one small problem with this – WebKit isn’t actually a browser. It’s merely a rendering engine, which is why Mozilla have developed Firefox for mobile.”

    is I am afraid wholely or at least slightly inaccurate whilst Apple and Google do use WebKit and I am sure you correct in asserting that RIM does as well. Every browser is based round some sort of rendering engine, In the case of Firefox this is Gecko. All of the browsers you mention are not simply their rendering engine. The Gnome project recently moved their Epiphany browser from Gecko to WebKit. The advantages and disadvantages of the various rendering engines could be debated. Google could have chosen to use Gecko as the underlying engine for Chrome and no doubt have very valid reasons for choosing Webkit.

    The next is a matter of opinion, Mozilla developed a mobile browser, simply because they want a slice of the mobile market. Nokia chose to use it for their own reasons.

    Just to underline, I use both Chrome and Firefox and both have their pros and cons.