Firefox on Phones: Coming Eventually!

For quite some time, I've been confounded by the fact that my favorite browser--Firefox, naturally--hasn't been available on what's fast become one of the most important devices I use to get online: my phone.

I switch phones so frequently that my coworkers make fun of me. So I've tried a bunch of tiny browsers, from Pocket Internet Explorer to the iPhone's Safari to Blackberry Browser to Blazer, the archaic one that's still preloaded on Palm-based devices. Not even Safari on the iPhone makes me as happy as Firefox does every time I launch it on a Windows machine or a Mac.

So I'm pleased by today's news that Mozilla says it's getting serious about bringing the Firefox experience to mobile devices. Mike Schroepfer, the company's VP of engineering, has the details in a post on his blog. The announcement is mostly big-picturey stuff--it's not even clear yet what platforms mobile Firefox will run on, or when it'll be available. (Schroepfer says it'll be some time after Firefox 3 ships.) And the company says that rather than trying to rewrite the browser from scratch, it's focusing on building a browser that can easily be ported to next-generation phones which have a fair amount of memory--which, while it sounds like a smart strategy, is also one that might prevent it from running on most current phones and push the browser's release even further into the future.

The two things that are most exciting about Schroepfer's post:

1) He speaks--again, in broad terms--about a scenario where your bookmarks, history, and other bits of information from your desktop iteration of Firefox on your phone. The whole notion of that stuff living on a local PC, as it usually does, is feeling increasingly archaic--I can't wait for the day when it's all there, no matter what device I'm doing my browsing on. And it should all be done wirelessly and transparently, rather than requiring synching of the sort you can do to get bookmarks onto Windows Mobile handhelds and iPhones.

2) He also says that Mozilla's goal is to build a mobile Firefox that can run extensions. If that happens, it should instantly make the browser the most powerful, customizable one available on phones.

Side note: At the moment, I do my browsing-by-phone using an HTC TyTN II phone, a wonderful, wonderfully powerful device that's also available, in slightly different form, as the AT&T Tilt. Both versions run Windows Mobile 6 and therefore offer Pocket Internet Explorer, a browser that looks pretty sad compared to Safari on the iPhone. But I use Pocket IE with Reensoft's PiePlus, a spectacular piece of software that essentially turns Microsoft's browser into the app it should have been in the first place, with tabbed browsing, an excellent full-screen view, and lots of other features. If you use IE on a phone, you need PiePlus.

But I'm still looking forward to the day when I can dump it for a really good mobile incarnation of Firefox...

Comments

"I can't wait for the day when it's all there, no matter what device I'm doing my browsing on."

Opera already does this, and has for a couple years. What do you think of Opera Mini?

spencerlmp

October 15, 2007

3:04 PM PT