N900 Videos

Fennec is the project name of the mobile version of Firefox. Compared to desktop Firefox, it has an interface better-suited to use on small-screen devices. This video is by Jay Sullivan, the vice president of Mobile at Mozilla corporation. He is giving us a tour of the browser on an N900.

Like so many browser demos, this one starts with the New York Times home page. By sliding the page to the right, Jay reveals a column of tabs with thumbnails on the left, together with a New Tab button. By sliding the page to the left, a column of controls is revealed: back, forth, bookmark and settings.

Scrolling the webpage (by dragging any part of it) moves the title bar off the screen. Double-tapping on a section zooms that section to fill the screen width. Ah, that’s why these guys always use the NYT for these demos—its narrow columns zoom so nicely! Another double-tap zooms out. Pictures can be double-tapped to zoom in, and double-tapped again to zoom in further still, then another double-tap zooms out again.

A button in the left-hand column, next to the New Tab button, brings up Weave, which provides links to the tabs that are open on the user’s desktop Firefox. So, if you’re surfing the web on your PC you can access those same tabs on Firefox Mobile.

Fennec settings include on/off switches for image display, JavaScript, plugins, and cookies. There’s a download tool, and a button for browser addons (the first mobile browser to provide these).

The URL bar (the “Awesome Bar”) listens as you type, and provides shortcuts to web pages you’ve visited recently, or often, or that you have open on your PC.

The layout engine is that of Firefox 3.6 desktop, including its implementation of HTML5.

The San Francisco folks had an N900 meetup in a noisy bar, and some of the Mozilla Fennec guys were there demonstrating Fennec on the N900. It runs pretty well, much faster than the earlier betas that we saw on the N810 earlier this year.

The Mozilla guys were showing the unreleased Beta 5, and tnkgrl filmed it for her blog. Filming conditions weren’t ideal, and the N900’s screen is often unreadable. But to make up for that, the walkthrough is highly informative and the reasoning behind the design of Fennec is well-explained.

The design of the user interface is largely driven by two factors: the limited screen space, and the difficulty of typing on a small device. This leads to the following design decisions:

• Website suggestions are presented as soon as you start typing, based on your frequent and recent visits
• Your desktop browser’s bookmarks and history are available (synchronised by Mozilla Weave)
• Direct, easy access is provided to search engines and key sites such as Wikipedia
• When you start to scroll a page, the top-of-page fields disappear, thereby automatically going full-screen
• Controls such as history and tabs are just “off the left of the page”, while back/forward and bookmarking are just “off the right of the page”
• Controls for preferences, downloads and add-ons are completely outside the context of a regular browsing page
• Add-ons are easily installed and can optimise the interface for the personal needs of the user

The great news is that the release version of Mobile Firefox (Fennec) will probably be available before the end of 2009.