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.