“The browser, codenamed Fennec, will initially be available for Nokia’s N900 phone, followed by other handsets,” Fildes reports. “It is currently going through final testing and could be released before the end of the year, said Jay Sullivan at Mozilla, the group behind Firefox.”
“The organisation is also developing versions for Microsoft’s Windows mobile and Google’s Android operating system,” Fildes reports. “However, he said that it would be some time before iPhone users would be able to use the browser. ‘Apple is very restrictive. It doesn’t allow other browsers,’ he said. ‘As it’s a pretty closed platform we don’t see that happening soon.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Huh? What was that? Sorry, we were distracted by downloading the iCab Mobile Web Browser for iPhone and iPod touch (US$1.99) from Apple’s iTunes App Store. There are so many other Web browsers for iPhone and iPod touch, both paid and free, that we want to try, too, if we could only find the time! Okay, back to The Beeb’s article…
Fildes continues, “Fennec has been in development for the last year and a half. The new software has many of the features of the desktop version, such as tabbed browsing, and an address bar that doubles as a search box. However, the mobile version will also scale pages to fit the device and will support functions such as tapping the screen to zoom in on a page.”
Full article here.
Those web browsers are based on safari
Tapping to zoom??
Welcome to 2006.
Pinch or go home to your mama.
Hey Safari! Do something will ya? Like adding that famous Private Browsing tab into the iPhone. I’m sure it will come in handy.
They are too busy working on the plugin for the Chrome OS that truly will banish all other “browsers”.
@MDN,
What Rob said…for all your snarkiness, MDN, there are some things about Firefox that are superior to Safari. It is a shame that Apple won’t give users the choice (most likely)
The usual immature MDN response…
Face it folks, Apple wont give you the choice to use Firefox. Deal with that, will you? Just pretend that you own you iPhone instead of leasing it from Apple.
Maybe you should read what MDN’s comment was relating to…
“‘Apple is very restrictive. It doesn’t allow other browsers,’ he said. ‘As it’s a pretty closed platform we don’t see that happening soon.'”
Then MDN points out there are browsers other than MobileSafari for iPhone/iPod touch. They weren’t saying Safari was the best, just pointing out Mozilla is pulling statements out of their ass.
I use Firefox on my iMac as I prefer it over Safari. On my iPhone I seldom use Safari because my apps are so good. After MDN’s response I opened the app store and searched for browser. Up came a whole list. I downloaded one and it worked as advertised. I call BS on Mozilla.
@Ed
And the other posters were claiming that the “other browsers” are based on Webkit, in other words essentially calling Safari to do the page rendering.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it would make sense. I could see Apple allowing that before they allow competing rendering engines on the iPhone.
——RM
So what’s superior about Firefox over Safari? Please qualify those statements with specific examples. As a developer, I find that they complement each other in features. But I have become partial to Safari because of it’s rendering speed.
*its not it’s (darn that iPhone autocorrect)
As much as I dearly love Firefox on my Mac, Mozilla are really, really REALLY getting on their nerves these days.
Their whiny attitude with the EU Windows browser ballot is where my appreciation for Mozilla really started to sour – every time they were quoted in relation to that story, I was embarrassed to be associated with them in any way. I kept screaming at my computer screen: You guys are a solid #2 in the browser wars!! Stop whining!!!!
And now, between Mozilla bizarrely biting the Google hand that feeds them by promoting Bing, their laughably idiotic claim that Firefox Mobile will kill off app stores, and now spreading FUD about Apple’s iPhone… well, let’s just say I’m growing more and more interested in seeing what the Chromium project produces. Once there’s a healthy enough ecosystem of privacy-related extensions for it, I’ll be more than ready to give it a shot.
” MDN, there are some things about Firefox that are superior to Safari.”
Some things? Lol, EVERYTHING about Firefox is superior to Safari.
Safari is a joke. It’s already been surpassed by Google Chrome in terms of market share. Nobody likes it but the hardest of the hardcore Mac fanboys.
Just think… opening the door to a
completely separate stand alone browser might mean not getting the “Safari can’t display that” message occasionally.
Who cares?
It’s no news.
I’m sorry for Mozilla, because if they don’t have browsers out there, they can’t keep collecting their “welfare check” from Google for searches made from the browser, and that’s almost their sole source of income.
But there’s already a browser on there more advanced than anything they do.
In any case, they’d presumably have to rewrite the app in pure Cocoa or it wouldn’t run on the device. All that work just for one phone, and no one would care anyway. It’s not as if people are holding off on buying iPhones, because they can’t replace the existing browser with a second-rate one.
Safari sucks eggs on the Mac compared to Firefox. Extensions alone make it the iPhone of the browser world. They are the app store of browsers. Safari aint got nuttin’
@F1Mikal in NYC
“Safari sucks eggs on the Mac compared to Firefox.”
God, aren’t fanboys boring?
Ugly, fairly slow, not fully native, can’t use Services, doesn’t use the keychain, inferior as regards rendering, lacks support for ICC Version 4 color profiles (even if you enable color-profile support in its hidden preferences).
It’s fine. It’s just nothing special.
“Don’t hold your breath for Firefox mobile browser for iPhone”
Oh boy, I wanted so much to have a browser that takes forever to start up and download updates and toolbars with out asking.
the Firefox guy’s statement “It doesn’t allow other browsers” is simply wrong – a lie. he knows better. if he had said ‘Apple’s iPhone app rules make it very difficult if not impossible to port non-web kit browsers to the iPhone’ then he would be credible. but he is scared of web kit – not by Apple of course, but by Google.
It’s a really great reason for those FireFox hold-outs to finally switch to or back to OS X
Safari is nice in many ways, but in good old-fashioned Apple tradition, extensions or addons are more or less non-existent; and that’s why I clearly prefer Firefox. If Apple would have something close to the mozilla add-ons place/portal, I would switch back in an instant. Oh and while they’re at it, they should re-think the concept of bookmarks! I mean, it’s like 2010 and Apple still doesn’t understand the concept of tags. Delicious, anyone?