FF Mobile In Action

Today I’d like to tell you about Firefox Mobile on the N900, running in conjunction with the new Mozilla Weave web service. I’ve been testing them out on my handset for about a month now since the beta release of Fennec (the codename for Firefox Mobile). The N900 is the first device to get Firefox Mobile but it should also appear on Google Android phones in the near future. There is talk from Mozilla of an iPhone version too, but Apple are so draconian with 3rd party software I’m not sure that’ll happen. I just can’t see them allowing another browser on the iPhone to compete with Safari. (correction: According to Fab the iPhone has allowed some 3rd party browsers already, see link in comments) Anyway, here’s my thoughts upon testing Firefox Mobile for some time.

Facing The Critics:
It seems fashionable with some people to bash Firefox right now and use it as the butt of their jokes. I think many of them are too quick to forget the great work Mozilla have done for us in spreading Open Source software to the masses. Many users get their first exposure to the wonderful world of FOSS through the likes of OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Sure it’s not perfect, it has it’s bugs and it can be slow at times too. But I think the emergence of real competitors like Google Chrome has and will continue to improve Open Source browsers in general. I like Chromium but Firefox is still the browser of choice on my desktop. Weave is also an interesting prospect and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. I was curious to see if I would like this new compact Firefox quite as much as I like it’s big brother. Read the rest of this entry »

Ho ho ho! A festive Rewind for you today. Well, it includes Christmas Day anyway. I trust everyone is having a good holiday season? I’ve caught my regular Christmas cold, it seems to happen every year and I dunno why, but it’s clearing up now and I’m getting my voice back slowly. You’ll hear that on the latest Rathole Radio, it sounds like Louis Armstrong is guest hosting from beyond the grave which is pretty funny. So, let’s get into what’s happened in the last week.

On Monday we did our final live Linux Outlaws of the year and man it was a long one. It ended up just over 2hrs but I suppose we can call it a Festively Fat Special Edition of the show. I waffled on for ages about my experience with the N900 but hopefully people will still find it interesting. Fab did a great job editing it all and it was released as episode 128 “The Mystery Box” on Wednesday. We actually did some more recording on Tuesday afternoon making some secret content for episode 129. That won’t be live obviously but you should be able too hear it some time this week. I can’t tell you what this special content is, but I will reveal that it was very funny and involved lot’s of takes to get it right. On Tuesday evening I ventured out into the snow and ice travelling to a carol concert my friend Sarah was putting on near Ormskirk. She conducts a local choir and the gig was really good, a great mixture of traditional and modern music with a guest appearance by Elvis, well an Elvis look alike anyway. It was a fun night and I was glad I’d made the effort to get there in the ice. Read the rest of this entry »

Fennec On My N900

I’ve got a quick tutorial of sorts for you today. As you may have read in my last update, I was very lucky to receive an N900 Linux-based phone from Nokia last week. I’ll do a proper in-depth write up about the device and the Maemo operating system in due course, when I’ve had some more time to test it. But for now I’d like to talk about installing Firefox. For a while now Mozilla have been developing a version of Firefox called Fennec, and it’s aimed at mobile devices. The name comes from a type of fox known for it’s small stature. I originally thought it would keep the name Fennec through it’s entire lifespan, but I’ve since been told that it’s only called Fennec as a codename whilst in development. Once it’s released it’ll just be called Firefox. Confused? Anyway, this is all beside the point.

I read earlier in the week that Fennec had been packaged for Maemo and would be available on the N900 and N810. I actually like the default browser in Maemo a lot, but I was also curious to see just what Mozilla had done with the interface. A choice of web browser is always nice on a system anyway, just ask Microsoft… oh no wait, don’t. A quick web search brought up the appropriate page on Mozilla’s website and I was able to install Fennec with ease. So for the benefit of anyone with a Maemo device, here’s what I did. Read the rest of this entry »