Mozilla: Firefox for mobile phones is coming

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Open Source, Mobile Minute

Mozilla: Firefox for mobile phones is coming

by Brad Linder Oct 10th 2007

We've known Mozilla had big plans for the mobile space for a while now. But we were a bit disappointed when Mozilla announced their first major Mobile offering back in August. Joey is basically just a web clipping service that lets you save web content using your desktop Firefox browser and access it from any old mobile browser. We were hoping to see a mobile version of Firefox.

Well, sometimes dreams do come true. Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer writes on his blog that work is underway to create a version of Firefox for mobile phones. There aren't a ton of details yet, but here's what we can tell you:

Mozilla is adding mobile devices to the list of "first-class" development platforms
Mobile Firefox will be able to run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow third party development via XUL
Mozilla is expanding its team of mobile contributors
Development on Joey will continue
Don't expect further Minimo development
Mobile Firefox will ship after Firefox 3

Mozilla hasn't picked the target platforms yet. So there's no word whether you'll be able to run Firefox on Palm, Windows Mobile, or Symbian devices. Considering the iPhone is still officially a locked device, we doubt you'll see an official version for iPhone anytime soon, but that doesn't mean some industrious open source hacker won't find a way to run Mobile Firefox on the iPhone.

Tags: firefox, mobile-browsing, mobile-firefox, web-browser

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

C said 11:56AM on 10-10-2007

Uh...Minimo???
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/releases/arm/0.1/
I thought that had been available for a while?

Brad Linder said 11:57AM on 10-10-2007

Minimo was an experimental browser based on Mozilla. It was never very fast or stable. We're talking about a full-fledged Firefox web browser for mobile devices complete with support for Firefox extensions.

Aalaap said 2:12PM on 10-10-2007

I'd love to see a Java MIDP 2.0 version of Firefox for my Samsung SGH-U600. It's not something unwishable - I've been using Opera Mini for months now...

DagMX said 8:44AM on 10-11-2007

I dont think this would take off too well.
For one, firefox isn't the most memory efficient browser and memory is a huge commodity in phones.
Secondly, most smartphones usually have a really good browser preinstalled in the likes of Opera Mobile etc...
Thirdly, if they choose to do it in Java, Opera is a huge competitor to stand against as Opera probably has the best cross-platform structure.

Not to say it will fail, but I think its not really a good idea.

Also while extensions seem like a good idea, again it goes back to the memory limitations of phones. Especially on smartphones where the OS itself is so memory hungry.

silvia said 1:51PM on 10-15-2007

don't know if it will beat opera though

David said 3:23PM on 10-30-2007

I would love to have mozilla do a version of firefox on my iphone rather than safari.. i know it would be soo much better!!!

daadir said 9:33AM on 1-04-2008

VERY gud

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