Fennec Alpha 2 Version Is Out


Mr.Gonzo said:
Oh i dig that , thats a sweet browser.
It's going to be open source ?
It should already be, it's just a slightly lighter xulrunner with some stuff on top.
 
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Mr.Gonzo said:
Oh i dig that , thats a sweet browser.
It's going to be open source ?
Yes. All you're looking at is a properly mobile mode Mozilla Firefox. Took 'em long enough... :D
(They've been at something akin to this for about the last 4-5 years now... ;) )
 
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I tried Alpha 1 on my N800 and thought the UI was great (though obviously still rough around the edges), but it was incredibly slow. It would just become totally unresponsive for fairly long periods, and even when it was working, it was too slow to use comfortably. I just tried Alpha 2, and the performance was still pretty bad. If they fix that, it will be a great browser for small-screened devices.
 
Ravnos said:
I tried Alpha 1 on my N800 and thought the UI was great (though obviously still rough around the edges), but it was incredibly slow. It would just become totally unresponsive for fairly long periods, and even when it was working, it was too slow to use comfortably. I just tried Alpha 2, and the performance was still pretty bad. If they fix that, it will be a great browser for small-screened devices.
the pandora omap 3 cpu is way faster than n800 though, right? so for all we know it could be decent on it already :p
edit: also the fennec alpha 2 demo videos are using the n810 which I think has the same cpu as the n800 but higher clocked.. could explain why it didn't run as fast on your n800 as it looked in the demos
 
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The build Ravnos used might have not have had Cairo rendering hardware accelerated.
 
The OS2008 update upped the clock on the N800 to the same 400mhz as the N810. The cpu's are identical. Its slow as heck on my n800 too. There supposed to be hardware acceleration now? Last I heard there weren't any video drivers for the IT's.
 
Wow. What the heck is the point of a "mobile browser" that can't run on mobile hardware?
 
Capn_Fish said:
Not to rain on this parade or anything....

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/fenne...5ngstr%C3%B6m-1

I'm guessing it's not going to be that snappy (it was even slow on my laptop (1.6 GHz P-M, 768 MB RAM, Gentoo Linux (though not self-compiled))) :(.


That is fairly old info. At this point it is actually relatively usable. There is hardware acceleration, which eliminates most of the slow down, but it's still noticeably slower than it's competitors--somewhat to be expected though, being more full-featured.

Given another month or two, I think it'll become quite competitively functional with the other mobile browsers.
 
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There's the issue on some mobile devices with graphical toolkits internally using higher bits per pixel than the device's output and a lot of conversions have to take place.
Qt4.4 on the n810 has the same problem.

It's fixable, if not already fixed by someone.
 
I've followed fennec's development and was excited at first. Their intentions were to create an easy to use handheld browser, but sadly they failed IMO. Fennec isn't intuitive. For me the requirements for a mobile browser are:

1. Compatibility(I hate it, when pages aren't rendered as they are supposed to be or fail completely)
2. Speed(fast as possible without sacrificing compatibility)
3. Good GUI(fast and convenient, without overload of functions)
Fennec is designed to be most usable in tablet mode, which Pandora isn't designed for.

The best handheld browser(to me) and the one I want to see on Pandora is microB. It is a perfect fit in a half tablet/half clamshell environment. Sadly it's GUI is closed source. Maybe Nokia opens the source, when Fremantle is out, or someone manages to make the binary usable on Pandora because of the similarities to OMAP2 hardware. Someone on ITT is developing a webkit engine for microB right now, so it will be possible to switch between gecko and webkit on the fly.

ED said, that he will make a vid of a longer browsing session with full firefox, when he has got a case and keyboard. If it is fast enough, it is less urgent to have a good handheld browser right now.
 
I want to be able to run full blown tabbed Firefox. microB doesn't have tabs, and multiwindows aren't fun.
 
What is the practical difference between multiple browser windows, which you switch through a menu or keyboard shortcut on one side and a tabbed browser, which is navigated the same way on the other side, in a full-screen environment like matchbox?
 
uncola said:
Ravnos said:
I tried Alpha 1 on my N800 and thought the UI was great (though obviously still rough around the edges), but it was incredibly slow. It would just become totally unresponsive for fairly long periods, and even when it was working, it was too slow to use comfortably. I just tried Alpha 2, and the performance was still pretty bad. If they fix that, it will be a great browser for small-screened devices.
the pandora omap 3 cpu is way faster than n800 though, right? so for all we know it could be decent on it already :p
edit: also the fennec alpha 2 demo videos are using the n810 which I think has the same cpu as the n800 but higher clocked.. could explain why it didn't run as fast on your n800 as it looked in the demos

As someone else posted, the processor speed for the N800 is the same as the N810 with OS2008. There is no difference in speed.

sindbad said:
The build Ravnos used might have not have had Cairo rendering hardware accelerated.
The build I used was the one in the Mozilla repository, so if they're using features that aren't enabled in my build, they haven't released it yet.
 
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Ravnos said:
The build I used was the one in the Mozilla repository, so if they're using features that aren't enabled in my build, they haven't released it yet.
Actually, they DO have hardware acceleration, but it likely wasn't available for you because you weren't using it on a supported hardware set. On the OMAP3, which it is quite focused on fully supporting, you would get hardware acceleration and it would run at a much more reasonable speed. It's still a bit slower than other mobile browsers though, because of the 16bpp bug.
 
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mali said:
What is the practical difference between multiple browser windows, which you switch through a menu or keyboard shortcut on one side and a tabbed browser, which is navigated the same way on the other side, in a full-screen environment like matchbox?
I take it you have you never tried using microB on a n800 or n810 with more than one window open while trying to use it fullscreen? Its an incredible pain in the ass, not even taking into account the slowdown on the IT. An F11 slimmed down Firefox with tabs at the top would be perfect for people who like to surf multiple sites at once (like forums.)
 
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