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Tag: Firefox for Android

  • Firefox For Android Will Come Preinstalled On Kobo Arc Tablets

    When you buy an Android smartphone today, you really only have one option of browser right out of the box – the vanilla Android browser. Sure, you can download other browsers off of Google Play, but why do that when you have a perfectly good browser already preinstalled on your device. Well, Mozilla is tired of you ignoring Firefox on Google Play so it’s going to do something about it.

    Mozilla announced today that Firefox for Android will come preinstalled on two devices this year – the Kobo Arc tablets and the Gigabyte GSmart Simba SX1 smarpthones. The move is obviously intended to get Firefox for Android on more devices as Mozilla struggles to gain marketshare in the mobile market. As of October, Net Applications reported that Firefox for Android is installed on only 0.01 percent of all mobile devices.

    As for the devices themselves, you’ve probably already heard of Kobo and its line of tablets. The company has been seen as a Nook competitor for a few years now, but Kobo has far superior hardware. It’s Kobo Arc 7HD and Arc 10HD blow the Nook HD and Nook HD+ out of the water.

    So, what does Firefox bring to the Kobo tablets? According to Mozilla, it’s all about the readability:

    Like Kobo’s Readability features, Firefox has a Reader feature to offer another way for Kobo customers to view and read Web content by removing advertisements, adjusting pictures and increasing font size to show a more clear view of the page. Everything in your Firefox Reading List is available offline, so you can catch up on reading when Internet access is unavailable, like on an airplane or subway.

    As for the Gigabyte GSmart Simba SX1, it’s a new smartphone from one of the world’s largest PC component manufacturers. It’s claim to fame is that it’s a dual-SIM smartphone that supports up to three-way calling. As for the hardware itself, it’s nothing special with a Snapdragon 400 dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM and Android 4.2.

    “We are pleased to partner with Kobo and GIGABYTE to offer Firefox as a pre-installed Web browser on Kobo Arc tablets and the GSmart Simba SX1 smartphone.” said Karen Rudnitski, Senior Product Manager for Firefox for Android. “Firefox is dedicated to offering users the best and most personal mobile browsing experience and we are happy to be able to bring that experience directly to users, globally.”

    The Kobo Arc tablets are now available in the U.S. and Canada while the GSmart Simba X1 will be available globally in December of this year.

    [Image: Kobo]

  • Firefox 21 Out Now On Desktop And Mobile

    Firefox 21 Out Now On Desktop And Mobile

    Firefox 20 was a pretty big release for the Web browser. It added a new download messenger and per-window private browsing, both of which are pretty substantial additions. Firefox 21 isn’t quite as grandiose, but it does add a number of great new features for the Mozilla faithful.

    Firefox 21 has two big features – a social API that supports more than Facebook and an improved Do Not Track UI.

    The first is rather important as it opens up Firefox to more social networks. Lesser known social networks Cliqz, Mixi (Japan only) and msnNOW can now all be accessed right from a sidebar in Firefox without having to actually visit the site in question. It probably won’t be long now until somebody builds a Twitter sidebar in Firefox with the social API.

    The improved Do Not Track controls give users even more control over what they want advertisers to see. The previous Do Not Track dialog in Firefox only had two options – user says nothing and user says don’t track. Those two options are kept in Firefox 21 with a third option explicitly telling advertisers to track their movements across the Web. It’s a small addition, but an important one in the greater context of the Do Not Track debates.

    Other additions in Firefox 21 include the Firefox Health Report and suggestions on how to improve startup time. The two kind of go hand-in-hand as Firefox Health Report will suggest ideas on how to improve performance in Firefox which may have a direct influence on application startup time.

    As for Firefox for Android, here’s what you will see in the latest version:

  • Shipping Open Sans and Charis fonts for Web Content
  • Ability to save media files on long tap
  • Access to recent history through long tap of back/forward buttons
  • Polished UI based on Holo theme

    • You can grab Firefox 21 for desktop here, and Firefox 21 for Android here.

  • Firefox 20 Adds New Download Manager, Per-Window Private Browsing

    Firefox 19, which launched in the middle of February, shipped with a built-in PDF viewer. Its successor, Firefox 20, comes with something even better – an update to the browser’s outdated download manager.

    Firefox 20 launched today, and the updated browser comes with a new download manager that makes Firefox much more visually appealing. If you used any previous version of Firefox, you’d know that the download manager was contained in a separate window. Now the download manager is contained within a drop down menu on the top right of the browser.

    Another addition in Firefox 20 is per-window private browsing. In other words, you can open a new private browser window without having to restart Firefox.

    Firefox for Android also gets an updated private window mode with the ability to open a new private tab without having to close the app. The Android app also adds the ability to customize the home screen with your most visited sites.

    Finally, Firefox for Android is adding support for devices with ARMv6 processors. Mozilla says that popular devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Next, HTC Aria, HTC Legend, Samsung Dart, Samsung Galaxy Pop and the Samsung Galaxy Q all now support Firefox for Android.

    You can grab Firefox 20 for desktops here. Firefox for Android is available on Google Play.