Lord of the Web

I ran across this video about Firefox mobile beta 4 for the Nokia N900 (running the Maemo 5 OS.) From the demoed browser on the video, you could make out that it is Fennec, but due to some reason Mozilla is now branding it more as Firefox mobile than as Fennec. Maybe to use the image that Firefox has as the most popular desktop browser.

One thing that caught my eyes was the ability to open the tabs that you had opened on your PC. This brings to the table true mobile experience whereby you can just leave your PC and start using your mobile, on the go, and continue your browsing just where you left it. This is made possible through the Weave add-on. Yeah, an add-on for a mobile browser.

Fennec brings with it the ability to install add-ons, something that Firefox is well known for. With the line separating mobile and desktop browsers getting thinner every passing year, the ability to use add-ons on a mobile browser could be the last step in removing this line altogether.

The highlights of Fennec are tabbed browsing, add-ons support, the awesome bar and the browser engine that is based on the one in Firefox 3.6.

While the Fennec browser looks promising, in my opinion, the browser that gets shipped with the N900, also based on the Mozilla browser engine, seems to be a whole lot better.

Watch the video and my article on the N900’s built-in browser and decide for yourself: