In the mobile market, Fennec goes up against Opera Mobile and Skyfire, which are available on a wide variety of platforms. The most important competitor, however, is probably Safari, though Apple only makes its browser available on its own phones. Safari may not be available on a large number of different phones, but it has set the bar pretty high when it comes to the user experience that users now expect from a mobile browser. With the Awesome bar and Weave bookmark synchronization, Firefox, however, will offer a number of features that Safari doesn't currently offer. Fennec will also offer support for plugins.

Om Malik looked at an early version of Fennec on the Nokia N900 and thinks that the browser "is perhaps its single biggest standout feature" on the device.

Mozilla on the iPhone

Earlier last week, a number of rumors about a Mozilla app for the iPhone also started to make the rounds, though it remains unclear what this app would look like. Apple, after all, isn't likely to allow a full Firefox-based browser on the iPhone.

Recently, Mozilla released Fennec 3, the third beta version of the company's open-source touch mobile browser. In January 2008, ReadWriteWeb compared Opera Mini to the promises of the much anticipated Firefox mobile browser. A year later, Mozilla fans are still waiting and Opera Mini users continue to enjoy synced bookmarks and notes, skinning features, relatively fast downloads and increased video capabilities. From more than 1500 votes within the GetJar community, Opera Mini 4.2 has earned an 8.1 out of 10 user rating. But it will be interesting to see if die-hard Mozilla fans will sing the praises of Fennec.

To read GetJar's Opera Mini reviews or to download the app, visit the community's browser page. Or if you've got a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and would like to test Fennec, download it here.

According to a report from CNET, Mozilla is considering the possibilities. "I think our community would be interested in doing it, because Android will be appearing on more smartphones with the capabilities to provide a good browsing experience," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of mobile.

The only question now is whether or not Fennec will ever have a shot at becoming a popular mobile browser. Although development is moving along at a reasonable pace, it's certainly had its setbacks along the way...and it's nowhere near a version 1.0 yet. Meanwhile, WebKit is taking the lead when it comes to browsers on many of today's hottest smartphone platforms. The open-source WebKit code currently powers a lot of the newest browsers on the market including the one that ships on Android, iPhone's Safari browser, and the browser on the Palm Pre. Where does that leave Fennec? Apparently, it leaves it competing against Opera, which already has a solid foothold on the other mobile platforms lacking a decent mobile browser - Opera even became the top mobile browser recently.

Hopefully with the new NDK from Google, Fennec will be able to make its way onto at least one of the top smarthphone platforms out there. But we wonder: will anyone care when it arrives?

This is where Fennec, Mozilla's new mobile browser, comes in. In this post we look at Fennec's progress (it recently delivered its first beta) and Chris Beard gives us his thoughts on Fennec's strategy.

We've been tracking the progress of Fennec since its first prototype in April 2008, to the launch of the pre-alpha version in February this year, and the recent launch of the first beta in mid-March. The first extension for Fennec also arrived on the scene in November 2008 - URL Fixer, an add-on that corrects typos in the address bar. The development of Fennec hasn't been without its problems - we reported on some glaring bugs soon after the pre-alpha launch. However the release of the beta this month shows that solid progress is being made.

How Fennec Aims to Get Users

Fennec aims to bring the Firefox browsing experience to the mobile phone, including the ecosystem of add-ons that are probably the biggest reason for using Firefox on the PC. However one immediate problem that Fennec is going to face is actually getting on mobile devices in the first place. For example Apple's Safari browser is the default browser on the iPhone and most users of the iPhone are more than happy with the default. So is Mozilla actively working to make Fennec a default browser on other devices? Beard said that, yes, Mozilla is looking for OEM deals with the likes of Nokia, Windows Mobile and Symbian. As of now, Fennec is only available on the Nokia N810.

However, even without those deals, Beard said that one big advantage of Fennec is that it's easy to install. He said that Fennec aims to bring the "the full Web" experience to the mobile platform, including Firefox's famed add-on platform. So Fennec isn't supposed to be a mini or micro version of the Web for mobile. Beard said that Mozilla is anticipating the increase in power of mobile devices, so they think the full web experience is within reach on mobile. For example, he mentioned getting the "Awesome bar" into mobile (the feature where you start to type in URLs in the browser bar and Firefox auto-completes them).

The User Experience

Although Fennec aims to duplicate much of Firefox's functionality, it has to do some things differently. For example instead of using your mouse to navigate, in Fennec you can have touchscreen interaction - or cursor keys for non-touchscreen handsets. For more on the UI, check out Fennec in action in this screencast by Madhava Enros, the lead user interface designer for Fennec:

Fennec is still in beta and only available on Nokia N810 right now, but there are other developments happening in Mozilla which lead us to believe that Fennec is being positioned as a key complement to Firefox. For example Mozilla's sync app Weave, which we will discuss more of in the next post in this series, now has an extension for Fennec that allows you to sync data from your desktop to Fennec. This ability to sync data between devices could ultimately prove to be a killer feature for Fennec. Update: a commenter pointed out that Opera already does sync. While this is true, the fact is that Firefox has a much larger percentage of the browser market. So the potential impact of syncing between Firefox and Fennec is much greater than for Opera.

The Competition

But despite its sync and add-ons, Fennec faces some stiff competition in the mobile web browser market. Other than Safari on the market-leading (for mobile web in the US at least) iPhone, Opera has consistently been an innovator on mobile phones and it was one of our top 10 Mobile Web products of 2008. Opera's mobile browser is already being shipped on millions of handsets from major mobile manufacturers including HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile, and more. Opera is also available for different types of mobile operating systems like Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Linux, making it the alternative browser of choice for many handset owners.

We also rather like Skyfire, a relatively new entrant to the mobile browser market which has already gained many fans. Let's not forget too that Google Chrome is already present on Android phones.

So it's going to be very tough for Fennec, even with the reputation and functionality of Firefox behind it, to make headway in this competitive market. Now let us know in the comments which mobile browser you currently use - and why.

In PCMag tests, the Fennec browser was installed on two devices. On each one, the browser had to be launched twice in order for it to run. But upon start up, only the checkerboard pattern displayed, not the expected introductory screen with instructions. By scrolling up and left, you could reach the address bar, but entering in URLs only returned errors. By kick-starting the phone's modem by first launching Opera, it was possible to get the title bar of various web pages to appear - but still no page would display. Other Fennec testers experienced the same issues.

Wrote PCMag.com's columnist Sascha Segan, "If this is a milestone, it's marking a pit stop. Better luck next time, Mozilla folks."

What Happened?

According to Mozilla Mobile team member, Mark Finkle, the problem appears to be memory-related. He notes that Windows Mobile devices have some restrictions around memory use and that's what his team is now trying to work around. However, it sounds like the team still hasn't yet nailed down the exact problem which is causing the bug. On his blog, he writes "when we figure out the true cause...we'll be sure to blog the details." (When?)

Checking in on the bug's status, it's still listed as "Assigned to: Nobody." But we're taking that to mean (we hope) that the entire Fennec team is working on addressing this showstopper of an issue.

Says one commenter on Bugzilla, the problem happens immediately following an allocation failure in gfxImageSurface, but no one else has chimed in to confirm his statement yet.

The Mobile Web: the Next Browser Battleground

Interestingly enough, while Mozilla's attempt at the mobile web was crashing and burning, another mobile browser, Skyfire, was releasing a landmark version of their browser, too. Skyfire version 0.9 for Windows Mobile and Symbian, a browser which already supports Flash 10, Silverlight, and Ajax, introduced a new "social" version of their software on February 12th.

In the latest update, Skyfire offers a Friendfeed-like start portal which delivers news from RSS sources as well as updates from Facebook and Twitter. It's pre-configured with feeds from Digg, ESPN, Google News, Hulu, YouTube and Yahoo! News, but those can be easily customized.

In addition to relative newcomer Skyfire, some of the most popular browsers for the mobile web comes from Opera, whose mobile software is currently installed on millions of devices worldwide. 

Although Skyfire and Opera may not have the brand-name recognition that Mozilla enjoys (well, perhaps Opera does), it's clear that when it comes to mobile web browsers, innovation can happen anywhere, from any company. What dominates on the desktop will not necessarily be what dominates on our mobiles, and for mobile web users, that could be a good thing.

Installing The Fennec Extension

Shortly after Finke created the mobile-ready version of URL Fixer, the addons.mozilla.org web site was updated to include support for the Fennec browser. When Fennec users visit the site, it will recognize that they're coming from the mobile browser and will offer direct installation via an "Add to Fennec" button.

After a required browser restart, users will see the new extension available from the Fennec Add-ons Manager, where it's also possible to access preferences and disable or enable add-ons.

Mobile Add-Ons Are Fennec's Killer Feature

The idea of being able to use add-ons in a mobile browser is definitely going to be a huge selling point for the Fennec browser when it goes to launch as it will be the first to support third-party extensions. It opens up a world of possibilities that take advantage of the new platform, too. Is it possible we'll see add-ons that allow you to interact with your phone's functions itself like "click-to-all" or "copy to my contacts"? That may depend on the mobile phone itself and how locked down it is. Still, we imagine that developers will soon be thinking of all sorts of unique add-ons that work best in a mobilized environment.

What sort of add-ons would you want to see in a mobile browser? Let us know in the comments.

Screenshots courtesy of Madhava Enros and Mark Finkle