You may remember back in May 2007 we reported that Mozilla were looking in to the possibility of developing a mobile version of their popular web browser, Firefox. A year and a half on and it looks as though the wish of the Firefox fanatics could be granted, with a series of leaked screenshots showing a mobile Firefox browser in action on a Windows Mobile device.
The current industry buzz is reporting that mobile Firefox (code named “Fennec”) is only in its Alpha testing phase, which makes general release a long way away yet, but the screen renderings are encouraging. What’s particularly interesting is the shot of the Acid3 website test, scoring a massive 88/100. For those that don’t know, Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain web standards. Out of interest, I decided to pitch this score against what will be classified as the benchmark competitor for internet access on a mobile device – the iPhone. The Acid3 test on the latest iPhone 3G ROM scored 74/100; impressive, but a way off Mozilla’s Fennic browser (and bear in mind that Fennic is still in its alpha testing phase).
It’s no great surprise to see Mozilla’s browser popping up on Windows Mobile, although it’s likely that, once generally available, there will be versions for a multitude of devices such as Symbian and proprietary OS’s such as BlackBerry.
Just to finally put in to perspective how important it is for Mozilla to move in to the mobile space; when we first reported on Mozilla’s intention to develop a mobile browser some eighteen months ago, around 15% of all desktop web traffic came from Firefox – today that figure is 20%.
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