Mozilla.org offers an early developer release of the mobile version of their web browser Firefox called Fennec. A fennec (Vulpes zerda) is a fox subspecie, which can be found in North-African Sahara and the Sinai. It features huge ears and a extra large tail, making that little night active critter look extremly cute. Thus, so far for the donator of the name, let’s go technical.
The features are:
- Bookmarks, including tags
- Smart URL bar (“awesome bar”)
- Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
- Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
- Easy access to multiple search engines
- Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
- Zoom in and out
- Instant Web site ID (“Larry“)
- Password manager
- Popup blocker
- Clear private data
- Click on a phone number to initiate a call
- JavaScript API to get device location
- Popup blocker
- Clear private data
- Searchable download manager
- Preferences pane
The mobile desert fox now only runs on OS2008 (“chinook” or “diablo”), like the Nokia Internet-Handheld N810, but there are versions for Windows and Mac OS X available, too.
Mozilla now wants to gather feedback and plans “further alpha releases which focus on performance, including projects like TraceMonkey, speculative parsing, and many Fennec and Gecko optimizations.”