Moblin Browser

Browser Goals
The primary goal is to provide a PC-quality, rich Internet experience for Intel-processor-based platforms. To this end, the Moblin browser will:

• be a Mozilla-based browser.
• be highly tuned for performance and power.
• on a small screen device, it will have a simple UI and provide fast navigation to Web content. We need to pay close attention to very basic operations that are still hard to accomplish on small screen devices, like entering URLs, managing bookmarks, providing an equivalent to multiple windows/tabs, etc.
• be compatible with the web. It will provide access to the "full" web, including rich Internet applications developed using AJAX. Web content developers should be able to optimize to smaller screen sizes, etc, but not be required to adopt alternate technologies.

Proposals
The current proposals are to use Firefox Mobile (code name Fennec) and Firefox 3.1.

• For devices that have a small or touch screen, we recommend Fennec as the browser of choice.
• For devices like Nettops and Netbooks that have a large screen, manufacturers will have the options to install either Fennec or Firefox 3.1.

Differences between Firefox and Fennec

• Although both share the same rendering engine, the UI is completely different. Firefox is not designed for devices with small screens but fennec is. One main problem with the desktop version of Firefox is that its dialogs don't fit on small screen devices.
• Firefox doesn't support touchscreen operation like finger scroll, fennec does.
• Although fennec supports add-ons just like Firefox, many of the add-ons will not work as is. Add-on owners need to add the new fennec application id and version number to the install.rdf file. In some cases, they will have to modify their UI because of the change in the menu system and tool bar layout.

Pros and Cons of Using Fennec
Pros

• Brand name recognition.
• It has the full backing of Mozilla.org. They have been constantly pulling in resources within Mozilla to work on this project. They are very serious in making this a success.
• It supports add-ons. Many of the existing Firefox add-ons will work in fennec with some minor modifications. The Firefox mobile team do plan on having many of the popular add-ons working by the time it is released to public.
• It has a new user interface that is designed for mobile devices with small screens. The new toolbar is simple and easy to use. It has introduced a new awesome bar for entering url and search text. It has built-in panning (finger scroll) support. They have completely replaced the menu system with a touch bar approach. There will be a spatial view for managing tabs, histories, and bookmarks.
• There will be a lot of performance works planned for fennec. One of the goals is to get the startup time down to about 3 seconds.
• The current Fennec's release schedule seems to be aligned with Moblin 2.0. Alpha 1 is targeted for August 29th- beta by end of this year. It shares the same schedule as Firefox 3.1.

Cons

• Memory usage is high.
• We still don't know how well the browser's UI will look and feel on a Netbook or Nettop with a large screen (>= 10 inches) or without touchscreen support.
• We don't know how fennec can take advantage of OpenGL to do 3D rendering. Need further study on this.
• Schedule concern. There is always a chance that the fennec's schedule might slip as shown in Firefox 3.0 (late by a few months).