Firefox for Mobile Now Available on Nokia’s N900 Maemo Platform! [Default MicroB browser still better]
FireFox has announced that it is now available for the N900 and Maemo 5. It’s been available a while as a Beta but now it’s ready. I’ve found the default MicroB To download, point your N900′s browser over to firefox.com/m
Your N900 will add “Mozilla Catalogue” to app manager and it’ll proceed to download and install the 12.8MB of Foxy goodness.
There are some nice little UI tweaks,
- such as zooming in to places of text entry, (like log in areas),
- the left swipe for tabs and
- right swipe for settings, back/forward, favourites (I love having a simple back/forward button on touch!)
- You also get Add ons.
- All tabs stay in this app (could be negative for some)
- “Awesome Bar”. Gets more awesome the more you use it.
- Not sure if some sites render better with FF, the only one that seems to be better with FireFox is Gmail and related google software. Not thoroughly checked though…
- Great password manager. Same as FF on desktop.
However…
I haven’t used this version much but I always moved back to the main browser during the Beta versions of Firefox.
The default MicroB on the N900 is just too good.
N900′s default MicroB vs FireFox
- Much smoother panning
- I think much faster
- Wider flash support (FireFox requires addon to watch YouTube)
- Spiral Zoom (it really does help fore precision zooming!!)
- Volume zoom (haven’t quite worked out how else to zoom other than tapping with FF)
- Each MicroB tab = 1 multitask window. You get a bigger thumbnail, title, and you won’t accidentally close several tabs.
- MicroB supports portrait browsing
- Typing with the keyboard automatically brings up address bar/search bar – you have to scroll back up with firefox.
- You can cut/copy/paste with MicroB
- On screen keyboard is temperemental at popping up on firefox.
- You can leave bookmark shortcuts on home screen with MicroB. FF bookmarks are in FF’s own homepage.
I would like to see a proper back button on the N900′s default browser. The panel of previously viewed pages is nice, but 99% of the time, I just want to press the back button and see the previous pages really quickly. [hardware keyboard is only option at moment]
Francois 
[...] estado leyendo las primeras impresiones de medios que lo han estado probando, como My Nokia blog, informan que las mejoras son notables, pero no destaca especialmente sobre MicroB, el navegador [...]
[...] Firefox for Mobile Now Available on Nokia’s N900 Maemo Platform! [Default MicroB browser still bet... January 30, 2010 [...]
[...] estado leyendo las primeras impresiones de medios que lo han estado probando, como My Nokia blog, informan que las mejoras son notables, pero no destaca especialmente sobre MicroB, el navegador [...]
[...] 5, 2010 9:39 am Last Saturday, FireFox officially went out of Beta stage, ready for the masses [well N900 owners [...]
[...] Last Saturday, FireFox officially went out of Beta stage, ready for the masses [well N900 owners anyway] [...]
100% agree with your assessment.
It is actually quite impractical to use Firefox for mobile without any way to adjust partial zooming and better panning. I bet the developers themselves would go back to MicroB after a few hours or real use.