14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla's Firefox Mobile browser dubbed Fennec has been finally released into the wild. As the team announced a while ago, the new browser comes to the owners of an HTC Touch Pro handset for the moment, and it is only a “Milestone Release” and not a finished product.
Those who would like to try out the new application should back up their mobile phones before going to the playground. Moreover, they should also know that at this moment Fennec comes with a number of user interface implications, which would include graphics for a 300 dpi screen, as well as control layout intended for a VGA screen while a hardware keyboard is needed for text input.
“Our focus to this point has been to have a working, usable browser, ” stated Mozilla's Brad Lassey. “To get there in a hurry we have punted in a few places, and I’d like to point a couple of them out. First is the update mechanism (both for the browser itself and for extensions). After installing this release, you will not be offered updates automatically, so please stay tuned for follow up releases. Also, we have disabled plug-in support. This is one of our high priority items going forward. Finally, as I mentioned before, there is no soft keyboard support. On an HTC Touch Pro, you’ll have to slide out the keyboard to enter a url.”
At the same time, Brad Lassey also talked about the previously leaked versions of Fennec that were spotted on the Web during the past few days. “Over the last week and half there have been several blog posts and “news” articles floating around the internet about leaked Windows Mobile Fennec builds. This has been fairly entertaining to those of us working on the project for a couple reasons. First, the builds that these posts have pointed to are the builds that I pointed to on twitter. They were intended to be used by the developers working on the project (or anyone else willing to deal with really buggy software) to find bugs before we pushed anything out to the general public,” Lassey said.
The Fennec that we see today is not the final product, but it is a great thing that the team allows users to have a glimpse at what will come towards them in the future, even if now it is only available for a single device. According to the earliest impressions on the browser, although it loads up nicely, it seems that it does not perform any searches.
If you're an HTC Touch Pro owner, head up for the Fennec on Softpedia and tell us how it goes.