14 DAY TRIAL // Fennec has been spotted in the wild before, about three months ago, when the developers released the pre-alpha version of the browser meant for use on the HTC Touch Pro, yet now the Alpha 1 version of the browser is available for download. According to the team, the new version is available for download for testing purposes, as there is still a series of bugs that comes with it and that might slow down the browsing experience.
In keeping with the development team, the new version has been tested on the HTC Touch Pro, and it should be used on that device for now, yet more are expected to see support added in future versions of the browser. Those that would like to install the new Fennec Alpha 1 on their Windows Mobile-powered handset can download it either directly on their phone or on a PC and then transfer it to the device, but they should take a look at the release notes to have an idea of how it might work.
“It is not yet recommended to use this release for daily browsing tasks. Certain performance problems will become immediately apparent to the user. Panning has a noticeable delay between the user first touching the page and the page moving. We are certain that other less obvious bugs exist and we invite you to help bring them to light,” is what the developers say.
The Fennec Alpha 1 comes along with a series of new features, like the Add-Ons Manager, the Downloads Manager, the CSS-based theme, a new JavaScript engine, called TraceMonkey, Mozillla's memory-management library called jemalloc, or bookmark folders and bookmark editing, as well as with some improvements, such as faster application start-up time, faster panning and faster zooming.
The release is mainly focused on stability, performance, and integration with the Windows Mobile operating system, and it comes with a reduced memory usage, while the look of the browser has been adapted to fit smaller screens as well. The features that have been available with previous milestone releases of the browser are also present in the new iteration.
The installation instruction for the Fennec Alpha 1 can be found here. The installation package is available for download on Softpedia as well, via this link. Those that would like to test the browser on their desktop computer can download the Fennec 1.0 Beta 1 for Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X from Softpedia.