The Second Beta of Firefox 4 for Android is now available for download. It’s faster and sleeker, loads pages more quickly and of course its install size has been reduced. Looks like it’s almost ready to go live. I have already installed it and am impressed with the performance so far.
As mentioned in the video, it has also been released for the Nokia Maemo device.
This update of Firefox 4 Beta for mobile is smaller, sleeker and faster with:
- a 60% smaller install size
- A new theme with a fresh look and new features for tabbed browsing and link sharing
- Optimizations that make it around 25% faster on the SunSpider Javascript benchmark than the stock browser on Android 2.2
In addition to important foundational improvements like more responsive pinch-zooming and clearer text rendering, there are a number of things that you may notice in this new beta.
- Revised Android-inspired theme – The “theme,” or look, of Firefox on mobile has undergone an overhaul.
- Reorganized awesomescreen – The browser gives you quicker access to the sites you visit often and have visited recently, while also minimizing the amount of typing you have to do. If you want to find a site you’ve seen recently (and that’s all you remember about it), your history is right at hand. And, finally, you can see the sites that you already have open on your desktop computer, via sync, right here as well.
- Undo close tab – The ability to reopen an accidentally closed tab is as useful while mobile as it is on the desktop, where this feature is very popular.
- Sharing – You can share links and images from almost anywhere you find them through the Android sharing system.
Though not available on the Android Market, you can download Android app from Mozilla’s servers by scanning or clicking this QR Code:
You can get more details about the Firefox UI improvements from Madhava Enros, Lead UX Designer, by clicking HERE
Mozilla is also encouraging developers to begin building add-ons for Firefox 4 Beta for mobile.
Source: Mozilla
