Notices

Do you know why qt builds of nightly/aurora/beta are no longer available ? Qt version offered much better performance than the GTK one.

i find the aurora builds to be smoother and faster than the beta. QT builds are definitely faster but virtual keyboard and portrait dont work!

tried out nightly 7.01a:

startup 20+ secs (microb and opera in no more than 2 secs)

page loading (TMO) almost twice as long as microb (microb with faster fox and speed dns add ons)

page scrolling virtually non-existent until page is ~70% done loading

obviously most add-ons will not work with nightlies

2 things in my mind going for beta/nightly: boomark sync and offline reading.

the five minute verdict, yet again: stick to microb/opera

i've been using de firefox builds for sometime n i prefer it to microb due to tabbed browsing, easier acess to bookmarks, history, home page, addons n sync. as for startup time ive decided to just forget about it n think of de advantages.

the qt builds are definitely the smoothest just not updated often. im presently using de last aurora qt build. the betas dat have been released seem still not to be smooth..

I downloaded fennec 5.0 from here:
http://moff.mozilla.com/latest/maemo5-gtk/multi/

Is this the latest fennec 5.0 (non beta)?

In my case noscript 2.1.1.2 did not work with this version.
http://noscript.net/getit
Is this only for me or a general problem with fennec?

MicroB seems to be able to use noscript 2.1.1.2, at least addons tells me that it uses it.

No you are not using the latest version. fennec 5.0 final was released on 21. so just go to firefox.com/m and install it from there. You might need to delete your catalog from the list in the app manager.

And just by following your link to the noscript page i saw there is a special mobile version
http://noscript.net/nsa/ yout might want to try that one.

Fennec 8 (alpha) now in nightly build just tested still slow but I noticed html5 support is great now.

I am using Fennec 5.0, and it's terribly slow. The only reason I use it
is the syncing addon, which doesn't work in microb.
The long start time is not the problem for me, it's the slow scrolling.

Unfortunately, that's the way it's working. I would suggest using Iceweasel via Easy Debians, it's faster (sic!), and You can use microB to Your "daily" browsing, and Iceweasel, when power of addons is needed. With proper configuration - i.e. emulated right and middle clicks, + ED on dedicated partition, using Iceweasel is very pleasant. Except long starting time, which is no such a big deal.

(In case someone may still don't know, Iceweasel = de-branded firefox on Debian)

I was running firefox and seamonkey on my zaurus a few years back, so yes, a full browser can run on a mobile device. However fennec is not a "full" browser. The most useful feature of firefox is noscript - unfortunately the version of noscript for fennec is, for whatever reason, a severely cut-down version of the "desktop" one (no on the fly enable/disable scripts per site makes it marginally useful).

Mobile cpu/mem/power will always be a few years behind desktop so if mozilla codes for fennec in the same bloated way as they code for firefox then they will never "catchup". I think the mozilla have lost their way lately as firefox is seemingly getting more and more bloated and definitely slower whereas opera is still lean and mean.