Notices

Here is how to get most flash sites to work with the current 4b5pre builds. I just tested it with todays nightly qt build. Works fine still:

1. If you had any previous version of firefox/fennec installed:
WARNING THIS DELETES YOUR FIREFOX PROFILE!!!
in xterm as root:

2. Install Fennec nightly build from:
GTK Version:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o.../binary-armel/
QT Version:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o.../binary-armel/
(n00b hint: install either one, not both...D'Oh...whichever you prefer. for me gtk works slightly better.
In current Qt builds the mailto protocol handler is broken. So clicking on mail links will result in an error msg (no crash). But the Qt Version is faster.)


Update 11.3.11:
At the Moment the nightly build repo is not being updated (since 5.3.11). I do not know why. I suspect it might be because there are problems with the latest builds. If anyone knows please speak up.
I did just install the 11.3.11 GTK build and I did have some major issues. (Scrolling not working correctly) I went back to last build in nightly repo.
If you still want to install newest nightly build goto:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/
(this is a HUGE directory and takes time to load)
Choose the latest *-mozilla-central-maemo5-gtk/ or
*-mozilla-central-maemo5-qt dir/
In the initial dir you will find the international version with many locales included (installed size 5MB bigger than single locale version).
In the en_US subdir is the smaller english only Version. Other single locale Versions are not available without the repos.


3. Start fennec/firefox and type
in the URL box. If you get a warning that warranty ends here, ignore it.
Now set
You may have to use the search box if you cannot scroll (known bug).


4. Restart Firefox

Youtube and many other flash sites will work fine now. Some, like grooveshark, will crash the tab in question or firefox completely.
Some addons will break this setup. If you need addons, check compatibility by installing one addon at a time...


I hope this helps someone. :O

Update
Of course this also works with normal release beta 4b4 (and higher) if you don't trust nightly build.

Those are available from Release ftp:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or...eleases/4.0b4/
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or...eleases/4.0b5/

how stable is the nightly build otherwise? is it a lot faster than the latest stable release? or should the average joe just stick with stable build for now?

It varies from day to day but in general they are pretty stable. The Guide should also work with the non pre "stable" 4b4 Version. But I havent tetsted it myself.

Updated the 1. Post.

I just tested the new 4b6pre beta. Still works fine.
IF You update from 4b4/5 you don't need to purge or uninstall and delete the profile dirs. Simply update with HAM or dpkg.

I did just test it with the 4b4 version, and yes, it does work fine. However, with 4b4, I found myself unable to type into any text fields on any web pages, so I went back to Firefox Mobile 1.1 for now. 4b4 starts up faster than 1.1, but I didn't notice enough of a difference otherwise to make me want to try to keep up with the nightly builds and try to work around ongoing bugs just yet. 1.1 is plenty fine for day-to-day browsing for now...

Never had this problem in any of at least 50 nightly builds I tried. In fact I scarcely had any probs at all. QT 4b6pre working great here.

Cool, I'll give it another try soon! But yeah, it may just be a problem with 4b4, if you haven't tried that one yet.

Amazing that it has been 2 years since I first tried fennec on my touch hd on winmo 6.1 Completely unusable at the time of course. And they still haven't been able to release a version that has been worthwhile. I know they are getting closer but I think most will agree that microb is still the better browser.

What exactly is your problem with the current builds? Apart from the slow first start I don't have any problems. Even the nightly builds are usually rock stable. It rarely ever crashes and once it's running it's not much slower than microb. And it has Tabs. I really miss that in microB.