Notices

Seems like there is a new feature that I missed (wasn't in the release notes). There is now a reflow text setting that reflows when you zoom in. This works pretty well IMO and seems to be (on some sites) better than the opera way of doing it.

EDIT:
(fixed spelling)

I also just discovered that shift+ctrl+o locks the browser from rotating!

For me speed is the thing, and if I want to find out what's going (in Egypt for example) I use MicroB. The Maemo boys did it right! I've tried Opera and the new Fennec, and both load up so slowly it's like I'm back on MetroPCS! I did a little time test, loading up BBC news as the homepage. Opera: over a minute, then I just closed it. Latest Firefox: 38 secs, and the default MicroB browser 21 secs, so I'll be sticking with that one. Plus I like the selection arrow and having the address bar on the bottom, but that's just my personal pref.

Have you tried going from the BBC Homepage to a news article and timimg them? As Firefox seems to improve with each update but there is not a lot they can do about the initial loading times as MircoB will always win them.

Whilst I always used Opera on my 5800 when away from wi-fi I can't say I have found any advantages to it over MicroB/Firebox on the N900.

Is it possible to make fennec automatically open the 'connect to' dialogue menu once trying to access a website while not connected to the internet? I keep forgetting to get connected first before trying to browse web pages

Sadly this beta doesnt work for me. The app just freezes and that's it. . I tried reinstalling but outcome is still the same.

[edit]

...but works from command line. *sigh*

Can Firefox Mobile not be jerry-rigged to be loaded at boot time too, like MicroB, or is this mechanism unknown or closed? From my reading, MicroB's constant presence in memory is the reason for its speed, but could that not be replicated?

Well, I am sure the firefox mobile could have code added and recompiled, who would want to do that?

If you want a quick fix, here is something that I whipped up, I think it makes a difference (since from what I can tell fennec spends most of it;'s time on IO so if we preload the files it is faster), but you are welcome to try it out**

Just save this script, to somewhere from your device and run it with:
From the terminal. There are a couple globals in the script you can play with (which files to load, whether to make sure that the end of the file is loaded as well, etc...) . If there is demand, I will write it up in C, and make a deb of it.
Also, if you have suggestions for more files to load, feel free to tell me, these are the ones that seemed relevant from /proc/*/maps...

**If you want to objectivly see if it improves the time, restart, wait for device to settle, run fennec and see how long it takes for fennec to load, then restart, wait for device to settle, and then run the script from the xterm, and run fennec and see if it loads faster.

Thanks dbrodie, I'll test it when I get my device.

how do I use the text reflow feature?
I enabled it in the settings, but still nothing happens.
when I double tab on a text, it zooms in. but when I then zoome more with the hardware keys, the text gets cut off instead wrapped.

also, how do I use it in opera? I cant use it there either

The text reflow happens only when you double-tap. If you'd like it to zoom the text to a different size, try this add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/mobile/addon/bigger-text/

(You can click on the Bigger Text "Options" button in the add-on manager to change the text size.)