Notices

Granted, it's only a beta but there seems to be a lot of work needed. It appears to suck up memory. I couldn't load up facebook because of that.

Well, the shell is certainly muuuuuch snappier, but since it still took almost a minute to load itT's home page, I'd say it needs a lot more work.

Consider to combine Fennec with Weave for a synchronized browser experience. With a recent Shiretoko build (Firefox 3.1 aka 3.5) with Weave extension you can synchronize your user data (cookies, settings, bookmarks; you name it!) between your desktop browser and Fennec. It is however not possible (nor the scope of the project) to have specific bookmarks or specific cookies synchronized; it is a full, 2-way synchronization. You can however opt to not sync specific data, such as forms or cookies.

Current caveats are as follow: 1) You must first create your Weave account on Mozilla Services, and get an invitation code 2) You must first set Weave up on Shiretoko; and then in Fennec 3) You must use at least Weave 0.2.111 and a recent Fennec (beta 1 is OK); preferably use the latest development version as well as the latest Fennec nightly 4) After you set up Weave in Fennec it might fail to synchronize the first time even though your login/password is correct. Restart Fennec and it should work.

Think of it as IMAP-for-your-browser. Or, think of it as an open source WebDAV client written in XUL (providing functionality akin to SyncML/Netscape LDAP/IMAP) with the open source server running on Mozilla Labs server. Data is stored encrypted on there, and communication goes via SSL as well.

Give the developers feedback on their forum or e-mail them.

Here is a quick howto for Nokia N810 (probably works on N800 too!) https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/InstallWeaveFennec

hehe ... i really, really love you for this public documentation of how poor the UI actually is. how easily people overlook or misinterpret the two basic gestures fennec invented out of the blue for no reason.

where should i send the beer?


(if you wonder now what this comment is all about: i had quite a few arguments here about the fennec UI, saying that it is not intuitive, while a lot of others insisted it is. you're my real-life experiment. i was right. )

Yes, those icons are atrocious and assume the user knows way too much about the app before they use it. Whatever happened to *text*? Swipe right for tabs, swipe left for controls. Done.

I still feel that Fennec's interface is trying to solve an interface problem that really doesn't exist. Asa should know better that visibility is a huge part of usability, and the reason this works in MobileSafari is because the controls are visible by default, and that the virtual space is uniformly constructed. Fennec introduces hidden panels that float over content that can be pulled in and out, sometimes in seemingly arbitrary ways. (E.g., in MobileSafari there's a uniform way to scroll to the top of any scrolling space, and the location bars and controls are always there. In Fennec, the location bar is attached to the top of the space, but there's no shortcut to get back to the top that I've found, and sometimes when simply scrolling up the location bar appears while in the middle of the page... and I can't find a consistent way to make it appear.)

I haven't felt it's that much faster than microB. I often get the "Warning: Unresponsive script" message. It's cooler though, assuming they fix the bugs. But I'd settle for faster.

Zooming was a mystery to me, but after reading this, I think I get it:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/UI/D...ng_and_Zooming
So, if I double-tap on the text of someone's post here, that text will fill the screen. Nice! That's different than any browser I've used, but I can see that will help them deal with a diversity of mobile devices.

Panning down these long ITT thread pages is a problem for me. There are no scroll bars and I can't get flicking to work, so I'm just dragging the page. But as I'm scrolling down it seems like it sometimes puts me back at the top of the page, causing me to grumble and drag, drag, drag back down to where I was.

Also, when I hit the swap button & switch to another app, sometimes Fennec pops up on its own.

In this forum, sometimes I had to tap on the links for page numbers multiple times before it did anything. I've had the same problem with buttons & links on other sites.

that was a problem for me, too. you only realize how nice a scrollbar is after they took it away

i'm at the bottom of a page in no time with the scrollbar. with fennec, i lose interest in whatever i came there for before i reach the end of the page eventually.

Oh yeah, as if we all understood how MicroB worked first time we fired it up. These gestures are Fennec specific gestures to allow the user to have full screen browsing. They are explained when you first start up the application. It comes with a manual/tutorial. I suggest one reads this before trying, or reads it when trying. In the only other finger-touch friendly web browser (MobileSafari) these gestures have different meaning. Mouse gestures exist too, for e.g. Opera, but these are not aimed for finger-touch friendly web browsing. Because the market is still young one cannot say that there is a standard for these gestures.

A positive example of the UI would be for example:

But ofcourse you will never mention that because it isn't what you are advocating...

This functionality is also in MobileSafari btw, but there you can also use multi-touch to zoom in more liberally.

The URL bar hiding, only at top, is a problem in MobileSafari and Fennec IMO but I don't know how to solve it.

That's exactly what it is: People playing around re-inventing everything from the ground up for no real reason, making up excuses for it afterwards and trying to convince people that they have problems with their current browsers.

I read (a while ago) in Aza's Blog that "nothing shouts “sexy!” like pretty animations and a physics engine" and that this has "marketing appeal". So that's what it's all about. There was no UI problem to be solved. It was about "being sexy" and "appealing" to people in suit and tie who desperately try to copy&paste the success of the Apple brand. (Not the Apple UI, mind you, it's the brand that's successful.)

Function follows form here, not the other way round as it should be.

Well... I think the browsers on both of my mobile phones and on my N800 are really good. Better than Fennec. I don't have any problems Fennec would solve. And I'm sexy myself, FCS!

The lack of a scrollbar might be worth a bug report. However, a scrollbar is usually pretty small on the screen. There is little sacrifice for the rest of the UI. On a mobile device this is not the case; so you'd either have a thick scrollbar because of finger/touch UI or you'd have no scrollbar (we're not catering to stylus/touch users; we're optimizing for finger/touch UI). MobileSafari solves this with a semi-transparent, small scrollbar (horizontal and vertical; when required) which is by default not shown unless the user is scrolling and only if the user can scroll in that specific way. This is a nice, visual way to give the user feedback about where on the page they are, while it also doesn't look invasive. However, it has disadvantages too. On a NIT this scrollbar would quickly be so far drawn out (because of the height when compared to iPod/iPhone) that it'd be quickly far less informative while a vertical scrollbar would hardly be required. Still it'd be something to consider. Kinetic scrolling solves the issue of not being able to scroll quickly. Together with these bars the user knows where on the page they are.