Feature – Mozilla is hard at work to develop a mobile version of Firefox, code-named Fennec. It shapes up to become very much stripped down version of the desktop version Firefox, while maintaining key functionality. And as far as we can tell, Fennec will set the standard for mobile browsers: The software will support Mozilla-based extensions and themes, which is a feature no other mobile browser can offer at this time and a feature that we believe will attract lots of users.

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The first alpha Fennec release shares much more in common with its desktop counterpart than appears at first sight. Fennec integrates the same core HTML rendering engine called Gecko and will include an optimized TraceMonkey Javascript interpreter (tailored to ARM chips), which is also found in the Firefox 3.1 beta. In fact, Fennec owes much of its efficiency and speed to these two underlying technologies. Since the desktop and mobile Firefox share the same set of core technologies, third-party developers can streamline their development process since there is no need to maintain vastly different code bases, although Fennec in itself is quite a different beast than Firefox.

Mozilla brought Firefox’ plug-in and extensions platform to Fennec, allowing users to share the same set of add-ons in both the desktop and the mobile version of Firefox. As we highlighted in our preview article, most plug-ins in Fennec Alpha 1 are disabled for compatibility and stability reasons, including Flash. But as we approach shipping version, we expect developers to update their code to address the differences between the two browsers.

There will be some tweaking necessary, but since Fennec uses a Mozilla-based plug-in architecture, that tweaking does not require significant code changes. Instead, programmers will have to mostly focus on screen size differences and UI changes, with most of the underlying logic left intact.

 

Read on the next page: Who needs IE mobile?