Mozilla has officially started on their newest venture called Boot to Gecko, a “complete, standalone operating system for the open Web.” They’re diving into the project with all the best intentions, looking for uniformity in application development and to streamline the complete experience provided to users. No more “fragmentation” across different devices. What works on your laptop, would work seamlessly on your mobile phone, tablet, etc.

They will be using the Gecko engine which shall now be completely open source, and all work moving forward shall be updated in real-time for further development. Looks like no double standard will be coming from the workers at Mozilla who will in fact be using Google’s Android kernels, and boot drivers to initially power a device running the mobile OS. Mozilla has said that they want to take as little from Android as possible though. So this is not an OS based on Android, but merely Android is helping get this project off the ground, so in later days, it can stand on it’s own.

Users of the beta Firefox Mobile for Android can feel much more secure after today with the introduction of a “Do Not Track” feature which gives them more control over the way their browsing behavior is tracked and used online.  By simply toggling the DNT to “Yes”, users are sending a ”DNT: 1″ signal to each website they visit – prompting that site to stop tracking them.  Not a bad feature, right?  Now, how about we ad support for Flash next?

Market Link | More Details

Via:  Mozilla Blog

Mozilla just popped out an announcement for Firefox on Android, making the current version in the market the official version and that’s really all that has changed since the release candidate that dropped last week.  In fact, it’s changed so little, that my market hasn’t even asked me to update the version from last week to make it really official.  Weird, I know.

So yeah…ummm, this is official Firefox.  Anyone using it?  I was most definitely high on the browser last week when it came out, but after spending an entire week and weekend with it, I’m not longer using it.  It’s just not ready to compete with the Dolphins of the world yet, although it could be at some point down the road.  It has some really great features built into it with a superb UI and PC browser syncing (wait people use Firefox on PCs?), but the lack of Flash support plus some other little annoyances (like awful zoom rendering) have me back to a much lighter browser.  I promise to be back for version 4.1 though.

Intro video after the break.   Download Link.  

Firefox 4 on Android has finally hit “release candidate” status and is pretty damn awesome when compared to previous builds.  Well, aside from lacking support for Flash that is.  It has speed to compete with any other browser, is no longer riddled with performance hogging bugs, and with its side panels, is one of the easiest to use on the market.  While I’m not a huge fan of Firefox on a PC, I’m definitely a big fan of their mobile version.  

Firefox for Android received a shiny new update today that might actually be worth your time.  According to its makers, this is the fastest version yet and crushes the stock Android browser in every single speed test.  It also supports Firefox Sync, the Awesome screen, and includes over 200 add-ons just like the desktop version.  I’m actually really liking this latest build, but the fact that it still lacks Flash support is killing me.

Fancy new video walk-through after the break.  

We’ve been following the journey of Firefox Mobile on Android since its “Fennec” days and keep wondering when it might see a build spicy enough for the Android Market.  According to Matt Brubeck, one of the Firefox Engineers, the time is near as a new beta release should be available some time in December and will be downloadable through the market.  In response to some poor AT&T customer who is unable to install 3rd party apps, Matt mentioned the following…

If it is, then you might be able to use the Android developer tool “adb” to install Firefox on your phone (search the web for instructions), or you can wait for our next beta release which should be available through the Market later this month.

Is everyone ready for an official Firefox?  We’ve been through how many alphas, betas and test builds now?  Can it compete with Dolphin, xScope and the rest of those well-established browser options?

Cheers Manny!

How have we not asked this question yet?  Shame on us.  With so many quality options out there for your Android browsing pleasure, we’d love to hear what your favorite is.  Is it Skyfire and their interesting take on Flash videos?  Firefox and their ever-evolving mobile version?  Dolphin, the standard?  Is xScope the innovator?  Or are we missing something fabulous altogether?

Let us know which browser you prefer, but beyond that, we want to know why it’s your favorite.  Why is this the browser for you?  If you could change anything in a browser, what would it be?

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