firefox's archives

Dave Townsend, Linux, Mozilla, PDK, Palm Pre, apps, firefox, news, pre, webOS

Firefox ported to webOS, PDK to blame for this madness

April 12th 2010 | Posted by Derek Kessler

Firefox running on a Palm Pre

Yup, that’s Firefox of the Linux variety, running on a Palm Pre. It’s the work of Dave Townsend, a developer for Mozilla that works on Firefox (among other open source projects). We don’t have much other info on it, but given the interface, we and Palm Developer Relations Team chief Dion Almaer came to a pretty easy conclusion about it: this is the kind of stuff you can do with the PDK. To quote Kool-Aid Man, OH YEAH!

UPDATE: Dave has posted a "how I did it" article on his blog. Instructions are absent, which is understandable given the hobby project not-even-in-alpha status of this project. All-in-all, it was about two days of work porting the Android project version of Firefox onto webOS, and it’s still buggy and the cramming of the Firefox UI onto the Pre’s screen isn’t exactly a great system. But it’s potential, and potential is something we’re rather fond of here.

Thanks to Bo for the tip!

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Acid3 Test, Internet Explorer, Maemo, Mobile Safari, Opera Mini, WebKit, acid3, android, browser, firefox, javascript, news, web browser, webOS, webOS 1.4, webos 1.3.1

webOS 1.4 web browser jumps to a 92/100 Acid3 score

February 28th 2010 | Posted by Derek Kessler

Acid3 score: 92/100There is this test call the Acid3 Test, and it is designed to test a web browser’s compliance with web standards, with an emphasis placed on Document Object Model and JavaScript. For an operating system based on web standards, you might think that webOS would have been scoring fairly highly with the test from day one. Not so, it would seem. In the early days of webOS, the browser scored a pitiful 1/100. With the update to webOS 1.3.1, the browser scored a 73/100 – better, but still not great.

Now, with webOS 1.4 out and about, the browser’s standards compliance has taken another step forward, scoring a 92/100. Obviously, that’s a great step forward as far as the browser is concerned, and we have been receiving reports of better performance and rendering on all manner of sites as a result. The score also vaults the webOS browser (seriously, it needs a name) to the upper tier of mobile browser compliance, topped only by Mobile Safari (100/100), Opera Mini (98/100), Firefox on Maemo (94/100), and Android’s browser (93/100). Of note, Safari and Android are both powered by the same WebKit core that hums underneath the webOS browser (and webOS as an OS), so full standards compliance is a possibility. At the very least, the score is worlds better than before and far ahead of Internet Explorer (Mobile: 5/100, Desktop: 32/100). For 99.999999% of users a score of 92/100 is going to be more than good enough for their browsing experience.

jack87 in our forums also notes that several sites (like costco.com) that previously failed out on webOS are now working. How about you, seeing better rendering now that you’re all 1.4′d up?

EDIT: Anchors (links that lead to a specific point on a page, e.g. comments) work now too! This blogger = happy camper.

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Mozilla, Sync, apps, firefox

Mozilla Weave Sync Coming to webOS

February 6th 2010 | Posted by Dieter Bohn

Score another point for fast and easy development for webOS. Mozilla Labs has announced they’re working on a Weave Sync client for webOS. Weave is Mozilla’s way of syncing bookmarks, passwords, history, and even open tabs from your desktop Firefox to your mobile device (and eventually to mobile Firefox on your mobile device).

On webOS, the client is "all just tests," which is to say you’re going to be doing some digging into .js files to get it working. Also, the client is just a viewer for your data, there’s no syncing or editing here. That last is perhaps not likely to change anytime soon, as webOS has the browser pretty well locked down.

What about mobile Firefox for webOS. We’re not Mozilla, so we don’t know – what we do know is that if you hit the menu inside the launcher and tap "Default Applications," a placeholder is there to someday set a different browser as the primary browser. So webOS is architected to allow for mobile Firefox (or mobile whatever), should somebody wish to get their tech onto the devices.

thanks to everybody who sent this in!

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