Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers, Android
The new Firefox 4 Beta for Android was released with a bit of fanfare, so I was quite excited to check it out. I'm sorry to say that having done so, I am now somewhat less excited. In fact, my Android device (an underpowered Acer Liquid E) is now sitting next to me, sans battery, cooling off. Firefox certainly made it work.
In terms of UI, Firefox for Android looks very nice. They did use some iOS-style controls, which I am less fond of, but overall it's a slick UI. Join me after the fold to take a look around.
The start page
The start page, also known as the Awesome Screen (seriously), shows your tabs from last time, tabs from Firefox Sync, as well as recommended add-ons. This screen pops up on startup, as well as when you hit the address bar.
Browser chrome
Now let's look at a bit of browser chrome. Here you can see the address bar (revealed by trying to scroll up when the page is already all the way up), as well as the right toolbar (revealed by scrolling to the right). The address bar is actually the AwesomeBar you know and love from the desktop version of Firefox, as you shall soon see. There's one more bit of chrome you can't see here:
Browser tabs
And those are the tabs. The "new tab" button is large enough, but there's something a bit wonky about the size of the tab versus the size of the X button -- it's too easy to close the tab when trying to switch to it. On the other hand, if they made the X much smaller, then closing a tab would become a problem. Tough UI call there, I guess.
Browser performance
What you see in the screenshot above is what happened when I pointed Firefox at Download Squad. And believe me, I did not have to time this screenshot very carefully. It just waited ... and waited, and then waited a bit more. Finally, Download Squad came up. And that's our mobile version, mind you -- not the desktop one. Not exactly blazing fast.
That's not the only spot where I've noticed Firefox 4 for Android being a tad on the sluggish side. Even operations such as scrolling a zoomed-in page seemed awkwardly slow. In fact, scrolling seemed to work only for one axis at a time -- meaning, I could either scroll to the side, or up/down. I could not scroll diagonally, no matter how hard I tried. Also, some of the chrome animations were rather choppy on my device -- for example, when dragging the page all the way to the right, I could see the tab bar slide open kind of like a rusty drawer. I should mention that Firefox was the only application running on my phone at the time.
Text rendering
Another problematic point was text rendering. Every time I changed the zoom level or loaded a page, the text became blurry for some time and then sharpened up again. I hadn't noticed this sort of behavior in other browsers on the same phone (native Android browser, Opera and Dolphin HD).
Text when zoomed in
This is what text looks like when it's zoomed in, after it has had a moment to become sharp. Very nice and readable. By the way, pinch to zoom is supported (just like on Dolphin Browser HD).
Firefox add-on website
And this is what Firefox's own add-on website looks like. This is the part of the site showing add-ons for mobile, so I find it interesting that the site itself isn't very mobile-friendly -- it feels like I'm browsing a site for a PC, with the same exact layout as I get on a desktop browser. Speaking of interesting:
This is Firefox 4 Beta giving me a security warning on its own add-on website. I think that's pretty amusing, but of course, this whole thing is still a work in progress and we should not judge harshly. Also note the interesting rendering of the page -- I caught it mid-render, which was not so difficult to do on my phone given the browser's speed.
Browsing a mobile-friendly site
This is what Download Squad looks like on Firefox 4 for Android. Nice, right? But then again, that's the whole point of a mobile-friendly site.
Browser preferences
Here you can see a bit more of the browser chrome. Note how Mozilla avoided Android's native UI, and went with its own iOS-like widgets. This is a matter of taste, I guess, but I don't personally like this look. Android provides a very consistent look and feel which is very usable -- I'm not sure why it's not good enough for Mozilla. I suspect there are technical reasons here -- perhaps the browser is implemented from the ground up as an XUL application.
I guess this would be a good place to mention that Mozilla ignored several other Android UI conventions. For example, hitting the menu button while browsing does not pop up a menu from the bottom of the screen -- it pops up the address bar, along with a site information notification and three search options. This happens at the top part of the screen. The whole thing doesn't really feel like an Android application.
Bottom line
Firefox 4 shows great promise. I'm sorry if that's a tacky line to end with, but it's true. The chrome is generally nice (except for the settings page), and Firefox Sync is a killer feature. The Awesome Page is also a very nice usability perk, and there's a lot to like here. However, it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of performance, at least on my Liquid E. I hope Mozilla manages to eke a bit more speed out of it in future iterations; I will keep you posted.
Hands-on: Firefox 4 for Android is still very much Beta originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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