Mozilla has been offering mobile versions of the Firefox web browser for Android since earlier this year, but up until recently the browser was built using Mozilla’s own tools rather than native Android UI widgets. This week the developers released the first nightly builds of Firefox which use native Android tools to reduce memory usage and improve speed.

You can download the latest builds from the Firefox Nightly site. Keep in mind, these are pre-release versions of the browser, and may be rather buggy compared with the latest stable release available from the Android Market. But the latest nightlies will give you an idea of where Mozilla is going with Firefox.

The new browser does away with the menus to the left and right side of the screen. Instead you can pull up preferences, the add-ons manager, or bookmarks by tapping your Android menu button. You can open new tabs and access a list of open browser tabs by tapping the plus button next to the URL bar.

The new version is designed to support existing plugins for Firefox mobile and supports Android 2.2 and up.  Soon Mozilla will add an improved start page as well as the ability to synchronize your data between browsers. A tablet-friendly version is also in the works.

Mozilla has released Firefox 8 for Windows, Mac and Linux… and today the company also released an updated version of its mobile browser for Google Android. You can grab Firefox 8 for free from the Android Market.

While the latest version of Firefox mobile has the same version number as its desktop cousin and uses the same rendering engine, the desktop and mobile versions of Firefox received some different features in this update.

The desktop browser, for instance, added support Twitter search integration, while that feature is only available for Firefox Mobile if you install the Twitter Address Bar Search add-on.

The Android version gets a few distinctive new features. For instance, there’s now support for a master password which you can use to encrypt all your saved usernames and passwords.

Users can also now save bookmarks as icons on their home screen, allowing you to quickly open any website or web app in Firefox with a single click.

You can read more about Firefox 8 for Android in the release notes.

The first version of Firefox for Android tablets is now available for download. The latest nightly builds of Mozilla’s web browser for Android include a new user interface designed for Android devices with large, high resolution displays.

Firefox for tablets offers the same basic features as the smartphone version of the web browser, including Mozilla’s rendering engine, Firefox Sync capabilities which let you keep your bookmarks and other data synchronized with the desktop version of the app, and support for add-ons.

The tablet version also has a minimalist theme that’s designed to play well with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, an awesomebar with tabs letting you flip between bookmarks, history, and pages from your desktop browser, and a new way to view browser tabs. In landscape mode, all your open windows hang out in a persistent area on the left side of the screen. When you flip to portrait orientation, there’s an icon at the top of the screen which you can tap to view a list of browser tabs.

I’m not sold on the persistent tabs in landscape mode — just because Android tablets have more screen real estate than smartphones doesn’t mean people want to constantly look at thumbnails for websites they’re not currently reading. But at least Mozilla is trying new things. Many Android web browsers look the same, so it’s good to see someone thinking a bit outside of the box.

You can download the latest nightly build of Firefox Mobile for Android from Mozilla.

via Android Guys

Web browser maker Mozilla released Firefox 6 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android this week. The new browser doesn’t feature any dramatic changes from version 5, but it’s a little faster, a little more refined, and offers hints of improvements to come.

Mozilla recently moved to a “rapid release” schedule for the Firefox web browser, which means that major version numbers don’t necessarily mean major changes. That’s pretty much the way Google Chrome works as well. Google’s browser has only been around for a few years and it’s already up to version 13, while Firefox which has been one of the most popular web browsers for ages just hit version 6 this week — and that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the rapid release schedule that kicked in after version 4.

The biggest changes in the Android version of Firefox include graphics that are optimized for tablets including font sizes and user interface elements, and better image scaling on devices with NEON-compatible processors for smoother zooming and less pixelation.

If you’re using a device with Google Android 2.3 you’ll also see a new Gingerbread theme which is designed to make the browser look a little more like the rest of your operating system elements. And Mozilla has optimized rendering of pages in languages that read from right to left including Arabic and Hebrew.

The new browser also features performance enhancements and memory management improvements and a number of bug fixes.

Firefox 6 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. Hopefully future versions will include further optimization for tablets including support for visible browser tabs and other features that make more sense on high resolution displays.

Mozilla’s mobile web browser keeps getting better. While Firefox 5 just hit the Android Market a few weeks ago, Mozilla is already working on versions 6 and 7. This week the developers released Firefox Mobile Aurora 7, which is a pre-release version of the next, next generation of the web browser and it features a couple of major improvements.

First, the company has improved memory usage in both the mobile and desktop versions of the web browser. Mozilla says desktop users should see memory improvements of up to 30 percent. The mobile browser should benefit from these improvements as well.

Aurora 7 for mobile also includes a new text selection feature which allows you to copy and paste text from a web site by long-pressing on the screen and then dragging handles to select the ext you want to copy. Tap outside of the selection to copy to your clipboard so you can paste the text into the location bar or another app.

The feature looks a lot like the text selection that’s built into Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but the developers didn’t use Google’s tools to implement it and instead developed the feature from scratch (although it’s designed to look like Android’s native text selection.

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Mozilla has released Firefox 5.0 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. The desktop version of the web browser features a number of performance enhancements and security and stability fixes, but you won’t find a huge list of changes from Firefox 4. Instead, the developers are moving to a rapid release schedule with new versions expected out every 6 weeks or so.

The mobile browser for Android does have one major new feature though: support for the Do Not Track option which has been available in desktop versions of the browser for a while. This lets users let web sites know they don’t want to participate in behavioral tracking for advertising or other purposes.

Mozilla says it has also improved page load speeds in Firefox 5 for Android and improved compatibility with the SwiftKey keyboard.

Firefox 5 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

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Mozilla rolled out a new version of Firefox for Android today with a Do Not Track feature, making it the first mobile browser ofr Android which offers this privacy measure.

To enable the feature, just open up the settings and click the button that says “Tell sites not to track me.” This will send a message to web sites letting them know you don’t want to share your personal information for behavioral advertising.

Firefox 5 Beta for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. The new beta channel is separate from the existing Firefox Mobile browser for Android. If you have the older browser installed you won’t be prompted to update. Instead you’ll have to download the beta. Doing so won’t overwrite any of your existing Firefox settings.

The update also includes some speed improvements and better compatibility with the SwiftKey keyboard for Android.

Mozilla has long offered users and developers a chance to try out early builds of its desktop Firefox web browser before they were thoroughly tested and deemed ready for the public. Now Mozilla has also launched Aurora and Nightly channels for Firefox Mobile, allowing Android users to test out early versions of Firefox 5 and Firefox 6.

The Aurora channel currently lets you preview Firefox 5 on an Android device. It’s not as stable as the Firefox 4 web browser which is currently available for download from the Android Market, but it gives you a look at where Mozilla is going with the next version of Firefox.

If you install the Aurora build you’ll be prompted to update the browser about once a day as Mozilla pushes new features and bug fixes.

Mozilla is also now offering a Nightly build of the browser, which is even less stable — but which shows what Firefox 6 for Android may look like. This build is for people who want to test the bleeding edge features, or check to see if their Firefox add-ons will support upcoming versions of the web browser.

Firefox 6 Nightly will also update about once each day.

Honestly, at this point you won’t see much difference between the Aurora, Nightly, and stable channels. They all look pretty much like Firefox 4 at the moment. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The browser offers speedy page rendering, smooth zooming and scrolling, and support for add-ons, among other things. But as developers continue working on new features, they’ll show up first in the Aurora and Nightly builds.

You can install the new test versions of Firefox without uninstalling Firefox 4. All three can co-exist on your Android device and each will have its own set of data, which means you can uninstall one without affecting the others.

You can download each version of Firefox for ANdroid from the following links:

• Firefox 4 Stable: Android Market or firefox.com/m
• Firefox 5 Aurora: bit.ly/fennec5
• Firefox 6 Nightly:bit.ly/fennec6night

via Mark Finkle