Mozilla has launched the first Alpha version of Fennec 2.0, which is code for the mobile version of the Firefox web browser. Fennec 2.0 is available for download for Google Android 2.0 and up or the Nokia N900 smartphone running Maemo Linux.

Fennec 2.0 Alpha uses the same page rendering engine as the desktop version of Firefox, but it’s optimized for mobile devices with small, touchscreen displays. You can access a list of open tabs, for instance, by swiping the screen to the right, or view other settings by swiping to the left.

Fennec supports add-ons, with support for Wikipedia, Twitter, and other search add-ons as well as extensions that add or improve features such as URL Fixer, a plugin that corrects common errors when you’re typing out a URL. While Mozilla says Fennec is the first mobile browser to support add-ons, I suspect the developers of Dolphin HD for Android would beg to differ.

Mozilla has also built in Firefox Sync functionality, which allows you to synchronize your browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, open tabs, and other information between Fennec and your desktop version of Firefox.

If you’ve been following the development of Fennec for Android and Maemo, you probably won’t find many surprises in the latest release. But it’s a bit more stable than previous builds, and this is the first version of Fennec I’ve tried that can be installed to an SD card on devices running Android 2.2. Even after moving the app to the SD card, it still took up more than 17MB of my phone’s primary storage space, but that’s better than the 28MB it used before moving some files to the SD card.

The browser is still slower than almost any other Android browser I’ve tested. It takes a while for pages to load, and zooming and scrolling aren’t particularly fluid. But we’re still looking at Alpha software. Hopefully things will get better before Mozilla officially launches Firefox for Mobile.

You can check out a demo video after the break, as well as a few more images.

Fennec 2.0 is available as a free download from Mozilla.

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Documents To Go has been allowing smartphone and PDA users to open and edit Microsoft Office documents for ages. The software is available for BlackBerry, iOS, Android, WebOS, and Windows Mobile. And now the company has launched a version for Maemo 5, which means you can run Documents To Go on the Nokia N900.

The Maemo app lets you view and edit Word and Excel files, with support for Microsoft Office 97 through Office 2010 files. There’s also support for password protected files.

The original formatting stays intact, and the app supports multiple zoom levels to make it easier to view large documents on a small screen.

A full version of DataViz Documents To Go for Maemo will set you back $29.99, but there’s a 30-day free trial download available as well. There’s also a $9.99 version that lets you view (but not edit) documents.

via ZDNet

Mozilla is going all out on the mobile front this week. On Wednesday the company submitted Firefox Home to Apple for inclusion in the App Store. The app isn’t a full-fledged browser, but it brings your Firefox bookmarks and browser history to the iPhone. And now Mozilla has also released Firefox 1.1 for the Nokia N900 smartphone running Mameo Linux.

To be honest, Maemo is an all-but-dead platform, with Nokia and other smartphone makers moving on to MeeGo. But Maemo was the first mobile platform to get a version of Firefox, and the Android version of Firefox is still in the pre-alpha stages.

In the meantime, by looking at Firefox 1.1 for Maemo, we can get a pretty good picture of what the full version of Firefox for Android will eventually look like.

The latest version comes with a number of new features including:

• Automatic updates of add0ns
• Autocomplete and other form assistant improvements
• Use the phone’s volume keys to zoom
• Save web pages as PDF files (making it easier to email pages to your desktop for printing)
• Improved Site Menu
• New context menus for opening links in new tabs and saving images
• Support for portrait and landscape mode
• Ability to “forget” passwords for web sites

You can find out more about Firefox 1.1 for Maemo in the release notes. You can download the app from a Nokia N900 by visiting Firefox.com/m/. There are also builds for Windows, OS X, and Linux if you want to try out a development version of the mobile web browser.

via Stuart Parmenter’s blog

Skype may not plan on launching video chat software for Google Android until later this year, but if you have a Nokia N900 you should get the feature later this week. GigaOm reports that Skype will roll out new software soon that will allow 2-way voice and video chat with Skyper users on any platform.

That means you’ll be able to pick up your Nokia N900 phone and make a video call to users on a PC or on another N900.

The Nokia N900 runs the Maemo operating system, which is a custom version of Linux optimized for mobile devices. That makes it an ideal platform for rolling out experimental new software like a Skype video chat client, since Skyp’s desktop Linux app already supports this feature.

But Skype plans to make 2-way video calling available on all of its mobile platforms. So hopefully any phone with a front-facing camera including the upcoming 4th generation iPhone as well as Symbian and Android phones should eventually be able to support Skype video calls.