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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Mozilla Plans Firefox Browser For Mobile Devices

There isn't a perfect mobile browser and there is plenty of room for
competition in the space, which is why Mozilla is stepping up its
efforts to improve the browsing experience on mobile phones, the
company said this week. Mozilla's plans include adding mobile devices
to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla 2, the company's
all-in-one open source Internet application suite that comes with a
Web browser, e-mail, and newsgroup client. The move will make mobile
devices part of Mozilla's core platform, Schroepfer said. Mozilla
also will roll out a version of Mobile Firefox, which can run Firefox
extensions on mobile devices. Developers will be able to build rich
applications for Mobile Firefox using extensible user-interface
language (XUL), a markup language based on XML. Mozilla browsers are
already available on Nokia N800 smartphones and Mozilla offers Minimo,
its mini Firefox browser, to users with a variety of Windows
Mobile-based smartphones. It also offers a service called "Joey,"
which brings Firefox Web content to mobile devices. The service allows
a person to use Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS
content, and live bookmarks to their phone through the Joey server,
and the content can then be accessed on the phone's Web browser.
Mozilla, however, wants to further bridge the desktop and mobile
browsing experience by allowing bookmarks, history, extensions, and
other Firefox capabilities to work just as well on mobile devices.
Mozilla is part of a larger movement by technology companies to bring
a rich Internet experience to mobile devices. Last week, chip designer
ARM Holdings partnered with six other companies to develop a new
Linux-based open-source platform for ultra-mobile PCs. The platform
will include a mobile operating system, application development
framework, and Internet browser. More Information

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