Mozilla Announces Mobile Version of Firefox Browser

Moving beyond its primary objective to coordinate and integrate the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, Mozilla Corporation now plans to develop a version of Firefox to appear for mobile phones.

Apprehending the lack of perfect mobile browser, Mozilla Corp. this week unveiled its plans to bring a mobile version of the technology to the market in a move that would strengthen its presence in the mobile arena.

"People ask us all the time about what Mozilla's going to do about the mobile Web, and I'm very excited to announce that we plan to rock it. We are serious about bringing the Firefox experience and technology to mobile devices," Mozilla's Vice President of engineering Mike Schroepfer wrote in his blog on Tuesday.

Mozilla has recently hired two new developers, Christian Sejersen from Openwave and Brad Lassey from France Telecom’s R&D department, to help develop mobile browser that would likely bridge the desktop and mobile browsing experiences by allowing bookmarks, history, extensions, and other Firefox capabilities to work just as well on mobile devices.

Sejersen, who joined the Mozilla mobile team on Monday, will lead the platform engineering effort for the mobile version of Firefox and will also head the Mozilla R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Additionally, the mobile team will be expanded with full-time paid employees in order to achieve the project.

Mozilla plans to add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla 2, the company's next-generation browser technology. Due in 2008, Mozilla 2 is company’s all-in-one open source Internet application suite that comes with a Web browser, e-mail, and newsgroup client.

According to Schroepfer’s blog posting, the move will make mobile devices part of Mozilla's core platform.

Mozilla also will release a version of Mobile Firefox, which will operate much like the desktop version. It will run Firefox extensions on mobile devices. The development team 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 smartphone, which currently is acting as a test phone for Mozilla's new mobile initiative. There is one more browsing option from Mozilla, Minimo, company’s mini Firefox browser that runs on a variety of Windows Mobile-based smartphones. However, Minimo will not be developed further, Schroepfer wrote in his blog.

Mozilla also offers Joey, an application that allows users to send information gleaned via the desktop browser to the mobile phone. The service lets users clip and save text, photos, videos and other content while using a PC and then access that content through a browser on a cell phone.

Mozilla developers are mow looking into portability options, where a user could easily port preferences, bookmarks, and so forth between the mobile and the desktop.

Established on August 3, 2005 to handle the revenue-related operations of the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corp. has become a global community dedicated to building free, open source products and technologies that improve the online experience for people everywhere.