Mozilla Touts Speedy Android Browsing With New Firefox

Mozilla has made available a new, faster, more personalised version of its Firefox web browser for Android.

The redesigned mobile browser features performance improvements to speed up everything from startup and page-load times to panning and zooming and Web app performance when you just want to play Mozilla’s BrowserQuest game with your friends, the company said in its 26 June blog post announcing the new release.

The new Firefox for Android is available for download here in the Google Play store.

Faster Browsing

Mozilla said Firefox for Android is significantly faster than the stock browser that ships on Android phones, according to the leading industry benchmarks, such as SunSpider. In addition, Mozilla developed a new benchmark, called Eideticker, which measures the actual user Web experience and built Firefox for Android to it, yielding an experience that is two times faster than the stock browser, the company said.

Firefox for Android is based on the same open technology platform as the desktop version of Firefox and thus offers a similar level of privacy and security features in mobile browsing. “Firefox respects your privacy and protects your security with features like Do Not Track, Master Password, HTTP Strict Transport Security and more,” the Mozilla blog said.

Moreover, new HTML5 capabilities in Firefox for Android enable developers to create rich Web apps and Websites based on HTML5, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and other open Web standards. “As the advocate for the Web, Mozilla exposes new Web APIs and submits them to standards groups to move the Web forward as a platform,” Mozilla said. “Among the standards that Mozilla helped build are Camera API, Vibration API, Mobile Connection API, Battery Status API, Screen Orientation API and Geolocation API.”

More Personalisation

In addition, Firefox for Android has a personalised start page that saves users time getting where they want to go on the Web.

It also features a new Awesome Screen powered by Firefox Sync that delivers all of a user’s browsing history, bookmarks, passwords and form data to their Android phones. The Awesome Screen gets users where they want to go quickly by giving them a list of your most often visited sites along with the ability to browse through their bookmarks and history.

“We also optimised your favourite features like tabbed browsing, Firefox Sync and Firefox Add-ons to deliver the best mobile browsing experience possible,” Mozilla said.

Firefox for Android also supports Flash so users can watch videos, play games and interact with more Web content on their Android phones.

Mozilla announced on 5 June the availability of Firefox 13, the latest version of its desktop browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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