We are pleased to announce the release of Firefox Home 1.1, a free application that brings your Firefox bookmarks, Awesome Bar history and tabs on your iPhone or iPod Touch. This is a major update that adds an easy way to setup Firefox Home. Note that easy setup requires you to run the latest Firefox 4 Beta release and is not available for the Firefox Sync add-on.
You can follow these simple steps to set up Firefox Home on your iPhone/iPod. Make sure your phone is connected to the Internet and you can access the desktop where Firefox Sync is installed.
Launch Firefox Home on your iPhone and tap on “I Have a Sync Account”. A 12 character code will be displayed for you.
Launch Firefox 4 Beta on your desktop and go to Firefox->Preferences->Sync.
Click on “Add a Device” and enter the 12 character code that’s displayed on your iPhone.
You’re done! You can start using Firefox Home as your data gets synced down to your phone.
Existing users can also use this new method (requires the latest Firefox 4 Beta) to set up Firefox Home. Note that the traditional setup method still works if you prefer entering in your username, password and Sync Key. To use the traditional method, tap on “I am not near by computer” to bring up the account setup dialog.
Develop a mobile add-on for Firefox and showcase your innovation to millions of mobile users. We’re looking for compatible and innovative add-ons to extend Firefox on the Android and Maemo mobile platforms.
We’re looking for the best example in each of the categories below:
Sports/Games
Commerce/ Shopping
Geolocation
Productivity
Sharing/Social
Novelty/Innovation
We invite developers of all experience levels to participate in creating awesome add-ons for Firefox mobile. You’ll be rewarded with fantastic prizes and tons of exposure between now and January 7, 2011 when the contest wraps. Enter now and start creating your add-on today!
But Wait, There’s More!
We’ve got a serious panel of judges that include industry experts and mobile visionaries that will be judging the submissions and awarding a winner in each category. The prize for each category winner receives:
$1000 in cash
Android or Maemo phone of your choice
Placement on the Firefox for mobile Start Page
Showcased in a Featured Add-ons video distributed across Mozilla channels
Blog post and Rock your Firefox spotlight
Of the 6 finalists, judges will also choose a Best in Show grand prize winner who will receive the above prizes, plus a full conference pass to Mobile World Congress 2011, plus 4 nights accommodation in Barcelona!
Early Bird Challenge
The Firefox Mobile Add-on Cup is packed full of exposure and prizes for add-on developers, but we have one more. If your add-on is submitted by December 17, we’ll send you a limited edition Firefox 4 Beta shirt!
Check the Cup site for more information, rules and resources to help you get started. Good luck!
Easy Reading, developed by our very own Brad Lassey and Ben Stover, is a really handy add-on for reading content on your mobile. It’s an add-on that helps text reflow into a more reader friendly format when you zoom in on copy that’s too small to read. Just double tap to zoom in and text will reflow so that you can easily read your content on your screen. Simple as pie! Enjoy!
Our second release of Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo is live! Download it and tell us what you think. Thanks to everyone for their continued support and feedback.
A great feature in Firefox 4 Beta is the personalized Start page that provides instant access to the tabs you had open last time you were browsing on your mobile, tabs from your other computers, and it even suggests you add-ons that will help you get the most out of your Firefox.
Two newly featured add-ons, that will also appear as suggested add-ons on the Start page, are “Phony” and “Bigger Text,” which have been developed by our very own Matt Brubeck. Both of these add-ons address some of the pain points that our users have flagged for us. These add-ons will serve as great additions while we continue to improve Firefox for mobile.
Phony: Some websites don’t yet detect Firefox as a mobile browser. With Phony, you can load different versions of mobile web sites by changing the “useragent” string to match iPhone, Android, or desktop browsers. Warning: Some iPhone- or Android-optimized sites may not work correctly in mobile Firefox.
Use Phony: Go to your Browser Tools (gear button) > Preferences pane. “User Agent” will be the top menu item. Tap on the drop-down menu and select your platform of choice.
Bigger Text: Sometimes websites are hard to read on a small screen with their normal fonts. With this add-on installed, you can open the site menu and press the “Bigger Text” button to enlarge the text on any page. Simple as pie!
Use Bigger Text: Tap on the Website ID (favicon next to Awesome Bar) and the Bigger Text button will be listed in the Site Menu. Tap on it and the text will enlarge.
Install them and let us know what you think. Go to your Browser Tools and tap on the Beta Tester button to provide your feedback right from Firefox mobile.
Ok, so it’s not a full week, but this virtual training event will give you all the information you need to build and port a mobile add-on for Firefox!
Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo has been released into the wild. Pretty soon it will be available for download in the Android Marketplace. Already Firefox for mobile has seen tremendous intrigue and attention from press and consumers, not to mention our 400 million desktop users who have been asking to take their Firefox with them wherever they go. The opportunity to get in early and develop mobile add-ons for Firefox is enormous.
In order to help you capitalize on this opportunity and get great exposure for your mobile innovations, we’re hosting a Mobile Add-ons Online Training Week, October 20-22. These three days are designed to help you get the information, tips and tricks that you need to develop or port an add-on to Firefox mobile.
From October 20-22, members of the mobile and AMO teams will be hosting online office hours on IRC and giving live video presentations on the following topics:
Developing mobile add-ons from scratch
Porting an existing desktop add-on to mobile
UI considerations and compatibility
Top add-on request from users, ways to get exposure, and an upcoming Challenge precursor
Hope to see you there! To get the agenda, topics and participation details, please see Online Training Week Agenda.
Firefox for mobile (Fennec) is bumping its version numbering to more closely match desktop releases of Firefox. This means “Firefox 2.0b1 for Android & Maemo” is becoming “Firefox 4.0b1 for Android & Maemo” and will be released as “Firefox 4.0 for Android & N900″. We are aligning mobile Firefox and desktop Firefox since the web rendering engines used in both browsers are the same. Treating them as the same version seemed like the right thing to do.
Any add-ons hosted on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) that are marked as compatible for Fennec 2.0b1pre will automatically be bumped to support Fennec 4.0b1pre. If your add-on worked in Fennec 2.0b1pre, it will work fine in Fennec 4.0b1pre.
Firefox Home for the iPhone is one of the first applications to showcase the benefits of having your Firefox data in the cloud. We received an amazing response to the launch of Firefox Home in the Apple App Store and have worked to make the app even better. Now, we want to share our plan for Firefox Home and are eager to hear your feedback.
What is Firefox Home?
Firefox Home is a free cloud-based application that lets you access your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and tabs on your iPhone. Want to pull up that funny video you were watching just before you left home? Open Firefox Home and your web history is right there. Forgot to print out directions to the restaurant before leaving work? Firefox Home gives you instant access to your desktop tabs.
On platforms that cannot support the full Firefox browser, Firefox Home saves the day by providing access to your Firefox history.
As we look to the future, we identified a couple of areas of focus for Firefox Home and would love to hear what you think.
Provide access to more Firefox data on your phone and add social functionality.
For example:
Synchronize passwords to your phone so you don’t have to type them in anymore.
Better integrate with new iOS4 features and other native applications (such as Youtube, Maps, Mobile Safari etc.)
Bring other Firefox customizations such as search engine preferences.
Bring your Firefox Panorama settings and tab groups to your phone.
Some of our more experimental features will allow you to easily share links, reviews and comments with your friends on
Twitter, Facebook or other social networks directly from Firefox Home.
Build the ability to provide feedback and get help with any issues directly from within Firefox Home.
Bring Firefox Home to more platforms
In addition to adding new features, another big focus is to bring Firefox Home to other phones where users don’t have the Firefox browser. We are working to bring Firefox Home to both Blackberry and Symbian platforms in the coming months. We want to offer people access to their Firefox data no matter where they are, and these two platforms make up around 60% of the worldwide smartphone market combined. We’ve also heard interest for an iPad version of Firefox Home and will investigate this option further.
No Firefox Browser for the iPhone
We are working to bring as much of your Firefox experience as possible to Firefox Home. People have asked about adding more browser-like features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone. We are focused on building Firefox Home as a rich, cloud-based application and making it a valuable product that people will continue to love and use.
Give us feedback
We would love to hear your thoughts around Firefox Home. In particular:
Do you have a cool new feature you want to see in Firefox Home? Tell us about it.
Do you want to see other types of data in Firefox Home? Let us know.
Are you a developer on the iPhone/Symbian/Blackberry platforms and want to help us make this a reality? Join us on our mailing list or #mobile on our irc server.
Have you been catching news snippets from various members of the mobile team? Can’t remember whose blog you read that was talking about that new mobile feature or event coming up?
Now get all the latest and greatest info on the new mobile blog. We’ll all be posting here, so connect with us and and stay up-to-date on all the Mozilla mobile happenings!
Firefox Home, a free app that syncs your Firefox browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs to your iPhone or iPod touch, is now available in 15 languages worldwide. Get Firefox Home in your language now! Watch Firefox Home 1.0.2 in action:
What’s new in this release:
Worldwide Availability: Use Firefox Home in 15 languages, including French, German, Japanese, Polish and Spanish. See all supported languages.
URL Search Bar: Want to visit a website that’s not in your bookmarks or history? Only remember part of the URL? You can now type the site’s URL into the Search Bar and Firefox Home will take you there.
Custom Servers: Advanced users can now set up Firefox Home to connect to their own custom Firefox Sync servers.
Our Firefox Home iPhone Skin Design Challenge winner has emerged from nearly 100 fantastic iPhone skin design submissions, as well as tons of votes from the community. Thanks to all those who participated!
Andrew from Pasadena, California, created our winning design, which is entitled “Make Firefox Your Home.” “I wanted to create a bold design that could be seen clearly on the iPhone. My design concept was to show how all the functions of Firefox Home are easily accessible through icons and to convey how user-friendly the app is,” says Andrew.
Because we liked Andrew’s design so much, as well as our other top designs, we’ve made them available in the Mozilla Marketplace. Get your new iPhone skin today! Congratulations again to Andrew, our top finalists and everyone who participated!
