Yesterday I learned that you can build and run Fennec on a desktop machine:
The build instructions are pretty straightforward, just ignore all the stuff about Maemo and Scratchbox, you don’t need them for desktop builds. Everyone else probably already knows you can do this, but I’m writing this just in case some others don’t.
I’m a smartphone Luddite, so this is the first time I’ve actually tried Fennec myself. It’s pretty cool! Though I haven’t worked out how to quit yet. Well, I can do it on the desktop by closing the window, but that’s not within Fennec itself and so presumably isn’t possible on a smartphone.
7 replies on “You can build and run Fennec on a desktop machine”
Yes, we build Windows, OS X, and Linux desktop builds of Fennec that people can use, as well.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-win32/
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-macosx/
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-linux/
“Though I haven’t worked out how to quit yet.”
In Maemo you either scroll up or slight right or left to reveal the window decorations and then just press the close button to quit. There’s also an add-on called “Quit Firefox for Mobile” which will quit Firefox if you close all tabs and adds a “Quit” item to the menu when you press the “Menu” button on Android. Maybe the add-on would work for the desktop build too.
Well, you can download it as well:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-linux/
I installed https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/addon/quit-fennec/ on my android phone
Perhaps surprisingly there isn’t a built-in way to quit in Fennec. We rely on the OS to provide a means. On Android as a rule all apps just carry on running until the OS decides that too much memory is in use and so asks some of them to close.
If needs be there are add-ons to help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/addon/quit-fennec/
The tinderbox system produces these each night too, see:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-win32
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-macosx
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-linux
And localised versions in the same dirs with ‘-l10n’ appended.
On this topic, we have a bug open on making the Fennec UI more desktop-friendly (keyboard shortcuts and so forth), bug 618893. Would be funny to see Fennec become usable on desktop…