Responsiveness-A native UI has the potential for beautiful panning and zooming performance.

Memory Use-We believe a native UI will use significantly less memory.

This means startup times in fractions of a second, versus several seconds for a XUL UI on some phones.

Startup-A native UI can be presented much faster than a XUL based UI, since it can happen in parallel with Gecko startup.

But because the XUL-based version of Firefox took so long to start up on Android and isn't as responsive, Mozilla instead embraced Andoid's built-in technology.Īmong the native interface advantages, according to programmer Mark Finkle: Initially the new version was geared just for phones, but Mozilla expanded it to tablets, too, after concluding it couldn't offer separate versions.įirefox for personal computers, and many of the add-ons that helped make the browser popular by making it more customizable, use an interface called XUL (XML User Interface Language). Release manager Christian Legnitto announced the move Friday. Right now, Apple and Google browsers based on the open-source WebKit project dominate mobile browsing. Last, Mozilla's objective-to ensure an open Web-relies on Firefox. Second, with Firefox shut out on Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone, Android is effectively the only route for Mozilla to bring its browser to the mobile market.

First, smartphones and tablets are at the center of a mobile-first transformation of the computing industry, and Firefox isn't preinstalled anywhere right now. The new version is strategically important for Mozilla for multiple reasons. With the organization's rapid-release cycle, the nightly version graduates to the Aurora, beta, and final-release channels, maturing for six weeks in each phase. The organization will introduce the new version on the 'nightly' channel, where Mozilla tests raw new technology.

And tomorrow, a month after making the decision, Mozilla plans to release an early version of the overhauled Firefox for Android. It was a tough decision for Firefox on Android: improve the browser's performance or keep its compatibility with add-ons and other technology?īut after creating a prototype, Mozilla settled on the winning answer quickly: performance.

Firefox for android latest version