A Few Improvements for Firefox's Android UI 81
The latest Firefox for Android nightly build now features a number of changes to the UI with the goals of "...keeping a clear distinction between different types of tabs; making better use of the screen real estate on different form-factors and orientations; and being more compliant with Android’s design language. ... the tabs tray is now divided into sections for each type of tab — regular, private, and remote — so that you always keep things separate and organized. Furthermore, once you select a private tab, the main toolbar becomes dark as a clear sign that you're in a different browsing mode. ... We now use a horizontal scrolling tabs tray whenever it improves our use of the screen space. This is achieved with a TwoWayView ... We've recently landed a new skin for Firefox for Android that is more aligned with Android's Holo design language. Almost all textures and gradients were replaced by flat colors giving a much lighter feel to the browser."
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Informative)
Give Mozilla credit man?
They are improving it vastly as Firefox 3.6 was beh and 4.0 was frankly aweful. The mobile versions for Android 2.x were terrible too. But that is not the case anymore. So much so I find myself starting to use it again in a non irritational like way and even like it.
I think one browser engine is harmful and I do not care if it is better. Ie 6 was far better than Netscape and even Mozilla 1.2 sadly and people forget that.
I do not want a webkit future no more than I wanted a IE 6 only future a decade ago. Website owners have to use all sorts of hacks with -webkit prefixes and strange relatie:position bugs that do not exist in IE nor Firefox. Many bash IE and Firefox for not being -webkit standard while ignoring W3C standards. It is not nearly as bad as it was but it is going in that direction as sites like HTML5test.com rush to benchmark futures that only exist in webkit to prove that any other browser sucks which are not even part of the W3C standard.
Re:Flash is the reason (Score:4, Informative)
Yes Google has deprecated iGoogle and is going to kill it completely later this year, but damnit, I like my iGoogle homepage!
It's also nice to have three different browsers around for those situations where a webpage just doesn't render right in one or the other. But I generally prefer Chrome for Android for most of my daily browsing. It's quick at rendering and loading, and since it uses WebKit most web pages just work correctly (but not all of them!)
I don't use Firefox sync any longer, even though I only browse with Firefox on my desktop computers. I used it for a while, but it was killing my battery because it was always doing its syncing thing. Once I turned that feature off my battery life went way up.