Firefox for Android to Get an Overhaul with Native UI

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Mozilla's director of engineering Jonathan Nightingale has informed the Firefox community that future versions of Firefox for Android will get a native UI instead of the current XUL-based interface.

According to Nightingale, the native UI will allow Firefox to achieve better startup times, reduce memory consumption and become much more responsive. The mobile browser has been heavily criticized for its generous memory consumption and slow startup in the past.

Of course, this change will ring in another round of discussions that will center around add-on support. Nightingale said that the change to a native UI is still in its early days and there are talks with the Add-on SDK team how support extensions. While this could be another painful switch for developers, Mozilla stresses that its discussions are open and that it welcomes participation from the community.

There is no information when the new UI will be available. According to Nightingale, Firefox 8 and 9 will still ship with the XUL and tablet UI.

Douglas Perry
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • fancarolina
    Shouldn't it have been written this way to begin with?
    Reply
  • festerovic
    hmm. I get great results with the android browser on droid 2. So far, Firefox on the droid is slower, and it just seems to be a port of the PC version instead of something that was designed to be used on a phone. Firefox, you will have to bring it to get ahead of the onboard android browser.
    Reply
  • zanny
    fancarolinaShouldn't it have been written this way to begin with?
    Its easier to port xul.os and have the massive overhead than rewrite the browser from scratch. Most of Firefox is written in C++, so it can cross compile alot of its dynamic libraries into Android. It will take a LOT of work to rewrite xul for minimum memory footprint, the file is about 25 megabytes on Windows. Its a lot of code, and it is the vast majority of Firefox's code base.
    Reply
  • v1ze
    no Firefox chick as the image? rage fail.
    Reply
  • john15v16
    I downloaded the firefox browser App for my nexus s but was seriously disappointed in performance and its lack of flash support. I hear all of what folks say about HTML5 & flash and blah blah blah but honestly, the web sucks without it. Opera mobile on the other hand, got it right the first time. It is now my default browser of choice.
    Reply
  • victorintelr
    I'm currently using Firefox in my tablet (Thrive) as of today I prefer it, it opens the Tom's website (or iToms if you are worried about the # of iphones news) without crashing like Opera's browser with its last update (before the update I had no problems......)
    Reply
  • nikorr
    Great, what about iPad?
    Reply
  • isamuelson
    How about flash support?

    As it is, Dolphin HD is an excellent browser. It's fast, supports flash and it even has a smaller version that is even lighter for those with less powerful droids.

    Firefox is behind the eight-ball on this one.
    Reply
  • del35
    I'm currently using Firefox in my tablet (Thrive) as of today I prefer it.

    My Thrive crashes on www.seekingalpha.com . Can't seem to get a browser that won't crash the tablet in that website, although my Samsung Galaxy s2 phone has no problems.

    Reply
  • dstigue
    isamuelsonHow about flash support?As it is, Dolphin HD is an excellent browser. It's fast, supports flash and it even has a smaller version that is even lighter for those with less powerful droids.Firefox is behind the eight-ball on this one.I absolutely agree with you isamuelson.. Dolphin HD is blowing away the competition right now. If you haven't tried it you should. I prefer the tabbed browsing style to the regular browser.
    Reply