For those waiting to bring Mozilla’s rendering goodness with them on the go because they feel that heavy contenders for mobile browsers like Opera Mobile and Safari for the iPhone isn’t just cutting it, well, luck is on your side. The much-awaited Firefox Mobile 1.0 is finally out, but for those unlucky to not have a Nokia N900 will have to wait a bit because this new contender in the mobile browser war is available only for Maemo.
From Download Squad:
Like the desktop version of Firefox, version 1.0 of Firefox for Mobile looks to set itself apart from other mobile browsers with the inclusion of browser add-ons.
Mozilla’s Weave Sync add-on is already available for Firefox for Mobile, and in the blog post announcing the new browser’s release Mozilla point out some third-party add-ons that they anticipate will be useful in a mobile context, including AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides.
I love the fact that Mozilla is also going to let us bring add-ons anywhere, but we all know that add-ons are the leading causes of crashes for Firefox. They give us additional functionality and make Firefox better than any other browser out there, but it perceptibly slows down the browser 30-40% on some pages. I sure hope they manage to pull off something that’ll let let us choose mobile-ready add-ons that won’t impact the mobile experience that much in terms of speed and reliability.
What do you guys think? Do you think a vanilla browser is good enough already or should we push for the full Firefox experience for mobile?