Mozilla ready to take on Chrome on Android platform with launch of Firefox Beta

From the Mobile wars to the Browser wars the game continues to get more and more interesting.  Mozilla yesterday released the Firefox Beta for Android devices.  Mozilla confirmed that this browser was in beta stage for testing and asked for users to comment on it.

The Firefox Beta App which the Mozilla released yesterday has been updated to include custom, open source fonts viz. Charis and Open Sans, which will replace the default Android fonts to make the App "visually appealing" as per Mozilla Blog. Another interesting feature to be included in this Beta update is HTML5 Compatibility Optimisations. Mozilla claims that the updated app brings improvements to HTML5 compatibility which it has tested on HTML5test.org. 

Here is what the Mozilla has done with this Beta version update

Open Sans and Charis fonts for Web Content                NEW
Ability to save media files on long tap                            CHANGED
Polished UI based on Holo theme                                   CHANGED
CSS -moz-user-select:none selection changed to improve compatibility with -webkit-user-select:none (bugs 816298)
                                                                                         CHANGED
Graphics related performance improvements (bug 809821)
                                                                                         CHANGED
Removed E4X support from SpiderMonkey               DEVELOPER
Implemented Remote Profiling                                   DEVELOPER
Integrated, Add-on SDK loader and API libraries into Firefox
                                                                                     DEVELOPER
DOM/content implementation for <input type='time'> Associated bugs                                                                                 HTML5
Added support for <main> element                                HTML5
Implemented scoped stylesheets                                     FIXED
Download Manager page is not updated after clearing private data (777639)                                                                          FIXED
In content UI cut off on small screens (840593)             FIXED

As you can see that it has fixed a lot of bugs and made the browser visually appealing but a number of known issues are still unresolved.  But if you are a developer or webmaster, then the beta version is for you.  Download the Beta version from the Google Play now and enjoy the difference.

Please put in your comments on this post.

Vijay Prabhu