With the arrival of Firefox Quantum, Mozilla again announced the arrival of a new Firefox application for Android phones.. Mozilla offers a new feature-rich application that combines security, privacy, and independence. According to the foundation, the app is still in development, but a stable version should be released this fall.
Mozilla first tried to reduce Google Chrome's market share releasing Firefox Quantum (Firefox 57) in 2017. The browser has allowed Mozilla to reposition itself as Google's main competitor in the browser market on all types of platforms.
Well, it had been launched with a new rendering engine, designed to take full advantage of the processing power in modern devices. In addition to the performance side, the user interface has been rebuilt in Firefox Quantum thanks to the Photon project.
The Quantum Firefox user interface is clearer and more modern, with consistent visuals and optimizations for touchscreens.
By making Firefox Focus, for iOS and Android, the company had already removed user trackers. To go further this time around, the company has chosen to create a browser that always focuses on confidentiality, but now adds security and privacy to its priorities.
The Mozilla Foundation has reinvented its web browser for the 2.500 billion devices that run Google's operating system.
“As we continually improved Firefox Focus over time, we realized that users were asking for a complete mobile browsing experience, but more private and secure than any existing application.
So we decided to make Firefox more like Focus, with all the ease and convenience of a full mobile browser, "said Mozilla.
About Firefox Preview
The result is a first version of a new application called Firefox Preview. The latter appears to be a rewrite of Firefox Focus and is based on the GeckoView engine, with some new features. The Firefox preview is still in beta, but a prototype is ready to be tested.
“With Firefox Preview, we combine the best of what our lightweight Focus app and our current mobile browsers can offer to create an unmatched mobile experience. The new application is powered by the Firefox mobile browser engine, GeckoView, which incorporates the same high-performance engine that powers our Focus application, "said Mozilla.
Most of the other major Android browsers are now based on Blink and therefore reflect Google's mobile decisions, but Mozilla does not intend to go that way.
"The GeckoView engine in Firefox gives us and our users independence," said the foundation. The GeckoView implementation paves the way for a complete transformation of the Firefox mobile experience.
This allows the new browser to offer greater flexibility in terms of privacy and security for mobile users.
According to Mozilla, GeckoView enables faster, safer, and easier-to-use browsers with unprecedented performance. These are some of the Firefox Preview Firefox features announced by Mozilla:
- Faster than ever: Firefox preview is up to twice as fast as previous versions of Firefox for Android;
- Quick Design: with a minimalist home screen and a bottom navigation bar. Preview lets you do more on the go;
- Stay organized: Get to know the web with "Collections," a new feature that helps you save, organize, and share site collections. Quickly record and resume tasks like your morning routine, shopping lists, trip planning, and more. ;
- Tracking protection enabled by default: Mozilla wants to protect its users against invasive ad trackers and other malicious gamers. Firefox Preview blocks default trackers. The result is faster browsing and less hassle.
In summary, Firefox Preview is a separate mobile application primarily aimed at developers and users who want to help improve Firefox on Android. The user experience of this first release will be very different from the final product, which will be released this year, Mozilla said.
Source: https://blog.mozilla.org/