Database Users

Fennec (Firefox for Android) - out now

You can get it here, but it's crap and takes up 40+MB of internal storage!! And it's still beta
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/m/beta.html

it`s Fennec (aka desert fox) and yes it huge and crap

Even moved to SD card it was still about 30MB! It's also unusably slow at the moment, and it doesn't reflow the text either so I doubt it will ever be an improvement on the stock browser.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

flash doesn't work on this, right?

andyb949 said:
Even moved to SD card it was still about 30MB! It's also unusably slow at the moment, and it doesn't reflow the text either so I doubt it will ever be an improvement on the stock browser.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The size is ridiculous but its definitely not slow for me. The scrolling and zooming are very smooth. The address bar is awkward, you cant type something in without it brining up the whole bookmarks/history stuff, very annoying.
I really like the sync features. Having access to all the bookmarks on my PC is really convenient.
Its lacking a lot of settings and options though.
Overall I like it, but not good enough to replace other browsers yet.

I used it awhile ago, doesn't compare to the stock browser or any of the others for that matter.
Skyfire is no doubt the best.
Sent from my SPH-D700

remember guys this is still in beta, im sure before we get an rc, mozilla will have an awsome browser

It's good that we android users have choice. But until mozilla fixes the size & optimize the browser its a no go for me.

Last time i checked, it was a resource hog, not as slow as hell but slower than the stock browser and Opera.
Uninstalled it less than 5 miniutes later.

tried it and yes the size is unbelieveable! shall be patiently waiting for them to go out of beta.

AndroHero said:
remember guys this is still in beta, im sure before we get an rc, mozilla will have an awsome browser
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally, I think this is a long way from being a beta quality release. It's a late alpha/pre-beta at best. I think Mozilla have done themselves a disservice by calling it a beta.
Regards,
Dave

InfDaMarvel said:
I used it awhile ago, doesn't compare to the stock browser or any of the others for that matter.
Skyfire is no doubt the best.
Sent from my SPH-D700
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
skyfire is laggy man.just compare its scrolling with dolphin's.dolphin is smoother than it.

it's slooooooooooow.

jaggy browser experience?

So I was really looking forward to getting a galaxy tab, primarily for web browsing. Then I saw this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZvCXMARtl0
What is the deal with the stuttering jaggy web browsing experience? Can someone that has a tab let me know if a third party browser can make browsing a little less, bleh?

The Galaxy Tab has Flash running in on the webpage.
Look at 0:08 on the video, you can see on the iPad that there are two bars marked "FLASH" disabled. It's suppose to have the banner for "HTC" on it.

Yeah, flash is SERIOUSLY CPU heavy. In fact that's how apple justifies not using it on any of its mobile devices. On closer inspection, there's more than just two 'FLASH' bars on the iPad, I count at least 4.
If you want it to good THAT fast then turn flash off.
On the other hand, do you look at websites by pinging back and forth on them so fast you can't read the text ? Personally, I scroll slowly down, and only move quickly infrequently when I want to 'go to top' or 'go to bottom'. If you actually read websites, the video doesn't really show off a whole lot. Its not comparing like with like, and its not comparing a real life situation, so it doesn't matter.

I have the tab. Some sites with flash will run just fine.
Others will simply cause the browser to be unusable. I have no explanation to this.
I compare a site that is unusable on the tab with my Droid x and on the droidx the site runs just fine with flash enabled.
Maybe. This is a software issue which is unrelated to flash and can be fixed in a future firmware update.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App

clubtech said:
I have the tab. Some sites with flash will run just fine.
Others will simply cause the browser to be unusable. I have no explanation to this.
I compare a site that is unusable on the tab with my Droid x and on the droidx the site runs just fine with flash enabled.
Maybe. This is a software issue which is unrelated to flash and can be fixed in a future firmware update.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Quote possibly. Samsung have been slow to release Froyo for the galaxy, so maybe the flash thing isn't just the Tab, its the architecture. Maybe they can't get the hummingbird GFX to accelerate properly.

I have a Tab since 1 week and yes...the browsing experience is really awful. it's a pain...it's slow in loading pages and VERY jaggy in scrolling.
If I think that it should be one of the best features on the Tab I'm very sad and I really hope that it will be fixed (ad least improved) soon in future releases!
By now I just can't leave my ipad for internet browsing.

It looks like both the SGS and the Tab are suffering from the same issue with the browser.
Samsung will have no choice but to fix this.

Dolphin and Opera
Yes browsing with stock browser is really slow and jaggy. I've installed Opera mini and Dolphin. I use Opera for casual browsing (ie xda) and it's really smooth. When I need flash, or for "difficult sites" or if I have to download with rapidhare etc I use Dolphin (which is almost smooth).

Thank you all for your honest opinions.

patomas said:
Yes browsing with stock browser is really slow and jaggy. I've installed Opera mini and Dolphin. I use Opera for casual browsing (ie xda) and it's really smooth. When I need flash, or for "difficult sites" or if I have to download with rapidhare etc I use Dolphin (which is almost smooth).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dolphin uses the same core lib as the stock browser so it should run the same as stock in terms of speed.

clubtech said:
Dolphin uses the same core lib as the stock browser so it should run the same as stock in terms of speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didnt know. In practice it's really smoother though!

The webkit browser has a really annoying renderer in general. I dont understand why it needs to lower picture quality whenever you move the image around.
Just look at the way opera mini does it - much faster and better looking! Sadly its buggy and lacking in features, which is why im still using webkit.
Dolphin HD is slightly better (if only because it semi-blocks flash content by default), but it has some annoying ui elements like the giant tab bar, which can be removed but at the cost of being able to click on objects along the top edge of the display.
Ive also tried the ARM7 version of the mozilla fennec nighly builds. It just force closed on me, not even a little looksee

For me Dolphin HD is much smoother beside the fact it doesn't show flash banners where stock one does.
Both of them have been a disappointment WRT flash support.
It isn't that great for sites i visit.

If I open a new tap, I need to zoom in and out to get a picture
is this normal?

No, mine loads fine immediatley.

ftgg99 said:
No, mine loads fine immediatley.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
strange maybe this evening I'll do a HR
by the way I open the tabs not in front but in background. If I open it in front it will load

Xoom and XDA

My xoom seems to struggle navigating through xda. It is very slow and laggy and very tough trying to navigate through the site. Anyone else suffer through this ?
Thanks for any feedback.

how long have you had it?
What browser are you using?
Mine was horribly laggy for a day or two after I got it. I couldnt believe this tegra 2 device couldnt hang with my evo??
After a few days it really smoothed out in several ways, especially browsing the web.
Now it owns my evo, as it should

Go to the bottom of any FDA page and set viewing to "xda classic". Fixes the laggy experience.

sddenizen said:
Go to the bottom of any FDA page and set viewing to "xda classic". Fixes the laggy experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup! This will fix it.

opera browser works nice with XDA site.

Tapatalk really work good...
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

jase33 said:
opera browser works nice with XDA site.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have to second that. opera works in web mode fine with all of the forums that I've tried..

Mine was slow as heck at first but after a day or two it started running great in stock browser, it coincided with my installing flash but I highly doubt it's related.

alias_neo said:
Mine was slow as heck at first but after a day or two it started running great in stock browser, it coincided with my installing flash but I highly doubt it's related.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can got to Settings ---> Applications ---> Browser ---> Clear cache. Did this couple of days ago and the browser seems scroll much smother.
You can also set Enable plug-ins in Browser advance settings to on demand. this will stop browser automatically loading flash contents.

Bigmille said:
You can got to Settings ---> Applications ---> Browser ---> Clear cache. Did this couple of days ago and the browser seems scroll much smother.
You can also set Enable plug-ins in Browser advance settings to on demand. this will stop browser automatically loading flash contents.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeh, like I said though, mine started slow and got faster, I didnt clear cache and didn't turn anything off or chance any settings, all I did was install flash. Weird, but I'm happy with the performance so far.

nebenezer said:
how long have you had it?
What browser are you using?
Mine was horribly laggy for a day or two after I got it. I couldnt believe this tegra 2 device couldnt hang with my evo??
After a few days it really smoothed out in several ways, especially browsing the web.
Now it owns my evo, as it should
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NEBZ!!!!! Glad you came to the dark side

sddenizen said:
Go to the bottom of any FDA page and set viewing to "xda classic". Fixes the laggy experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Astonishing how much this setting helps. I recently switched to that a few days ago and I can now enjoy XDA on my tablet.
(While I'm a huge proponent for using Opera Mobile on Android 2.x, I don't like it for Honeycomb because it doesn't follow the normal text selection conventions in the OS and it isn't (yet) HW accelerated to my knowledge. Barring XDA 2010 theme on the XDA site, I get much better performance from the HC stock browser than Opera Mobile when on my tablet.)

Likewise, thanks for the tip on changing it to xda classic. Scrolling is much smoother on the stock browser now.

Thanks for all the advise and help really do appreciate it. I changed setting to classic and WOW makes a huge difference. I've had my xoom few weeks since it came out and love it. This was one of my complains because my brother owns an ipad and he uses my xoom to navigate through xda and always complains, now that is fixed Once Again THANKS ALL

The xda donate version (I thinks its offically called the premium app) works well on xoom.
Sent from my Xoom the way it should be, rooted and with SD card.

i had the laggy xda site too after i installed flash. Once I set web pages to use plugins on demand, (settings -> advanced -> enable plugins -> on demand), thepages load much faster and scroll smoothly. I think it was all the flash-based ads that were making the browser slow down.
I've noticed this helped other sites as well, so if you are experiencing browser lag on other sites, try this method. Hope it helps!

I had a similar experience with my Acer A500. Thanks for the suggestion about using the classic theme. With the XDA 2010 theme even entering text was a laggy chore, and that is with plugins set to on-demand. Switching to the classic theme solved the lag, and has made posting much more pleasant. I will share this information over in our neck of the woods.

i've also noticed that portrait scrolls better than landscape.

Thanks for the "XDA Classic Theme" tip!

A noob's first look at ICS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBzTq1xCq8

i made a new video showing browser performance. will be uploaded shortly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBzTq1xCq8

yeah i checked it out too.. not bad

It made me seasick trying to watch.
Cheers!
-M
Xda member since 2007

was too shaky, couldn't watch it.

Y U SO SHAKY
lol

chatch15117 said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBzTq1xCq8
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey chatch, just a friendly suggestion. You should go out and buy a camera leg stand. Will cost about $5. I used to make my vids while holding my camera, too. Then I discovered the leg stand.

Not bad.
The browser is impressively fast. I assumed GB's was slow because it's tethered.

Browser seems vastly improved. Is there still typing lag?

wow... So glad you decided to switch hands on the second video! Is hardware acceleration there? Or is the browser just that fast?

idk man the subject says i'm a noob. i'm already back on honeycomb. got prime to boot
it is fast as hell though. i can't wait till asus releases the real update so the devs can have at it.
but yes i think it does have hardware accel although flash is broken

I notice browser links highlight now when you press them. I just wanted to make sure, currently on Honeycomb, do browser links highlight for you guys when you press them? This drives me insane that they do not on my tablet.

not in the stock browser. in opera they do

It looks impressively smoth... WOW. Isto liked the small detail of the camera on the lock screen?

how does this work should i flash it?

Hey chatch the browser does look good, and quite an improvement. I usually use stock or Opera. Opera sometimes is slower to load pages, in ICS should I expect to see an improvement in Opera?
Thanks

Bit of a review...
From a Chinese android site
http://i.hiapk.com/news/01132012/053500016.shtml
sent from yet another MikG HTC Evo

I'm glad they improved the stock browser. It's one of my more favorite stock browser's out there.

New Firefox Beta worth trying

The new Firefox beta is quite impressive; it's way better than the crap they released to the play store and I thought I'd share. Enjoy.
http://nightly.mozilla.org/

Agreed, give it a try. It's pretty darned good.

Still really slow in comparison to Opera Mobile, and the Firefox rendering is flakey at times.
No real reason to use Firefox on Android right now when Opera is offering Opera Mobile.

CrazyPeter said:
Still really slow in comparison to Opera Mobile, and the Firefox rendering is flakey at times.
No real reason to use Firefox on Android right now when Opera is offering Opera Mobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, Opera Mobile is actually slower than the latest Firefox nightly. With the bookmark sync, it's sweet, fast and useful. Scrolling is far smoother than the stock browser, too. It's pretty much what I've been waiting for Firefox to do. Quick controls aside (I will miss them), I think I can finally get away from the stock browser for a lot of things now.

this is much better then previous version. scrolling is pretty smooth. can't wait for final version

I'll give it a try simply for the fact that it is open source.

It's pretty good, although it's not available in the market/play. Download from mozilla http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/
I've been using Dolphin browser on android for a few years, and this might be a replacement.
sent from my transformer

Is there any way to get Firefox not to force mobile versions of websites even when you go to the normal site link? I don't see anything in the very limited settings.

just lou said:
Is there any way to get Firefox not to force mobile versions of websites even when you go to the normal site link? I don't see anything in the very limited settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The nightly has a setting to request the desktop site. It's not in the beta version.
FYI, there are a few versions: nightly, Aurora, beta, stable. Nightly is the bleeding tip of the sword, Aurora is the pre-beta, and so forth. You can have all versions installed seperately and they don't overwrite each other.
I downloaded a few, and these are the versin numbers I have now:
beta 14.0
aurora 15.0.a2
nightly 16.0a1
I'm sure it would help the devs out if you ran one of the non-stable versions and turned on the performance tracking.
I just noticed that the nightlies have their own link (see OP), and the more stable versions have a link (posted a few posts back)

It is slow and still isn't touch friendly. All the controls are at the top like a desktop application. The "tab" hack is pretty horrible.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium HD app

latest nightly now has appstore

just lou said:
Is there any way to get Firefox not to force mobile versions of websites even when you go to the normal site link? I don't see anything in the very limited settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update- there is an add on called phony that will spoof your browser headers. Seems to work OK.
sent while running with scissors

how do you get tablet ui to work?

CrazyPeter said:
Still really slow in comparison to Opera Mobile, and the Firefox rendering is flakey at times.
No real reason to use Firefox on Android right now when Opera is offering Opera Mobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have yet to see a browser on an android tablet establish the key 30fps stable...the stock browser is beset, with chrome a distant second, and dolphin behind it.
Firefox was by far the worst junk I've ever installed on my tablet. I sure hope they've made improvements, because honestly, I liked the tab management better than all the other browsers on offer.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium HD app

+1
Nightly is really nice.
Been having issues with Opera on the stock .24 rom.

Jamesyboy said:
I have yet to see a browser on an android tablet establish the key 30fps stable...the stock browser is beset, with chrome a distant second, and dolphin behind it.
Firefox was by far the worst junk I've ever installed on my tablet. I sure hope they've made improvements, because honestly, I liked the tab management better than all the other browsers on offer.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just try the damn nightly