Is Mozilla Firefox for Tablets Really Awesome?

Sleek designs and fantastic user interface are usually synonymous with Apple. Nonetheless, tablets using the Android platform might finally have a browser that makes the Apple's Safari browser unattractive.

Mozilla's Ian Barlow has previewed a version of Firefox for tablets, which, he says is "an evolution of its phone based predecessor, with some added enhancements that take advantage of a tablet's larger screen size."

Firefox for tablets draws its overall theme from Android 3.0 Honeycomb's minimalist design language.

But familiar visual elements remain in place. These include the signature big back button, and the "Awesomebar", the URL field that allows quick access to bookmarks, history, and synced desktop activity.

Barlow, a UI designer for Mozilla, said in a blog post, the tablet version has a row of tabs, unlike Firefox for mobile. In landscape mode, tabs exist in a persistent left bar, allowing for quicker browsing. In portrait mode, this tab bar gets rolled up into a menu item at the top of the screen, to free up browsing space below.

Mozilla has still not announced a release date for Firefox for tablets.

In or out?

"The tablet version of Firefox might just be the first tablet browser interface actually designed for, you know, tablets," says Thom Holwerda of iOS news. He notes that iOS -- the operating system for Apple's mobile devices -- is incredibly inconsistent, not particularly attractive-looking, and causes lots of arm strain with all the most important controls are all at the top.

However, like iOS devices, mobile Firefox currently does not offer Adobe Flash support, making it inferior than other browsers for the Android. Even the $99 TouchPad from HP has a browser that has Adobe Flash support, allowing it to connect to most sites and services even without a dedicated app.

Yet to be found out is whether the new Firefox has removed this problem: some Android devices are unable to run the present version of Firefox. And when it runs on a device, the browser runs a little too slow.

Overall Picture

Will Mozilla win in the war of mobile browsers? Technically speaking, it's a won fight for Safari, as it is the default browser of the iPad. The iPad of course has at least 70% of the tablet market. The remaining 30% is split among Android tablets and the webOS HP Tablets, which is now the most sought after tablets because of its $99 fire-sale price.

In the Android market alone, Mozilla has yet to gain success against the Opera Mini and the Dolphin HD browser and even the browser from Google that is built in the Android operating system.

With the new browser for tablets, Mozilla hopes to make itself relevant in the tablet market -- currently the hottest area of computing.

But maybe it's better off with improving the desktop version of Firefox, which is the second most widely used for PCs. Last week Mozilla released version 6 of its Firefox browser, keeping with a six-week release cycle policy, but the interface has been largely the same since March.