One of the key focal-points of the N900, and one it does better than any other smartphone I’ve seen to date, is the browsing experience. Fast, reliable and supporting a full flash plugin on an 800×480 screen with finger-focused controls it tries to do what desktops do, in a fraction of the size.

Like other small-screen browsers it has the same screen real-estate issues where pixels don’t help. Fingers cover large areas of the screen when browsing. Top and bottom toolbars hide 30% of the content area and standard web fonts require a zoom to read and reduce the size of the effective window even further. Until we get to the stage where expandable screens become thin, cheap and reliable enough to design into a pocketable device, the issue will remain.

Given the constraints, Nokia, the Maemo teams and partners have done a good job. It will get better too as Fennec becomes available next year and includes features like slide-in/out toolbars, synchronization features and plugin support and then, in 2010, better again when Flash 10.1 is introduced and enables 3D and video playback improvements.

Here’s the situation today though. In the video you’ll see standard web sites, flash, javascript and embedded video working well.

I’m a big fan of Weave, Mozilla’s sync technology and i inchm interested in Firefox too. Putting the two together in a mobile device is just mobile web heaven!

Mozilla are here at the Maemo summit and are presenting information on Fennec, the weave, plugin and awesome bar-enabled mobile browser. Click the images for larger versions.

The awesome bar helps reduce typing once it’s populated with history and search results. Weave adds instant-history to that.

Pull-in side-bars keep screen space used for the web page.

tabbed browsing and memory management along with image icons help use multiple pages simultaneously.

One of the biggest features of Firefox add-ons. Add-ons will be supported and Mozilla are working on improved memory management and security in this area.

Weave. Ties together configuration and history from desktop and mobile PCs

Beta 4 is out already (and will be in the Maemo ‘Extras’ area on the N900 very soon.

Full version will be available before the end of the year for Maemo 5.

If I was running the Fennec project, I’d be thinking carefully about accelerating development for more than just the Maemo platform too! Its not that Maemo is a dying OS (although at this point you could say that Maemo is already dead with the ‘old’ N810 being the only Maemo device on the market and very little news about any new devices based on Maemo 5) it’s that Fennec needs to position itself where the customers are in order to get brand recognition. Windows Mobile, due to the terrible built-in browser offering, is a great place to start. They need to do it fast though because Opera Mobile and Skyfire are fast becoming de-facto choices.

Mozilla released Alpha 1 of the Windows Mobile browser in May and last week set free the Alpha 2 version. People have already started testing and giving feedback. Clearly, Alpha 2 is a long way away from a full release (late 2009 timeframe would seem a reasonable estimate for full release, much later then the original plan) but it will be interesting to see if the development accelerates to meet the new range of powerful smartphones that are coming out. LG01, Omnia Pro, Touch Pro 2, Acer M900. They all reach into the same ‘mobile microblogging’ arena as the Nokia Tablet. [More info on the Omnia Pro a it later today]

For some information on how Fennec is performing on WIndows Mobile, check out  Mobility Site. For information on the Maemo version, check out this thread on the Maemo.org forums. I won’t be trying it on my N810. I’m holding out for new Nokia Tablet hardware. (Please!)

The first beta of Mozilla’s mobile focused browser was recently released, and provided that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, I thought I’d give it a try on my Sony VAIO UX180 [Portal page]. I flipped the unit into portrait mode and recorded a quick demo of the action. I’m pretty impressed so far and I like the interface. They still have some work to do and it will be really interesting to see how good of a web experience you can have on a Linux powered device (like the N810 [Portal page]) with lots of familiar Firefox addons running in conjunction with Fennec. Check out the video below:

Fennec, the small-screen version of Firefox, is important for ultra mobile fans. Not just because its a small-screen, finger-optimised browser but because it has been chosen as one of the browser options (the other being Firefox 3) for Moblin 2, the latest version of the Intel-led core operating system for MIDs planned for first release in Spring 2009.

Fennec has support for add-ons but unfortunately, it doesn’t support the mainstream add-ons that are available for the Daddy of the pack, Firefox 3. Thank goodness people are starting to jump on board then because add-ons help a lot with individual tailoring, an important part of the ‘personal’ part of the ultra mobile PC equation. ReadWriteWeb reports that the URL Fixer add-on is now ready.

Exactly what the add-on does isn’t really as important as the signal it sends out to developers and adopters. Fennec is starting to gain traction and awareness amongst developers.

For more about the browser choices on Moblin check out this part of the Moblin website. While you’re there, don’t miss the clutter user interface demo video. Clutter is the new 3D-capable UI architecture that will replace Hildon. The demo looks fantastic. Oh, one more thing I noticed. It looks like they are working on open source hardware-driven video decoding based on libva APIs. In fact the whole Moblin project is looking far more organised than it was 6 months ago and there’s quite a few exciting things to check out on the site if you’re interested in Atom-based MIDs.

Remember though, Moblin 2 is for OEMs to brand and enhance.  Its not an end-users distro.

Breaking News (Meaning I don’t have much information at this stage!) Google have just posted confirmation that they will launch a new browser tomorrow (3rd Sept.)

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

That doesn’t sound too exciting but if its Ajax-focused, it could be interesting for mobile users. Its a hash of Firefox and Webkit by the sounds of it.

We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

I’m looking forward to trying it out, testing its capabilities and speed tomorrow. Stay tuned for some UMPC-based Chrome action! Questions to be answered:

• Is it fast for ajax?
• Does it support grab and drag (our fave) plugin
• Is it just a google-focused window to Google apps?

More comment from Matt Cutts (Google.) More official info at the Google blog,

Update: Chrome is now available for download. Have installed on desktop and don’t see any way to ‘grab and drag’ or fullscreen or do any sort of plugin activity. That will kill it for most people I think. What exactly are they trying to achieve with Chrome?