Mobile Newsletter – Early November 2011 Edition

nhirata

Hey Firefox Mobile testers,

Welcome to those new that have joined the newsgroup.  This is a biweekly newsletter to those that are testing Firefox Mobile in all channels. Our goal is to provide you with general mobile related news and guidance towards how and where you as a tester can help out! This newsletter will highlight general news and and provide status about the Beta and Birch Channel.

What’s in Beta:

Native Fennec is getting a facelift on Android

  • As per the last newsletter, a reminder that we are rapidly moving towards a native front-end using Android Java for Fennec 10+.
  • Moving to the Birch Branch will cause most/all add-ons to break
  • Sync will also not be supported at this time
  • Developer focus is presently heavily concentrated on the rewrite
  • Current plans at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/NativeFennec1.0
  • How to download the latest native Java UI builds:
  1. Enable ‘Unknown sources’ in Settings | Application Settings on your Android device
  2. Go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-birch-android/
  3. Download and install: fennec-10.0a1.en-US.android-arm.apk
  4. Be aware that these builds are volatile, and some things are not ready

Testing Areas:

  • Virtual  Keyboards (aka SKB, VKB, Soft Keyboards) : could always use some help  in terms of testing.  With your favorite keyboard type in web pages,  please help with the testing.
  • Website Compatibility : social sites like google plus, facebook; banking sites ;  blogs, rss feeds, meme pages like reddit to give an example of some of  the sites that we would love for you to use as an end user.  Please use your favorite sites!
  • Content copy/paste to clipboard could use more testing
  • Please report any websites/STRs for checkerboarding issues

Reminder/General News:

Reporting/Feedback:

Thanks so much for reading and testing and helping us out!
Til next time,
The Mobile QA Team