Browsing the Web on a mobile phone is traditionally such a painful process that many of us simply don't bother. Thankfully things are beginning to change though. We've already seen the Beta release of the slick Opera Mobile browser for Windows Mobile devices. Now, Mozilla is getting in on the act with its Firefox Mobile browser, code-named Fennec.

What's inside?

Touch-screen users will love the way that Firefox Mobile is organized. The main window dedicates pretty much the whole screen space to the web page itself rather than placing loads of tools and options on screen. In fact, the only things displayed here other than the web page itself are the large, touch-friendly address bar and bookmarks button.

Firefox Mobile avoids clutter by locking its settings in a menu that can only be viewed by dragging the screen to the right. Here, you can tinker with options for JavaScript, cookies, passwords, etc., as well as managing your plug-ins. Yes, that's right, Firefox Mobile will be fully extensible, and this version even picks up the add-ons you've got installed in your desktop version of the browser.

The joy of tabs

Perhaps the feature I like most in Firefox Mobile, is the way it handles tabs. Instead of displaying tabs underneath the address bar like in normal Firefox, this version stores all your tabs in a hidden area on the left, which again, can be opened by dragging your finger across the screen - this time to the left. This is another way in which the program optimizes screen space without sacrificing functionality.

There are other features on the horizon that haven't been wholly integrated into the Fennec alpha yet, such as quick dial for phone numbers on Web pages, and more work will be done to support maps and GPS tools. In fact, the sky is the limit really in terms of features if enough developers get excited about Firefox Mobile. Mozilla is banking on the fact that developers can build apps and add-ons freely using AJAX, CSS, JavaScript or HTML, rather than having to learn new techniques to code projects for multiple mobile platforms using multiple languages.

For now though, Fennec is a very crude version of Firefox Mobile, which is rife with display errors, bugs and feels very much incomplete.

Nevertheless, if you want a sneaky peak at how the future of mobile Web browsing might look on a HTC Touch Pro, Firefox Mobile is worth a look.

Download Firefox Mobile Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 in Softonic

You’d have to have been living under a rock not to have noticed that Firefox from Mozilla has become a popular choice for web professionals and causal users who have become sick of the flaws and security holes in Microsoft’s ubiquitous Internet Explorer. Minimo is the Pocket PC version of Firefox, shrunken down to match your device but still loaded with power and features lacking from Pocket IE.

The first thing to note about Minimo is a slight installation issue we suffered. If you’ve already installed a previous version of the browser on your device, it’s important that you uninstall it and perform a soft-reset before attempting to upgrade. After installation, we’d recommend another soft-reset before running the program as this usually irons out any creases in the installation process. It isn’t right that we should still have to be installing programs in this way on Pocket PCs but that’s really more of an issue with the way their systems are designed.

When you finally get around to launching Minimo, you see an attractive splash screen and then in a couple of seconds, the browser window appears and immediately starts loading your start page – just like in Firefox. Items such as the start page, bookmarks image loading and so on can be accessed and adjusted through the preferences menu. In terms of speed, Minimo is at least as fast as Pocket Internet Explorer, and makes for a comfortable and quick browsing experience.

Minimo’s main boasts of improvement over Pocket IE are increased security, tabbed browsing and support for RSS feeds. All of these features will be well known to anyone familiar with Firefox, RSS support in particular being a welcome addition to the Pocket PC’s browsing options. The program also features Small Screen Rendering (SSR) and ‘Single Column’ formatting, both options designed to optimise websites for viewing on a small-screened device. While these functions are highly effective on some sites, making it easier to read news reports, we found it pretty difficult to make sure that SSR would stay off when we turned it off. The SSR engine itself doesn’t seem to be quite as advanced as that of Opera, but perhaps this is to be expected given that Opera have been working on small screen rendering for a lot longer than Mozilla.

As with almost every other aspect of their Pocket PC operating system, Microsoft left itself wide open to competition in the browser category. Opera for Pocket PC is a sturdy choice and is currently ready to go. It is Minimo, however, which promises the most in terms of a true alternative to IE – even if it is still at an early stage in its development.

Download Minimo 0.2 in Softonic