Mozilla’s mobile browser , long-under-development with the codename Fennec , should be available in alpha release within a matter of weeks. Engineers released Milestone 8 of the tool at the end of September and have previously said the utility will be finished and ready for use by early 2009 .
Mozilla chief executive John Lilly now indicates things are progressing quickly. In a new interview with the San Jose Mercury News , Lilly says:
“We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user. The first thing is to bring Firefox to mobile devices. We’re working on that, and we’ll see some alphas in a few weeks.”
Fennec’s early versions have been tested with Nokia models, but Mozilla intends to have the browser support multiple platforms by the time it’s ready to roll.