Mobile/Fennec/NativeUI/Nightly

Calling all Mozillians! Download the new Nightly for Android! 

Establishing Firefox for Android is pivotal in achieving Mozilla’s goals to 1) provide a platform for developers to create compelling content and applications using the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, 2) deliver an exceptional mobile experience to users, complete with the performance, personalization and security they expect, and 3) do all of this work in the shared Mozilla source repositories so all platforms, desktop and mobile, benefit each other.

Android continues to be a strategic mobile OS for Firefox and a very important platform for the next billion people coming online. Establishing Gecko as a top-tier mobile Web platform remains a priority, and Mozilla is embarking on the ambitious target to re-architect Firefox using a native Android user interface. This evolved product will deliver improvements to start-up time, memory usage, UI responsiveness and battery usage. Our plan is ambitious, and will require everyone’s help and efforts for success.

In a short period of time, we have made enormous progress and have quite an exciting experience already; but the mobile development team really needs more filed bugs so testing Nightlies in the meantime is even more crucial to the product’s development. Nightly builds are generally for developers and contributors who are directly involved with building and testing Firefox, and are used to verify and test bugs. Nightly users should expect exciting changes with every update, as well as instability, possible regressions, and many bugs. Nightly users now can already feel the drastic differences from XUL-based Firefox, and finding these initial bugs are critical to continue improving the product.

Please get involved!

We urge all Mozillians to download a Nightly build to help file bugs and provide feedback.

To Download

Download the latest Nightly .apk file from the Birch tree. Users will need to allow the installation of non-Market applications (depending on device: Preferences > Applications). Devices will also need around ~13MB, check if your device is supported here. After you download, you should see updates in your Android notification status automatically.

To File Bugs

Go to Bugzilla and include the device name/Firefox version/OS version, steps to reproduce, and the expected and actual outcomes (bug writing guide). See known issues for reference, but please do file the bug if you're not sure! 

To Fix Bugs

See our Get Involved wiki to learn how, and join the Android Nightly Testers mailing alias for questions, discussions and news.

Contact Us

• IRC #mobile
• Android Nightly Testers mailing list
• Support: IRC #sumo
  

Current Features to Test

Action (Navigating to a web page)

• Tap on the toolbar at the top of the screen to enter a new URL or pick a URL from your history or bookmarks.
  • As you type "All Pages" will search for recently and frequently visited sites.
  • "Bookmarks" and "History" show more previously visited sites.
  • Firefox uses the Android system databases for storing your history and bookmarks, so you will see sites visited and bookmarked from the default Android browser too.
  • As you visit web pages they should appear in your history

Behavior (Web page Title and Favicon are displayed)

• As a web page loads the page title and favicon should be displayed in the toolbar
• If the web page changes the title and/or favicon because of something that happens in the page (like "Twitter (2)"), the title should change in the toolbar.
  • Try it: http://people.mozilla.com/~mfinkle/change-title.html

Action (Navigating through session history)

• Try using Back, Forward and Reload to move through session in a tab
  • Back is done using the Android BACK button
  • Forward is on the Android Menu, which is displayed using the MENU button. It's should be disabled if you can't go forward.
  • Reload is on the Android Menu, which is displayed using the MENU button.

Action (Opening a new tab)

Action (Selecting a different tab)

Action (Closing a tab)

Behavior (Saves and fills passwords on pages)

• When entering a username and password (or just a password), you should be prompted to save the login information.
• If you save the information, it should be auto-filled into the page if you visit the page again.

Behavior (Content permission prompts)

Action (Viewing and editing preferences)

Behavior (Visited links on pages should be visually indicated)

Action (Sharing the current page)

Action (Saving a page as a PDF)

Action (Adding and removing a bookmark)

Behavior (Tapping on a page listbox or dropdown widget displays a touch friendly UI)

Behavior (Causing a file download should create an Android notification)

Behavior (Panning a large web page should display scroll indicators)

Behavior (Visiting a HTTPS page with a bad certificate should display an error page)