Fennec/NativeUI

Features

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Firefox Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next

• Fast - Instantly startup (<300ms)
• Small - Low memory usage (consistent with other browsers)
• Energy - Doesn't eat your battery

Background

[1]

How To Build

The project repository is here: http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/birch

Follow the instructions from Mobile/Fennec/Android. Build as you normally would (make -f client.mk), just with a different mozconfig.

Here's an example mozconfig:

# Add the correct paths here:
ac_add_options --with-android-ndk="$HOME/android-ndk-r6"
ac_add_options --with-android-sdk="$HOME/android-sdk-linux_x86/platforms/android-13"
ac_add_options --with-android-version=5

# android options
ac_add_options --enable-application=mobile
ac_add_options --target=arm-linux-androideabi
ac_add_options --with-endian=little
ac_add_options --with-ccache
ac_add_options --enable-tests

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=./objdir-droid
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j9 -s"

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/birch/ src
cd src
vi mozconfig-droid
...
export MOZCONFIG=~/src/mozconfig-droid
make -f client.mk

Architecture Overview

Get a bird's eye view of how the native UI version of Fennec is structured.

Known Issue

Near Term

• tabs (dougt / ram)
• Dialogs
  • http auth
  • nsIPrompt
  • cert auth (xul)
• door hangers (gcp)
  • content permission (geolocation, desktop notification, indexedDb)
  • popup permission
• preferences (alexp)
• bookmarking (blassey)
• Panning perf (clord)
• zooming perf (clord)
• IME (alexp)
• Don't initialize this early. https://github.com/snorp/mozilla-central/blob/faster/embedding/android/GeckoApp.java#L383. So far, the only usage is here: https://github.com/snorp/mozilla-central/blob/faster/embedding/android/GeckoAppShell.java#L1717 -- which is after a page has loaded. I would recommend the initialization happen right there, when the mDb is null. Or probably at the end of onCreate in GeckApp.java
• https://github.com/snorp/mozilla-central/blob/faster/embedding/android/AwesomeBar.java#L178 -- This can be moved to an AsyncTask. A database access can happen in the background and the results can be pushed to the UI. In that way, the responsiveness of AwesomeBar will be faster and better.
• Setting the FilterQueryProvider automatically processes the SQL in a background thread (see http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/CursorAdapter.html#runQueryOnBackgroundThread%28java.lang.CharSequence%29). I verified this by adding a Thread.sleep() call in the filter - the UI remains responsive.
• Better to use styles in layout. This helps in reusability. (sriram)
• GeckoApp activity uses a lot of static variables. This has issues while rotation (they tend to hold previous values). It's better to avoid static variables and use getter and setters. [see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2475978/using-static-variables-in-android]
• Change directory structure under embedding/android to follow a more traditional Android app layout (src, res, gen, etc) for better integration with Eclipse.

Mid Term

• Sync support (thebnich) ** see https://github.com/rnewman/clj-weave to start
• page info
• sharing
• Ability to pan around last screen shot.
• Remove unused cruft from the APK.

Longer term

• addons (going to use jetpack - mossop)
• Download
• find on page
• selection
• removing xul
• profile migration
• Touch events

Low priority bugs

• The HttpRequestObsever is not appropriate for one.

http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/birch/file/2f3d39316c54/mobile/chrome/content/browser.js#l22

• OpenURI is not supposed to load the frame, only provide the frame:

http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/birch/file/2f3d39316c54/mobile/chrome/content/browser.js#l80