BBC: Mozilla's mobile Firefox browser close to release

Mozilla is moving closer to the release of its first mobile Firefox browser.

The alpha 2 version of Fennec was made available on Dec. 22, one Mozilla developer announced.

The BBC, quoting a Firefox mobile developer, noted that Fennec is only day's away from release.

"We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading," wrote one Mozilla Fennec developer, who announced the release of Alpha 2 on his blog. "In addition to the great performance work, we’re starting to work towards feature completion.  We’re making great progress on our Windows Mobile builds and are starting to roll on Symbian."

The mobile browser runs on Nokia's 810 Internet tablet and Nokia 900 smartphone, which run the Maemo Linux based operating system. Mozilla has also provided versions of Fennec for Windows, MacX and Linux desktops for developers.

Mozilla also plans to support Windows Mobile and Symbion mobile operating systems.

Fennec includes touch-screen support, a password manager, pop-up blocker and Firefox-style tab-browsing interface.