Web browsers aren't anymore focusing on feature-packed functionalities, simply because users have enough of them.
With the internet having pretty much everything the world's information has to give, people are more in needs for speed, organization of data, and privacy. Here, Mozilla launches 'Firefox Preview' which is meant to be the preview version of its future Firefox Android browser.
Mozilla claims Firefox Preview, and its future Firefox for Android for that matter, to have speed that is twice as fast as previous versions of Firefox for Android.
It is also designed to have an improved workflow to increase productivity further, all packed with a different foundation that is more mobile-friendly.
Firing up the browser, the first noticeable thing, is the interface change, which positions the address bar at the bottom, rather than its usual spot at the top. Firefox Preview also adds what Mozilla calls the 'Collections', which allows users to save and share groups of websites, or to just open them like shortcuts.
Firefox Preview is Mozilla's "platform for building, testing, and delivering unique features", and aimed at refining the mobile browser, which on Android is dominated by Chrome.
Essentially, Firefox Preview is a 'technology preview' which showcases GeckoView, a proprietary mobile engine from Mozilla, meant to be the alternative to Google's Chrome WebView.
The browser's use of Mozilla Android Components and GeckoView is to reduce Mozilla's reliance on Google Android tools, and is aimed at browser developers - many of whom still rely on Google Chromium and Google Android components.
In its blog post, Mozilla compared this to its Quantum engine on desktop, which helped the browser make significant gains when it was launched back in 2017.
Mozilla here believes GeckoView can offer the same advantages on Android.
The idea behind GeckoView is to make the Android Firefox rendering engine a "reusable library", according to Dan Callahan, a Mozilla developer advocate.
"By decoupling the Gecko engine from the Firefox application, we've created a newer, faster, and more maintainable way to create Android applications. This approach leverages Gecko's excellent performance, privacy, and support for cutting-edge web standards," Callahan said.
GeckoView is meant to help Mozilla develop its browser faster, and allow it to ultimately and completely revamp Firefox for mobile. What this means, Mozilla is shifting its focus away from its privacy-focused Firefox Focus for at least temporarily.
With Firefox Focus out of the way for the moment, Mozilla does incorporate Focus' features. This includes Focus' ad-trackers blockers that is turned on by default.
"While Focus is great at what it does, it is not a general-purpose browser. By design, Focus does not keep track of history or bookmarks, nor does it support APIs like WebRTC. Yet we need a place to test those features to ensure that GeckoView is sufficiently robust and capable of building fully-featured browsers. That's where Reference Browser comes in," said Callahan.
"GeckoView is the foundation of Mozilla's next generation of mobile products. To better support that future, we've halted new feature development on Focus while we concentrate on refining GeckoView and prepare for the launch of Firefox Preview."
The browser is also the result of Mozilla developers' work on Firefox Fenix, a replacement of the browser's main engine, Fennec.
Mozilla said that the final version of this revamped and “feature-rich” Firefox would be “significantly” different that its initial version. Mozilla said that it's improving the browser based on user feedback.