Mozilla Building 'Junior' Browser for iPad
Apple's iOS platform isn't without its selection of third party browsers, including ones that can handle Flash content (albeit not very well, in our experience). But one browser maker that has yet to join the iOS party is Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, and guess what? Mozilla has something brewing for the iPad.
It's called "Junior," which is currently a prototype browser for the iPad. It's not a Firefox port, nor is it a slightly altered version of Safari. Rather, it's a completely new browser built from the ground up.
"We wanted to make something entirely new. We wanted to look into how we could reinvent the browser for a new form factor," said Alex Limi, Firefox UX Lead at Mozilla, according to The Verge. "There are lots of reasons why we should be on iOS even though we can't bring our rendering engine there."
One of those reasons is that surfing on Safari is "a miserable experience," Limi says. Equally important is the fact that the iPad is tremendously popular, which makes for too large of a market for Mozilla to ignore.
Interestingly, Junior is without tabs, at least as currently constructed. Tabbed browsing has become a staple of nearly every browser out there, and so it's easy to predict a heavy dose of criticism if Mozilla sticks with its tab-less interface. What you'll find instead is a full-screen browser devoid of an address bar. There are two buttons on either side just below the center of the screen, including a back arrow on the left and a plus symbol on the right. Tapping the plus button brings up a handful of options.
You can watch a lengthy video demo of Junior in action here.
It's called "Junior," which is currently a prototype browser for the iPad. It's not a Firefox port, nor is it a slightly altered version of Safari. Rather, it's a completely new browser built from the ground up.
"We wanted to make something entirely new. We wanted to look into how we could reinvent the browser for a new form factor," said Alex Limi, Firefox UX Lead at Mozilla, according to The Verge. "There are lots of reasons why we should be on iOS even though we can't bring our rendering engine there."
One of those reasons is that surfing on Safari is "a miserable experience," Limi says. Equally important is the fact that the iPad is tremendously popular, which makes for too large of a market for Mozilla to ignore.
Interestingly, Junior is without tabs, at least as currently constructed. Tabbed browsing has become a staple of nearly every browser out there, and so it's easy to predict a heavy dose of criticism if Mozilla sticks with its tab-less interface. What you'll find instead is a full-screen browser devoid of an address bar. There are two buttons on either side just below the center of the screen, including a back arrow on the left and a plus symbol on the right. Tapping the plus button brings up a handful of options.
You can watch a lengthy video demo of Junior in action here.
