Hands-On With Firefox 4 for Mobile

just , so it makes sense that its mobile counterpart should appear in the Android Market, even if it's still a release candidate (Mozilla says the version will be updated to the final variant in the next few weeks). Not surprisingly, Firefox 4 brings many of the downstream, including bookmark and history syncing amongst devices, a variation on tabbed browsing, and the Awesome Bar.

In use, the Firefox 4 for Mobile browser marks a huge usability improvement over the stock Android 2.x browser. The start page is customizable, and shows tabs of pages from a previous session. The Mobile browser also has the , which you access once you tap the URL bar. The Awesome Bar learns as you browse, and will display your favorite pages based on the frequency you go to those pages, and how recently you've visited.

The Awesome Bar also has some nifty built-in features and support for plug-ins. The huge bonus that I've waited a while to see on a mobile browser: The ability to save a Web page as a PDF, directly from the browser. That's a terrific boon for mobile travelers who might want to access content offline, when they have no Internet connection. You can also efficiently search within a page, add a search engine, and share a page via your social networks (Facebook, Twitter), as well as Gmail, text, and via Bluetooth. Through add-ons, you can save a page's HTML to a reading list, or use the Awesome Bar to send out your tweets.

You swipe to the right to open a left panel and access thumbnails that represent your currently open windows (the Mobile version's take on tabbed browsing). Theoretically, you can have as many Windows open as you want; you're just constrained by your hardware's oomph...and, you'll have to scroll down among the open windows if you have more than one screen's length worth of windows open.