Mozilla shows off Firefox for Android tablets

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Mozilla has shown off its efforts to get Firefox onto Android tablets.

Mozilla's desktop Firefox web browser has been in the headlines almost continuously thanks to the organisation's decision to put the browser on a rapid release schedule. While it has been pushing Firefox for Android smartphones, there was a distinct lack of news about Firefox for tablet devices, but Mozilla finally obliged by showing just what it is doing to create a tablet version of its popular web browser.

The challenge for Mozilla is to make good use of the extra screen space on a tablet, and while that is easy to say, in practice it's far more than just making icons bigger. The browser outfit said that Firefox for Android tablets will make use of the minimalist theme of Android 3.0.

Mozilla will use the extra screen space to present some of Firefox's user interface elements that are hidden on the smartphone version of Firefox. Depending on whether the tablet is in portrait or landscape orientation, the extra screen space will show tabs.

Mozilla hasn't ditched some of the trademark Firefox features such as the Awesomebar or the oversized back button.

The biggest challenge for Mozilla is to get users to install Firefox on Android in the first place. With Google's built in Chrome browser doing a good enough job out of the box, Mozilla will have to provide some compelling capabilities well beyond those of Chrome in order to pick up users. µ