Start up time
• microB: instant
• Fennec: About ten seconds (warm start-up is little bit faster, but it is still slooooow….)
This is a pain for Fennec. Loading all that XUL Javascript needed to run Fennec is just too much. You really don’t want to start Fennec for a quick browsing session, unless you have the patience of a cow. I am not sure whether N900 keeps microB loaded on the background all the time or what’s causing the difference.
User interface
This is really where Fennec shines. Nokia enjoys some reputation of being a boring engineer house with little innovation left to stir. After learning the trick of left and right sweep, which is cleverly demostrated on the start page, Fennec user interface instantly feels intuitive. microB, on the other hand, uses somehow clumsy “bottom right corner full-screen button” to access buttons and left-right sweep is not very well thought. For example, switching a tab/browser window takes three “clicks” on microB (show menu – switch application – choose next browser window) when Fennec does it with one sweep and click. Also, backward navigation is much more intuitive on Fennec and takes too many gestures on microB.
Both browsers have search integrated to the navigation bar. Fennec start screen is more clever, showing the history and shortcuts, while microB shows only the bookmarks. Fennec navigation bar also is a combination of title and navigation bar, saving the precious screen estate on small physical form factor. Fennec zooms to text fields automatically when you start to input text into them and also have soft “tab keys” to navigate to next and previous input field.
Page reading and speed
On sites with above average layout complexity, Fennec is unbearable slow compared to microB, up to the point the browser is next to unusable in its current incarnation. As they both use the same rendering engine, I have hard time to understand how microB manages even the heaviest dynamic pages (Facebook profile page) when Fennec becomes unusable even on a moderate complex page (slashdot.org).
The thing with Fennec is that for some of the the time it does not register your interaction and does not have any indicator showing if it is responding – it has grinded to halt, little bit like desktop computer when swapping. And even when Fennec is responding the scrolling of the page refreshment is sluggish compared to microB. This makes the page reading experience unusable. A normal user won’t stand 1-3 second frequent responsivity pauses or page movement which cannot be controlled.
microB must do the rendering somehow different - is it hardware acceleration on font rendering, smarter management of images or some other trick?. However, until Fennec reaches the smoothiness of microB, there is no way I would switch to Fennec over microB.
(Note: You can press CTRL-Backspace from N900 keyboard to force application switch if you cannot exit from halted Fennec otherwise)
Mobile browsing
Though N900 has 800 pixel wide screen, it is still a mobile phone. Small physical size, low bandwidth with high latency and limited CPU power might make you to pick a mobile internet version of the site when it is available. However, since the screen has exceptional high Dots-Per-Inch value, this poses a problem for rendering sites with the default font sizes.
Fennec does not seem to have a shortcut for setting a large text size. This is something one would hope to see on such high DPI device as the most of the time default web site fonts are too small to be usable. Also, Fennec does not use the shoulder plus and minus volume buttons for zooming – microB does it and it is very natural place for this function.
Fennec seems to have some difficulties with mobile site rendering: for example touch.facebook.com and yle.mobi are not scaled to full width. Instead a narrow colum of 1/3 screen width is displayed.
Bugginess
microB is very solid piece of software. It crashes more rarely than Safari on iPhone (might this be because of more memory – low memory conditions seem to be a normal crashing condition for Safari?). Fennec is still in its first version and have some issues.
(Note: I managed to get Fennec to zombie state – I had to go to terminal and type killall fennec command to make the browser become launchable again).
Sites tested
Slashdot.org
Geek discussion site
microB: no problems
Fennec: slow, frequent pauses, not smooth scrolling
slashdot.org/palm
Very simple mobile version of the above.
microB: Font too small
Fennec: Scales correctly
Facebook.com
High profile social networking site
microB: Sometimes little slow, but seems to work perfectly
Fennec: Unusable slow
touch.facebook.com
microB: Perfect (at least when scaling font up a little)
Fennec: Does not scale correctly (default scale uses only 1/3 of screen width, double click zooming scales too much)
yle.fi
Finnish national broadcasting company site
microB: Ok. Readable and usable with text size large.
Fennec: Ok. The default view is navigable, but not readable. You need to double-click zoom to read the text (Fennec doesn’t seem to have text size large option)-
yle.mobi
The mobile version of above.
microB: Perfect with text size large, ok otherwise (need to double click to zoom and then click to choose a link to follow).
Fennec: Ok – font size too small
GMail HTML version
The default Javascript version of GMail is too heavy for both the browsers. GMail still provides “Basic HTML” view as the fallback for devices with less CPU power and network bandwidth.
microB: Ok – you can do some basic emailing
Fennec: Ok. Does not seem to be affected by as much of “slugginess” as other sites are (might the slugginess be a Javascript issue?)
Youtube.com
The web version of flash based video sharing site.
microB: Plays Flash movies ok – smooth scrolling even whilst a Flash movie is playing
Fennec: Frequent grinds to halt, sluggish, unusable. Manages to open Flash video, though.
m.google.com/youtube
The mobile version of above.
microB: Youtube claims the browser is unsuppoted
Fennec: Cannot enter the site – shows only the page of Youtube Mobile instructions
twitter.com (web site)
microB: Perfect
Fennec: Ok. Sluggish when opening new pages, but still usable. Fennec start view ships with Twitter button, so one might assume this site is well tested for Fennec.
m.twitter.com
The mobile site of above.
microB: Ok – the default font size too small, but when settings text size large works well
Fennec: Ok – the default font size too small. Double click zoom does not work well on the twit feed, making reading difficult.
plone.org
A community site with relatively simple layout.
microB: Ok – minor rendering errors
Fennec: Ok – minor rendering errors
iltalehti.fi
Finnish tabloid web site with lots of images.
microB: Ok
Fennec: Grinds to halt, unusable slow
Summary
Though having nice promise of innovation, the advise for Fennec development team would be “back to the basics”. The slugginess and response times of Fennec are such an issue that one would not yet consider it as an real alternative for Nokia’s default microB browser.
With Fennec’s user interface and microB’s speed one could have a near perfect mobile browser. Depending what kind of future co-operation Nokia and Mozilla foundation will have, we might live to see it.
source:: http://blog.twinapex.fi/2010/01/02/mobile-browser-wars-nokia-microb-vs-firefox-fennec
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar