If you own an Android-based tablet like the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab you are most likely to use the included Chrome web browser from Google. Now Mozilla, the team behind the Firefox browser, wants to put more of an effort to have its product used on more Android-based tablets as the market expands for such devices.
In a new blog post, Ian Barlow, who works on Firefox's mobile browser team, offers up some news on what he has been working on to improve using the browser on tablets.
The Firefox browser that's made for Android smartphones hides most of the browser's user interface features. For the tablet version, the team decided to bring some of those UI elements back again. One of them is the tabs feature, and Barlow writes that; "In landscape mode, tabs exist in a persistent left bar, allowing for quicker browsing. You can switch through tabs with your left thumb, and scroll through web content with your right. In portrait mode, this tab bar gets rolled up into a menu item at the top of the screen, to free up browsing space below."
In addition, the tablet version of Firefox will have the browser's trademark big "back" button for simple access to previous web pages. Bookmarks and other features such as your internet history have had their icons moved over to the left of the browser for easier access. According to Barlow it also, "[...] increases the number of results that can be displayed above the keyboard." Some of the new features have already been put into the Android version of Firefox or will be in the near future.
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