The mobile user is one many tech companies want to impress and get as much a piece of. There is quite many who access internet primarily on a mobile device, mobile revenues on the other hand are growing with companies like Facebook and Google reaping huge returns. We all know a mobile only story, don’t we? Instagram, Whatsapp, Line, Flipboard, Foursquare and Angry Birds just to name a few.
With mobile users going more into apps as opposed to the traditional browser, browser companies are bound to think of how to reinvent the experience to get back and keep these users.
Firefox is one such case that wants to keep users long after they have shut the desktop and gone to the smartphone while in waiting-rooms, beds and living-rooms.
The war on the browser is similarly tough, with Google’s Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer on the forefront. Each of them have since extended the war to the mobile phone that also has stock browsers to add to the list of those who want in on the piece of pie, Opera is also big on mobile.
Firefox has this awesomebar that was meant to make the experience of the desktop user quite memorable with ease of finding and controlling settings and browser features. Mozilla hopes to achieve the same on mobile by introducing awesomescreen to the mobile browser on Android. In a blog post, Mozilla announced that these features have been added to the nightly builds where tests, debugging and refinement will go on till they have something to take to the user.
Awesomescreen shows the browser start page with thumbnails of browser history, bookmarks and reading list, allowing the user to switch side to side to access different modes. What this does is give the user more things to do on the idle screen instead of the plain page. This way it functions more like an app than a browser.
