Mozilla Announces Plans To Resume Firefox Mobile Development

Mozilla, the organization arguably responsible for giving the term browser extension great meaning and prominence in an increasingly Web-centric world, has made known its plans to “revitalize its mobile development efforts,” promising to deliver its first issuance of Firefox Mobile sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Not too distant, meaning sometime after Firefox 3 is offered as an official public release. Firefox 3, for those unaware, has yet to be so much as provided as something for Mozilla’s core of beta testers to sink their mice into. Yes, so, distant, but not too far away. Too far, meaning…oh you know what you I mean.

Now, some in the world of tech punditry have looked at the roughly-sketched roadmap and arrive at something of a grim prognostication. As in the words of an Ars Technica headline on the news, the whole thing (Firefox Mobile, that is) “may be too little, too late.” Others, however, are taking the announcement from Mozilla in a glass-half-full sort of way. I myself have chosen to side with the latter crowd.

Why? Firstly, I’m an unabashed proponent of the Firefox project. It shows that intelligent execution and the development of something safe, easy to use, pleasurable (oh, so pleasurable), customizable, and expandable can in fact grow to quite phenomenal heights. And I applaud the folks at Mozilla and all the various third-party developers for it.

And the fact that it’s free and cross-platform doesn’t hurt, either.

In short, it’s pretty much what Linux has wished to be all its life. Both espouse openness as a elemental virtue, but the team behind Firefox did what the backers of Linux did not, which is, essentially, making the software as expandable as possible while staying strong to the easy-to-use-and-it-just-works principle.

And I dare say if they make Firefox Mobile as superb on the small screen as parent on the desktop, I’ve no qualms with offering a very preliminary prediction in that it will quickly come to dominate the mobile browser market.

Well, if Opera doesn’t beat ‘em to the punch.