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Opera, Microsoft, and the Mobile Browser Market
DrEspenA writes "Salon has an interesting article on the competition for the mobile phone browser market. Ostensibly the article is about Microsoft's efforts to dominate the market, but the key protagonist is really Opera Software, which may be gaining the (initial) upper hand simply because they are not Microsoft. Good discussion of whether standards and familiarity really is necessary in the mobile browser market."
Dammit. Make the moille screens decent first.
...um...like...a sig...
Why can't I choose what browser I'd like to use?
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
I guess Gecko is too big to fit a Mozilla based browser into a cell phone, but does anyone know if there are any efforts in the works to get an open source browser that could work in this application?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Surely all we need is a very simple system that can deal with sending short messages, possibly with links to other short messages.
I have no desire to read Slashdot through my phone thanks. I need a decent screen. I may want occasional bits and pieces of information, but this will be very short pieces of info like news headlines. Internet cellphones simply try to do far too much, and be far too much like a desktop PC.
Again, I don't trust Mozilla but on my Handspring I use EudoraWeb and I have one of those Wireless cards.
Also, I suspect that there's going to be some small companies somewhere and all the providers are going to pick a different company and we're going to end up with 3 or 4 small companies that MS is just gonna buy out and gain the upper hand with.
internet like monkeys'
..If for nothing other than the fact they have a huge ad below this story =D.
nice too see that Opera took the chance to get into this new market. Of course, M$ now tries to displace them, like they did with Netscape years ago. I hope Opera gets the fair chance they deserve.
OTOH, I really wonder why it is so difficult for M$ to rule the mobile market - can you remember when you first heard about Windows CE? Not much happened in all the years, although M$ is throwing a lot of money at it.
SteveB.
... why would i need a browser when gprs is so expensive and slow?
"Do something man. Right now."
It's probably difficult for Microsoft to rule the mobile-marked because they can't seem to find a cellphone with 256 MB of DDR-RAM and a 1 GHz CPU. Not to mention a physical-media like a harddrive for swapping when you are dialing long-distance numbers.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
"If Windows is allowed to become the dominant brand in cellphones, the handset industry could go the way of the PC industry -- in which hardware is considered an interchangeable, brand-less commodity. Now wouldn't that be horrible! *thinly veiled sarcasm*
Personally I always found browsing on WinCE mobile PCs to be complicated by the fact that the browser itself likes to take up a good 35% of the screen space. Packing features in is great guys, but the first browser to give a sense of utility without making me feel like I'm browsing the net through a keyhole is the one that gets my money.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
ziproxy is a forwarding (non-caching) proxy that gzips text and HTML files, and reduces the size of images by converting them to low quality JPEGs. It is intended to increase the speed for dial-up Internet connections. Most browsers support gzipped content, so Web pages appear as normal, but as they are only a fraction of their original page size, pages are much quicker to load. Even for browsers that don't support it, hints how to overcome it using SSH port forwarding are included. Images are reduced in size by an average of one third, with only marginal visible image quality loss. It should be used with inetd/xinetd, but if you can't use them, a simple replacement "netd" is provided.
Am I the only one that thought that this wasn't particulary unque? Hell, Lynx has been doing it with text for ages and AvantGo (with "display tables" turned off) does exactly the same thing.
Whilst the Opera guy may think that the browser war is hotting up (he's wrong, MS have won, everything else is relegated to the niche position and always will be - there are far too many Joe Blow users out there), they are definately onto a winner in the mobile arena.
Oh finally, for those that don't know, Sendo are not a well known manufacturer of mobile phones here in the UK. The reason being is that they don't sell under their own brand. Their business model is to create cheap network operator branded phones and for that, they do pretty well.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
The article has quite an emphasis on companies being able to customize the appearance of the software UI. I'm not a smartphone user, but I don't think the screen appearance has nearly as much glamour/show-off appeal as chic faceplates and such.
My opinion is that Opera's supposed smart "massaging," also mentioned in the article, will be hailed as easier to use than Microsoft's Pocket IE, and thus play a larger end-user role than vendor customizing.
Although, it is nice to see vendors say that the Windows UI is bland, ubiquitous, and doesn't possess the uniqueness that Nokia et al. want.
Business deals and positive/negative corporate assocations usually trump user comments and design staff, IMO, but not always.
Don't forget the fact that their mobile operating system's name was best shortened to WinCE.
Reminds me a bit of the horrible sales Chevrolet saw in Spanish speaking countries for their 'No va' ('Doesn't go' for those who know even less Spanish than me).
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
``Good discussion of whether standards and familiarity really is necessary in the mobile browser market.''
What standards? Do you mean the de-facto standard for desktop computers (MicroSoft), or the vendor-independent web standards, which Opera has traditionally supported like no other?
---
``The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model.''
-- Andrew S. Tannenbaum
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"...which may be gaining the (initial) upper hand simply because they are not Microsoft. "
/. Community, but the reality is that the vast majority of people either really don't care. Outside of Slashot, the real world isn't exactly vindictive against MS. Not everybody's running around being masochistic just for the sake not using MS stuff. "I spent 3 weeks making my Linux box do whatever my Windows box was already doing!" Whatever.
/. than Mozilla as an MS browser alternative. Zealousy abounds I guess. I say that because the only ding I can see against Opera is that it's Ad-supported. I'd care except they show cartoons in that banner window. Heh.
Err right. That might be true in the
The reason that Opera could be gaining ground is that they made a good product. That's it. Even in the mobile market. I got a chance to use a Zaurus running Opera, and found it to be a rather pleasant experience. It definitely kicked IE on PocketPC's butt.
However, I'm not exactly picketing Opera to make a PocketPC version. Why? I don't browse the web on my PocketPC. It's a horrible experience. Not because IE is bad (although it is, at least for browsing the web) but because the PDA doesn't give you the resolution and speed you need. It works great with Avantgo, though. No complaints there. With AvantGo, the pages are formatted to PocketPC. As long as I have AvantGo (even works wirelessly), then I don't care if it's Opera or IE, or even Mozilla.
Opera doesn't have a whole lot of chance of gaining ground until PDAs become capable of viewing entire web pages. I don't think that tech is very far away. LCD technology has gotten a lot better in the DPI realm. It won't be more than a year or two before those tiny devices can run at 480 by 640. When that happens, Opera suddenly becomes an interesting alternative.
It's a pity, really. I think Opera deserves more attention on
"Derp de derp."
"Von Tetzchner, for example, says that phone makers are deathly scared of Microsoft because they know the company's history: If Windows is allowed to become the dominant brand in cellphones, the handset industry could go the way of the PC industry -- in which hardware is considered an interchangeable, brand-less commodity Wow, Microsoft being responsible for the standardization of smart phone hardware. "Who are you!? And what did you do with my dark overloard Bill Gates!?"
I was unfortunate enough to hear about the "sybian" (www.sybian.com -- don't watch if your boss is behind you or you'll find yourself in a funny situation) before the Symbian OS. So you can guess what I think of every time I hear about "Symbian"...
;-)
Apparently, others has had the same thoughts as me and the comments from Psion is amusing.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Although Microsoft can sustain their money loosing efforts in the Mobile market, Xbox effort, .Net effort, and PVR market they won't be able to do this forever. There is a limit to the amount of money they can loose. And if Openoffice manages to cut off their profit in the Office software area, then Microsoft will have lost one of their core cash cows. This would slowly cut off the needed resources to maintain their other Tech offensives.
I think Bill Gates is like Hitler, Napoleon, or Alexander the great - take your pick. He just doesn't know when to stop starting wars with new companies (countries).
Eventually he will find himself 30 kilometers outside of Moscow without a Jacket.
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
[i]Can phone makers, and a little Norwegian company called Opera, stop the onslaught?[/i]
My experience with Scandanavian companies is that they like to stick together. They would much rather deal with someone close by or at least in the European Region.
This gives Opera another leg up, as Nokia and Ericson are in the same region.
Jason
on that market, and that leader is Openwave.
Their solution is already selling millions a month.
The real question is will people use smart phones to browse the web.
none Yet.
Opera seems to be taking this market a little more seriously....
The latest beta (version 7) has the ability to render the screen as if viewed on a small screen (press shift-F11 to toggle the view)... This makes testing instantly easier.
I just love the opera browser (mouse gestures, tabbed browsing..etc) and have gladly payed for the privilage since opera 5, but thats just my choice..isn't that what this is about.
There is no way that IE has the market tied down at the moment because they don't control the platform that it sits on. This will be a much better test of browser preference than the artificial desktop browser choice, because MS don't control the platform (symbian platform that is)
How come Microsoft is not standard-complaint in its browser. Internet Explorer supports the standards better than any other browser out there. In addition they have pretty useful addons which must be standard, will be standard. I used those addons and they are life-savers for me. However everybody cry foul instead of trying to implement those features. When it comes to standards Microsoft is the best out there.
Clippy: I see your trying to make an emergency phone call...
User: Dammit, my cellphone bluescreened again!
Slashdot user: I bet I could h4x0R the modem and form a cellphone beowulf cluster, but someone said ??? = PROFIT! and then all the cellphones belonged to Bill...
I personally woudn't stand to have browse slashdot on my 4 square centimeter cellphone screen and most of the time I don't have use for it. However, what does happen is that when I'm really bored (or have to wait for a long time), I pull out my Psion Revo+ and download a complete comment page on Slashdot: hours of fun! Of course, the screen on my Psion is way larger than than a cellphone screen, but recent evolutions seem to integrate what we now know as PDA's and cellphones. This together with GPRS, could lead to more surfing on cellphones.
So the browser on the cellphone is important, not now, but we'll see it coming in the next years. And yes, on my Psion I use Opera and it rocks!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Also games are very popular on cells too. While I do not see the appeal, many seem to. I bought the most "business-like" phone I found, yet it still comes with 3 games. It's getting pretty hard to find "just a cellphone" without all the bloat. Try to find me a cellphone without Games, Calendar, Downloadable songs, on-screen animations, WAP, iMode or anything that doesn't belong on a cellphone. Only a contact list, talking function and SMS function... Find me such a beast and I'll agree there still are "just cellphones".
Besides, don't forget the Japanese. They surely seem to love iMode and they fancy cellphones.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
...of silly nordic ceo's walking around in viking helmets preparing a raid on the cellphone market on that tiny screen...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Get the Opera 7 Beta 1 from www.opera.com. It supports "small screen rendering", so you can test the experience (and your own site, web designers take note!). Somewhat quirky with frames right now, but a step in the right direction.
On Sendo's leaving Microsoft and using Symbian, where they get the source and are allowed to tweak with it:
Was it a technology problem -- did Microsoft's software work? "It was a not a technology issue," she said. "I cannot go into all the details about it, but our business model is to offer very customized phones so they have something to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, which we cannot offer if we don't have the source code."
Microsoft dismissed this explanation. In an e-mail, Suwanjindar said that Microsoft's "shared source" model "provides partners with the APIs [application programming interfaces] they need in order to customize and develop applications for our platform."
Sendo: We don't like your deal, it isn't flexible enough.
Microsoft: We'll give you our API's.
Sendo: API's aren't as flexible as the full source code.
Microsoft (handwaving): API's will do.
Sendo: No, they won't.
Microsoft (handwaving again): APIs will do.
Sendo: No, they won't! You think you're some kind of jedi, waving your hand like that?
show on Opera...
Oh never mind
Too late. It's on the market since about a week in selected European countries.
The phone is manufactured for Microsoft and sold exclusively through a deal with Orange.
If it is a success, now that's a whole different question. I guess people prefer not having to reboot their phones.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The article actually says that Opera does better job of displaying web pages too. They show example of Opera displaying standard and popular web site (designed for large screens) very nicely on a small screen. They describe how mobile IE displays the same page much less nicely, requiring lots of scrolling.
So, in addition to being leaner, Opera is also impressing with superior results at displaying on small screens. The fact that it's not MS is just icing on the cake -- certainly not the main attraction.
Beep! Wrong answer. Here's what Google tells about this particular urban legend.
There is a really good Java HTML component called WebWindow (http://home.earthlink.net/~hheister/). The designer focused on memory consuption, which makes it a great option for mobile devices. And since Microsoft seems to be losing ground at least on the mobile phone market, this could become another competitor.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Well when you look at the XBox and compare its size to other consoles, physical restraints never stopped them from entering a market, they'll find a way to pack 256 meg of ram and a 1 ghz chip, even it means they have to make the mobile manufacturers sell a brick.
Funny thing is, I worked at GM and that story was constantly being spread around the grapevine as actual fact. One group used the tale as an analogy in their newsletter, again, misrepresenting the story as fact.
:)
I've also seen the story used on TV news shoes being misrepresented as actual fact to demonstrate similarities between current corporate blunders and that.
Odd how urban legends become 'fact' isn't it?
My journal has hot
It must be true! A good friend of mine's frined worked at GM and-- Shit! Gotta go - I think my doberman has got something caught in his throat!
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Please do not blame Opera for not being open source. I remember I was using Opera in 1998, it was fast, it was small, it was usable. MSIE was always huge, slow, and bloated. But, Netscape wasn't much better. Now, after 4 years, there is free browser - Mozilla. I use it every day. But it's far from perfect. In 3-4 years they added irc client, mail/news stuff, and who knows what else. They completly forgot about speed. MSIE was huge? Compare 1998 MSIE with todays Mozilla.
I am not using Opera, because I have strong computer and I can waste resources for such product like Mozilla. But there are places when Mozilla is not a right thing.
Try http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Microsoft&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AN D&TERM2=browser&FIELD2=&d=pall
So what they don't get by technology, they might try to force by litigation, particularly if software patents would be officialised in Europe.
When you are talking about standards in the context of browsers, u're usually talking about whether or not they comply with them and thus whether or not they encourage web developers to take advantage of "features" which are nonstandard. MS makes deliberately non-standards compliant browsers in order to seduce web developers and unknowing (Office and Frontpage) users into increasing the number of sites which dont work right in Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc. This is a disgusting manipulation and attempt to take over for one's own purposes something which was intended to be universal and available to all.
Therefore, implicitly equating "standards" with MS's "familiarity" while talking about browsers is dumb. If MS doesn't take over by convincing the phone companies that their phones need to be maximally familiar to windows users, then there is some hope that standards compliant browsers such as Opera will prosper in this sector.
Standards and familiarity are not the same thing. "Familiarity" in the context of this topic/article is what MS hopes phone manufactures will figure customers want (eg "better put MS on our phones b/c our customers are used to using Windows"). Standards are what will make it possible for customers to have options in what they use because without standards someone like MS can lock competitors out by making them incompatible with the main.
It's asinine to talk about MS "familiarity" as a standard because MS is the antithesis of standards -- that's what they do -- take things which are standard, leverage its monopoly on the desktop to propogate incompatibility to fragment things, and then sit and then just hang out till everything's so fscked that everyone has to revert to whatever MS has got, with innovator's suffocated to the wayside.
You will not be modded up for that. You've given a random troll (actually, it's more likely another "troll researcher" doing another psychological test on slashdot readers) some job satisfaction, and you've wasted severla minutes of my time and yours. Happy?
- Chris
"...the key protagonist is really Opera Software, which may be gaining the (initial) upper hand simply because they are not Microsoft"
Yeah, and it doesn't hurt Opera that they aren't American, either.
Disclaimer: I'm American, a happy Opera user (it really is a nice, trim piece of work), and hate M$ as much as the next guy...but there's no doubt that some proportion of anti-Microsoftism abroad is helped along by anti-Americanism. God help us, but M$ is seen as representative of us.
What's to stop 'em? Not like that can't afford it. The only thing I see stopping them would be pride.
explorer on the Internet.
Oh never mind
Yep, I'm a Finn
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
..."Don't steal music" in large friendly letters?
The Openwave (www.openwave.com) browser is already leading. It targets the small screen and limited input you will always have on a phone. Even if phone displays get better, phones will always have constraints that desktop browsers will never have. Openwave recognizes this.
From the article on Salon, it would seem that Microsoft's phone browser would require a Microsoft phone operating system (sound familiar?). With as many security & privacy breaches Microsoft products are known for - is this a good idea? I'd be expecting my MS-powered phone to ring at odd-hours with commercials. I'd expect my list of phone numbers to be 'accidentally' transfered to Microsoft. We've heard about Microsoft using unique id's on their OSs and X-Box to track their victims, er, I mean customers - why wouldn't they do the same on the phone, if they could. Move over, Homeland Security! Here comes Big Brother Bill! (the butterfly is watching you!)
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
This isn't surprising at all. Microsoft has a standard procedure for every market they crash. They bring their way of doing things and expect others to conform to what slight room they give to maneuver.
No one should be surprised. But I don't think that will work in the phone market. As always some few will join with Microsoft simply because they are Microsoft. To lightly turn a phrase, better to be vassal to the devil than stand in his path.
But I think that this market will remain diverse. Microsoft won't gain appreciable ground toward dominance unless they manage to pull a pretty big rabbit out of their hat and wow the world enough to overshadow their shady practices.
I don't see that happening with their cookie cutter software and limited access to source.
Kalen D'arrie
In the end I'm shouldn't need to care what software is running on my phone. The worry I have is that if MS get control of the software it will put them in a position to control the data formats, protocols etc just as they have, to some extent, in the PC world.
I owned an Ericsson T68i. I selected that phone because I wanted all the connectivity that it offered. I also picked it because I previously owned an Ericsson SH888 and it was well built and easy to use. The other factor that kept me with Ericsson was the availability of information regarding their products. The SH888 came with the reference manual (which included the AT command set) on the CD with the phone together with a data lead and synchronisation software. Similar data for the T68i is available on their web site.
As a Linux fan I want access to the data formats and protocols that my hardware uses. All these are available for my 'phone. It runs Symbian's OS but I don't really care about that. I just care that its usable. If Microsoft come along and corner the market what will happen. Will they come up with their own munged non standard protocols and data formats. Will they force me to use only Windows when transfering data to and from my phone. I really don't want that to happen.
I don't want my mobile phone upgraded with a BSOD quality OS. Even dialing 911 will become something that sometimes doesn't work? What about security vulnerabilities showing up? I just can't imagine that phone companies can take this one seriously.
When do company's get the clue, that money alone won't save their ass. What we would get is mobile phone company obliteration. How long would it take for microsoft also dictating call rates to Vodaphone? The best product doesn't always come from the company with most cash in their wallet.
Robert
How can you say that...
Only a few months ago Microsoft announced the requirements for EmbeddedXP...
(For the record... EmbeddedXP 160MB)
Embedded... the same way and asteroid is when it hits a planet... Doesn't mean it's small or light.
People feel comfortable already with phones. It's technology they understand. Same goes for cell phones. As cell phones become more like computers, people don't have the same fear-factor going into them like they do PCs. They feel that they understand it already, unlike PCs.
Like the article says, people want a personal experience with a cell phone. It's how you stay in contact with your circle of friends. People don't want or care about a "familiar interface." To them, it's not a computer, it's a phone.
I see cell phones replacing the PDA and the laptop. The truly personal computer will come from simple, functional, portable devices growing better, not from hard-to-operate PCs shrinking. Maybe Microsoft will lose it's monopoly this way.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Wanker in Spainish
just because microsoft is trying to do something you say they want to dominate the market and you say it like its a bad thing. in every market each competitor wants to dominate the market, isnt that the point. just because microsoft wants to do it makes it a bad thing??? wouldnt you all want to see open source on 100% of the computers in the world? wouldnt that be dominating the market?
Opera takes more memory the longer it's up (read: it leaks). I don't know how they'll get it to run on a portable device for any length of time, where memory leaks are quickly fatal.
Maybe it's not entirely different or complicated... It seems like Daniel Glazman managed to do this transformation with only javascript dom and css manipulations on Mozilla. In fact, he's made it into a bookmarklet and you just click on it when browsing a page to activate it.
...and to quote him from the page: "Well, sorry to say, but that's not a very big deal. There is nothing magic there and I can prove it right now. Let's write a stylesheet that does most of the job..."
...it lacks MANY interesting functions such as rotate (90 degres) for a landscape view. It's really sad when you get a page designed with a certain "fixed width" in mind, you need to keep scrolling from right to left and you can quickly give you a headache while reading..! There is no copy/paste which is *really* annoying when you want to cut/paste long URL's and it doesn't do tabs.
For those reasons, I'd say that Konqueror is a much better choice. Both of them run on the Zaurus (K runs on OpenZaurus, which BTW kicks azz)
IE on a handheld? No way, I don't want to permanently have a 512M CF in it just to run IE!
-- Leeeter than leet
"I bet the cell phone providers and manufacturers are getting paid to make sure that we can start viewing web ads on these phones ASAP."
By who? Who would do that? Websites don't have money. ISPs should see web-phones as competition. Advertisers just want the most for their money, so I don't think they are going to pay Nokia, Symbian, and Opera just to create a new advertising channel.
Sure, there probably is a conspiracy, but I just can't see it here.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Sorry if this off topic but I'd like to see which browser will be the most popular when MS removes IE from windows and starts selling it for $49.95 just like any other piece of software...
I'm pretty sure users will then realise there ARE alternatives...
Just think if all the car makers start putting "BM" radios instead of FM radios. Although you like your 9x.x station, will you bother changing the radio? Probably not... you'll start listening to what's on "BM" radio instead... So MS has unfair advantage by putting it's own browser...
Wireless users HAVE the right to demand any browser on ANY platform they wish to use.
I agree with the other AC. Please mod this guy to +10.
Top 10 Stupidest Things to Do:
10) Make toast with a light-bulb.
9) Commute to work on a sewing machine.
8) Drill holes with a pencil.
7) Eat dirt.
6) Use MS products for their security and innovation
5) Milk a rock.
4) Wipe your butt with sandpaper.
3) Stick your head in an angry alligator's mouth.
2) Expect deep insight at Slashdot.
And the number 1 stupidest thing to do:
1) Web browse on a cell phone.
1) Look for articles with any connection to website layout & design
2) Condemn designers for failing to produce infinitely-flexible text-only sites (bonus: rant about Flash sites)
3) ???
4) PROFIT!
No, not recognition of the brand and fear of them, the brand itself. MS values it's Windows brand highly. A product is no good for them unless it prominently carries the Windows brand on it. That's why they're so adamant about retaining their logos and appearance on the desktop. The problem is, to a phone manufacturer thier brand is incredibly important, much more so than the hardware and firmware in the phone. If you pick up a Nokia phone and it doesn't have their brand clearly visible, if instead the most clearly visible label is some other company's, this is not in Nokia's best interest. I don't see any way MS can shell out enough money to convince the cel-phone makers to give up their brands, so I don't think MS is going to make much headway with them. That's undoubtably why Sendo switched away from them: technical flexibility aside, the MS licensing terms probably prohibited Sendo from removing all traces of the Windows brand and making it appear to be a completely Sendo phone.
Were I to get a cell phone it would be for just one reason: emergencies. If MS starts messing with cell phones, with their dismal track in security and reliability, using a cell phone for emergencies will become unfeasible.
- try opera on zaurus..will make you feel like getting one..
No kidding. My company is in the medical marketplace and I develop applications based on handhelds to support our other products. Currently we use Palm technology for physicians, but we're unhappy with the capabilities of the (IMHO) glorified organizer.We were heading towards using the PocketPC and aiming our application at PocketIE. This has been in the works since the end of August. Our biggest problem is PocketIE--it's more closely related to MSIE 3.0 than any other browser, and that just doesn't give us enough "power" to make a rich user interface.
Monday before last I met the Zaurus people at a medical seminar in San Diego. Before then I had heard about the Linux-based Zaurus but hadn't paid attention to it. The first thing I heard that Monday was "Opera browser"--so I took a look. It's not a stripped down browser, it's the full browser. That stopped me cold.
To make a long(er) story short(er) my company is about to bet the farm on the Zaurus (the only PDA I'm aware of that tech support can SSH into. . .) and Opera.
If you're developing handheld applications and want a real platform to develop towards take a look at the Zaurus.
Best-kept secret in the PDA market today.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
A phone, like a pair of shoes or a car, and unlike a PC or a coffeemaker, is a personal device, a fashion accessory that says something about its owner.
/. covered this already but, I couldn't find the link.
Whatever. Try telling that to Nick Pelis.
Yeah, I know
(Score: -1, Stupid)
The cell phones that are really selling hot these days are the ones that are smaller and lighter, not the ones with the biggest screen.
So change the model. Instead think of a tablet PC size device linked with a bluetooth connection to your cell phone. Now you have a screen of a really usable size and an interface to it better than a joybutton that you could use to really create and work with messages and web pages with far more efficiency that any tiny cell screen. Now imagine that the internet connection could be outside the voice band so you could talk on your cell phone while taking or looking at your notes or checking references online. Now you have something that is really usefull and powerfull enough (and customizable enough to use any darn brower or even OS that you wished).
"chicks love getting sweet SMS'es"
Only trailer-park living skanks.
Really hot chicks like you to talk to them in person.
Opera supports standards. Sure. But usually an old one.
The resisted proper Javascript support for so long I gave up.
So choices traditionally have been:
MS - Support Javascript, but the browser is a security nightmare
Netscape - Sucks the weenie. Just awful.
Opera - The best browser for 1996 made in 1999. Great.
Now at least we have Mozilla, which will be great when they trim it down so it doesn't require a PIII class machine to run.
But hey, nothing's perfect.
The refutations are not completely persuasive.
Common language and addspeak are not identical. I can easily imagine a "Nova" add campaign that confused people--for instance, a radio campaign with emphatic accents or music that obscured the voice of a speaker, or magazine adds with fancy glyphs that suggested "n o v a." Grammar be damned--it's about creating an instant and lasting impression--any kind of negative association is a liability.
It's telling that the story is GM folklore. Any GM employee can tell you about it.
There aren't enough facts here to either accept or dismiss the "no va" story. Here's a smart summary of some of the arguments.
[wince] WinCE [/wince] is a phenomenally stoopid name.
I think the only major reason small devices like mobile phones are using opera a lot is that opera is very small. It doesn't use a lot of memory or a lot of secondary storage. When trying to fit a browser into a crowded machine, that probably matters much more than any of the other considerations. I don't much like the look and feel of opera, but I'd still make it my first choice if I was trying to stick a browser into something with only a few megs of memory.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
As a compulsive reader of server logs and counter logs I see that Opera is generally doing quite well - a more successful technology on the desktop than Linux even. Rather odd - something you pay for which replaces something you get for "free" (ie MSIE if one uses Windows) doing better than something that's free that replaces something you have to pay for (ie MS anything)
I think he has a very viable point, but only halfway. MS user interfaces are not easy to use. MS' insistence on using so much screen space for it's branding is what makes it's interface unpopular. Users don't care or perhaps even like the jellybean icons, but most users like Nokia etc because they have features that make them easy to use. Things like word completion in SMS in every language that the Nokia is available for. Things like quick selection of numbers, or voice dialing. Smartphones will have these too soon, but this is where the real competition lies and why Nokia has the market majority at the moment. The ease of use on a limited interface is something that Symbian in general and Nokia in particular excels at. (Software chooses a word you didn't want in word completion, on the Nokia you press the "*" key until the word you wanted appears. Try it. It's cool!). These are things that make Nokia popular amongst other things here in Europe.
The fact that Nokia goes out of it's way to help developers also makes them a lot of fans in the developer community. You just register and they send you a free Symbian Java and C++ SDK on a CD. In addition to this the newest ARM CPU's process Java bytecode natively, meaning that Java has finally found a home and that you can make applets in an easy language that you don't have to pay for.
If Microsoft can improve on features like this is what will make the market, not browsers.
Regardless of what Daniel thinks this is revolutionary simply because they did it first.
How they do it is an implementation detail of little relevance to anyone. This is exciting because they are doing it and on a browser that fits in a mobile phone.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The openwave mobile browser has at least 70% of the global handset browser market - and growing.
This is because Openwave is able to focus on this type of browser.
Neither Microsoft or Opera is going to be able to trump this anytime soon. Microsoft is only a threat to the mobile PDA market. Opera is nowhere. Who is shipping with their browser?
This is so silly. "Not Microsoft" is such a zealous thing to say. It's one thing to boycott a company that runs sweatshops (even then, it's better to lobby government), but Microsoft is only as Evil as you make them out to be because you have a vested interest in OSS (I could go on, but it's not worth my time or yours).
Back to reality, we see that Opera is A) a fraction of the size of IE, B) a lot faster than IE, C) seems to finally be following the W3C a little better than IE, and D) has a lot more features than IE.
The only other aspect is cost, which I don't know. The point is, choose technology based on it's merit. IF MS is succeeding with crappy tech and strong-armed tactics, then don't go with MS. The reality is, however, in most all markets they don't do this, and the ONE market that they were found guilty of doing this it was only for maintaining an already successful product (meaning, it was successful due to the products merit - without underhanded tactics).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that
called for a small employee contribution. The company was paying all
the rest. Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed;
otherwise the plan was off. Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded
and cajoled, but to no avail. Sam said the plan would never pay off.
Finally the company president called Sam into his office.
"Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's
a pen. I want you to sign the papers. I'm sorry, but if you don't sign,
you're fired. As of right now."
Sam signed the papers immediately.
"Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you
couldn't have signed earlier?"
"Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so
clearly before."
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