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Mozilla Heading to Mobiles
mu22le writes "CNET News.com has an interview with Doug Turner, the project leader of Minimo, the version of Mozilla for small devices. The article (also commented upon at mozillazine) roams from the challenges a small devices browser presents to the competition with Opera for Mobile. Brace yourself for the forthcoming Minimo 0.3, due in January."
Sigs cause cancer.
Blazer, the browser that comes installed with the Treo 650 smartphones, is usable, but I have had some stability issues with it and there are a few quirks here and there. Having the option of a Mozilla based browser on something like the 650 would be a blessing, especially considering the costs of many Palm applications.
This is my first Palm, and to get it to do the really interesting things you have to spend 29.95 on this application, 39.95 on that, etc. After spending as much money on a Smartphone, I am hesitant to shell out more money for expensive applications. Heck, I am unwillingly. (Lets not mention bluetooth accessories)
The CNET interview makes it sound like the Minimo team knows how to make a worthwhile portable browser that I would immediately jump to. Shrinking the unimportant images, zooming in and out quickly on a page, and providing better support for Javascript and frames can only be steps in the right direction for small browsers.
I didn't see Palm mentioned in the article, so its only a hope. If this wouldn't work on Palm based devices, I wonder if Palms latest linux initiative rumblings would eventually lead to compatibility down the road? Tabbed browsing on the crisp 650 display would be nice.
Now if I just use one of my micro mobile devices for browsing the web...
My cellphone, my pda, hell probably my digital camera can probably get on the Internet. But if you think I'm browsing webpages on that kind of screen your nuts.
My hats off Doug Turner and to the guys programming Minimo but I just don't browse the web on my micro devices. I use them for their other features.
-Teiresias
32 to 64 megs is lightweight?
Man that seems like a pretty heavy memory requirement.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I hate to say this, but at the moment minimo is nowhere near being able to compete with opera. Opera is really, really nice on embedded devices, and I can't see it being replaced on any but the cheapest devices any time soon.
I am trolling
Or some other aptly named mini-version of Thunderbird for a handheld. I care much more about being able to synching my mail and calendar to my PDA via a bluetooth or wifi connection than I do about browsing the web. And enough with HotSynch already - now that these toys are wifi enabled, let's use regular file transfer methods and regular mail protocols to transfer this information - as if it were a hand sized laptop...
You gotta make something explode to really understand it...examine all those tiny particles while they're still on fire.
The biggest problem with using the sidekick on non-mobile pages is how much longer rendering/downloading takes for sites heavy with ads. The proxies should be filtering these out. Its not like anyone is losing money, as they're next to impossible to read on my tiny screen and if the mobile people think people are buying stuff from banners ads on mobile devices, then they're just fooling themselves.
Only thing I can view on my phone are sites that support the WAP... which sucks, considering many sites (/., even? If there is, I haven't found it) don't have one.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
bash$ ln -s lynx minimo
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
And here I thought that Firefox was the streamlined mini browser of choice.
How long before all the geeks are using Minimo and proclaiming firefox as bloatware?
He who knows not and knows he knows not is a wise man. He who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool.
...how about finishing roaming profile support?
...sigh...
Come on folks, it was built into Netscape 4.7, why is it so hard to build it into Firefox and the Suite?
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
Allow me to be the first to say:
You, sir, are an ass monkey.
feh. stuff.
firefox takes 133 MB of RAM? What is wrong with your computer? On this windows machine here at school it takes 23MB. And it takes even less on my Linux boxen at home. You must have installed some pretty heavy extensions and startup up some pretty crazy plugins to get it to use that much RAM.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Even the slickest small, embedded browsers will struggle in the marketplace until more sites support small-screen browsable content.
Sites with scheduling content (movie times, game schedules etc.) would be ideal, but there's not enough of that out there to drive the popularity of these browsers up yet.
I'm sure the day will come though...
First they get their market on the desktop eaten so they make an excellent mobile product that's worth the money. Now they are facing (in a decade or so when Mozilla finishes development... they aren't the speediest at new products) getting that market wiped out too. I don't mind seeing it happen to companies like Microsoft but it seems a little hard on Opera who have this far been nothing but nice*.
:o)
So, whilst I am looking forward to seeing what Moilla can do, I wish the Opera guys all the best and hope that the money they made in the mobile market lets them develop something spectacular to keep them going until the commodity stuff catches up again
*Do you see any lawsuits? Threats? Whining? Almost unbelievable in this day and age.
Beep beep.
Stop humping the laser!
Fleur de Sel
33mb here after several hours of browsing. Unless you've been opening a lot of pr0n in tabs (I'm just going by your nickname :P) since it has known memory leak problems.
Well, OSS is essentially a "race to the bottom" to see who can devalue the software market the most. Even a superior "non-free" (as in beer) version cannot survive since most people will choose the free version to save a few bucks. Others will simply pirate the non-free version since the free version has established (in their minds) that the cost for such type of software should be zero.
After since these Mozilla folks can give it away for free, why shouldn't the Opera folks? It doesn't matter that the pay version may be better. It is simply a race to the bottom and frequently results in cheap "free" copies ruining the chance for quality comercial software.
"Ooooh, it doesn't work for me, I can't be bothered to read the fricking docs and figure out how to make it work, it's trash and you shouldn't use it.. "
feh. stuff.
Not many. The two ones are Thunderhawk (a server based compression with a client) and Access Netfront (Javascript, JVM, CSS). Netfront is in my opinion the best one on the Windows Mobile platform.
Netfront is also used as the engine behind the browser supplied with Palm OS.
I've got a Loox 720, which has a fabulous VGA screen. Except, it may as well not have one, because everything is just double the size for compatibility's sake. PocketIE just doubles the size of all graphics, making web browsing a real chore on non-mobile-optimised sites. There's a workaround, that involves using SEVGA or OzVGA to eliminate this pixel-doubling, but that breaks a lot of applications, and just looks ugly in others. Better support for VGA devices is crucial if whatever's left of the market is going to go anywhere, as the increased resolution adds so much functionality to these devices - web browsing, email, even Office functionality such as viewing spreadsheets becomes feasible. MS really dropped the ball here. Has anyone had any luck with other apps? I'm using PIE with MultiIE, which is a great addon, but it's annoying having to soft reset every time I want to do some web browsing.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
We can be ported to many platforms that Opera can't
Opera has been ported to Linux, cell phones, PDAs and embedded devices. What platform is he refering to when he says Opera can't be ported to it?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I've set up pages using the @media rules for handhelds in order to alter the layout of pages for these devices. However, they don't work in the handhelds I tested (at least that was the case months back). Hopefully this browser will work with these media rules...
In addition to not being the first company to come up with those ideas, Opera as a company is also against software patents.