Nokia Develops a New Browser on Apple WebKit

Althazzar writes "Nokia has built a new browser for their Symbian system based on the WebKit open source project from Apple, released last week. "Apple is pleased to assist Nokia in creating their new Series 60 browser based on the same KHTML open source technology that powers Apple's Safari"."

Comments

Let me know when its free to use

[CrazyJim1]

I have a built in web browser in my phone, but I never fired it up because it has fees that go along with its use.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[Kaamoss]

Sorry, but I gotta side with CrazyJim here on this one. I never use the browser on any of my phones just because the data service charge is so high. I'm sure it makes sense for some people but deffinitly not for most. it's not the same as asking an isp for a reuter and not exspecting to pay for bandwidth because the primary reason for use of a phone is to make phone calls. I think a lot of people have lost site of this and confuse their phones for instant messaging, camera, web browsing toys and not a device to place a call. But that's just my 2 cents.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[faedle]

On my carrier, I get unlimited data usage and only 300 minutes of "anytime minutes". My PalmOne Treo is an IMing, SMSing, SSHing computer that just happens to have an expensive-to-use phone attached to it.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[Okonomiyaki]

Actually, the primary use of a phone is to send and receive text messages. Now that flat rate internet access is getting reasonable, that will soon be the secondary use and since it will be moving into the #2 position from dead last, I guess everything else will be moving down. That should put "making phone calls" around 5 or 6.

Of course it could just be me. I really hate talking on the fucking phone. And it costs too much in Japan anyway.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[squiggleslash]

If you're an American, you might want to switch over to T-Mobile. Basic web access is free over GPRS, though they offer additional plans (T-Zones, which is exclusive content, and non-port blocked GPRS access for things like laptops) for an additional fee.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[eWarz]

his carrier is probably sprint. $15/mo for unlimited data.

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[Xshare]

I pay only 3.99 a month for unlimited data use on my phone. T-mobile. :)

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[jalefkowit]

... unlimited data use through the apps provided by T-Mobile, that is (i.e. their cruddy web browser and e-mail client).

Try to load up your own apps like Opera Mobile, Agile Messenger, etc. and you find that the dirt-cheap all you can eat plan blocks your service. You have to shell out $20/month to be able to bring your own apps.

Not that they document this anywhere you might see it before you buy a plan -- it's just "unlimited data!!! unlimited Mobile Web!!! " with the caveats buried deep in the fine print.

(Yes, I'm a bitter T-Mobile customer :-) )

Re:Let me know when its free to use

[geekychic]

T-Mobile changed its data pricing in the past year or so. If you subscribed to unlimited data before they changed the price, you got to keep the 3.99 per month rate. It came in very handy this past March, when I was checking NCAA basketball scores every few minutes...

I wonder...

[techathead]

If apple was actually working with them on this, or if they just are using the recently released webkit code from apple.

Wither KHTML?

[squiggleslash]

I wonder if it'd be worth the Konqueror people taking WebKit/etc and porting it back to KDE, rather than trying to keep up with WebKit in KHTML when the latter is obviously having problems because of slight architectural differences.

This way the three groups, Nokia, KDE, and Apple, will be working on making one browser engine perfect, rather than working on two very similar systems that, really, have no major advantages over one-another.

Symbian has little relationship with OS X/OpenStep. It strikes me if this was easy for Nokia to do, it should be architecturally reasonable to port it to a KDE environment.

Re:Wither KHTML?

[m50d]

WebKit doesn't meet KDE's coding standards. They're quite strict, in order to keep a clean codebase, wheras Apple has rushed features in to a certain extent. Also, KHTML is integrated into KDE, and a large part of the difference between it and WebKit is that Apple have done a lot of work to remove that integration (and add their own). I suspect the reason Nokia are using WebKit is it is mostly de-integrated. Porting to KDE would just mean adding all the integration back in. (kparts, kwallet, etc.). Not too much work, but pretty pointless because the result would be very similar to KHTML.

Re:Wither KHTML?

[jellomizer]

So you saying the KDE people are producing a lesser project because they rather sacrifice features, correct behavior, and speed for clean code? perhaps they should reevaluate their levels.

I agree code should be clean when possible. But it is not always possible to produce clean code. Sometimes you need to put an ugly fix in it to get it to work right.

Re:Wither KHTML?

[jellomizer]

Problem. You have to fix a program. You have 2 hours to fix it, if you are over 2 hours you are fired. The clean version of making a function more adaptible will take 3 hours to do. Vs. Copying and pasting the fuction and altering the bits and pieces and give it a simular name dostuff2(int x,int y, float z).

Time it takes to code in reallife is actually an issue. If you spend to much time then you go over budget, when you are over budget then your job quality is in question, when your job quality is in question there is a hire chance of getting fired. These are real factors that are not taught in Computer Science, because in the virtual world people have endless time to write their code and make it optimised, and clean. In real life, If it takes you twice as long to write a program that is 25% faster. It is usually cheaper to buy a computer that is twice as fast then pay for optimised code. Also with the cost of repairing bad code vs. writting clean code from the start If the tradeoff of fixing code will simular amount of time as it does writting clean code you get the advantage of spreading the money over a longer period of time alling more time to invest money and make more.

Real life sucks doesn't it.

That's quite strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I had thought WebKit had some nontrivial tyings into Cocoa. Is WebKit that neatly separable from Cocoa? Does it use qt internally still?

Re:That's quite strange

[geniusj]

They probably mistyped and meant to say WebCore. That would be my guess.

Re:That's quite strange

[Elwood P Dowd]

1. Yes, they meant WebCore not WebKit
2. There's a bit of mailing list activity from people working on porting WebKit (and the internal qt-alike), and the Apple folks have been encouraging.

Dunno who's doing the work, because I'm not watching CVS or bugzilla or nothing. It sounds like they'll merge the existing GTK Webkit port first. Some dude says he's going to pound on it 'till it compiles in Windows and swears he'll keep it up for a year. Dunno who these people are, so I don't know how much salt to take anything with.

But the notable thing is that the Apple employees are down with WebKit getting ported to Windows, and that would imply that they will try to keep that port maintained.

Mildly offtopic, but interesting, right?

There is a GTK+ Webcore based Web browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is based upon the Webcore released by NOKIA not long ago. Here is a Screenshot

And further Information can be found here.

Re:There is a GTK+ Webcore based Web browser

[Coryoth]

Gosh, so it's sort of the bastard offspring of KDE, GNOME, and Apple. How very odd. I wonder if this will mean GNOME will get a webkit based browser in the near future.

I wonder how many people would have predicted that GNOME would gain the most from Apple taking up KHTML? Sure, we aren't there yet, but it begins to look possible. How very very odd.

Jedidiah.

Re:There is a GTK+ Webcore based Web browser

[quinto2000]

actually, gtkhtml was originally a fork of the khtml codebase, just like webkit. It has since mostly withered and died, but there are a few projects using it.

hmmmm.

[Kaamoss]

So dosn't that mean that the Nokia 60 browser is opensource too? Wonder where I can get the source code or if they'll bother to provide it. If anyone finds a link to it let me know.

Re:hmmmm.

[CdBee]

KDE - upon which WebKit is based - is LGPL, meaning full source-code disclosure isn't required

Re:hmmmm.

[oever]

It is required! The code for the _library_ must be provided. The code linking to it may stay undisclosed.

Re:hmmmm.

[XbainX]

The LGPL requires any distributed modifications of LGPL'd source code must be made available.

Nokia using a LGPL'd web library for their browser does not mean they have to release the source code for the browser.

Re:hmmmm.

[Coryoth]

Of course Nokia has apparently taken webkit and built the GUI for it using GTK+. The result is GTK-WebKit, which has indeed been open sourced - you can find it here. I have no idea how much of their browser that contains, but at the least it is an HTML renderer and basic GUI, which should get you the better part of the browser whole.

Does a GTK+/KHTML browser count as cross desktop cooperation, or a mutant bastard offspring created by third party mad scientists?

Jedidiah.

Hmm

[Payalnik]

I do suppose Opera has more experience in fitting web pages to small screens. Have they made it better?

Re:Hmm

[kaarlov]

Nokia ships lots of phones with Opera as a web browser. See http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/

If Nokia is serious with their own KHTML-based browser for their phones, it could be major financial blow for Opera Software.

Re:Hmm

[kaarlov]

Yes they do. According to Opera Software's first quarter earnings, they get three times more revenue from licensing their browser for various pocket devices, than from selling the desktop version for Windows and Linux.

How long...

[Fermatprime]

How long until Cringely announces the details of the upcoming Apple/Intel/Nokia merger?

Return the favor?

[DeepFried]

Maybe they can return the favor by being more Mac friendly in their desktop and sync software rollouts.

I have recently "discovered" the series 60 platform and I am really pleased with it. I was so happy with it that I was able to dump my Treo for a 6620. Finally, a real multitaksting smartphone alternative (non-msft). It's the best thing since sliced bread. Now if they could just give OS X some love.

Minimo

[brolewis]

What happened to the minimo project? I thought that Nokia was supposedly funding this project for use on its phones. Is this an apparant shift or just a bad memory on my part?

Re:Minimo

[jp10558]

I think Nokia just want's lots of choice for browser on their phones, as they also tend to include Opera on the series 60 IIRC.

Opera

[Eric Giguere]

This is a blow for the Opera for Mobile product, it seems to me. I wonder how usable this new browser is without a proxying component like the one used by the Reqwireless WebViewer or even the BlackBerry's built-in browser?

Eric
J2ME acronyms defined

It's very spiffy

[Kyro]

This has been out for a while, i've been using gtk-webcore for the last two months on my Slackware box.
you can get it from here and there's lots of other interesting tidbits of information on that site.

Gtk+ WebCore

[mukund]

Gtk+ WebCore seems to be made at Nokia.

That's exciting

[J. T. MacLeod]

But not nearly as exciting as it would be if Nokia would make a Series 60 phone that didn't have gnome-sized buttons or have them arranged in strange, unnatural ways.

Why can't Nokia make a decent Series 60 phone?! To boot, they're all ugly as sin.

I want Series 60, especially if it has a decent browser on it. But all the Series 60 phones are wonderful pieces of technology with garbage physical interfaces. It's so sad, considering how usable some of their lower-end models are.

Ironically, Nokia is the only phone manufacturer with a sane software interface.

Re:That's exciting

[SpamJunkie]

Ironically, Nokia is the only phone manufacturer with a sane software interface.

I thought this too until I started to do some serious research. My aging nokia needed to be replaced and the new nokias turned me off for the same reason: horribly deformed keypads and general ugliness. Even though I was afraid of giving up the familiar interface I checked out some alternatives.

To my surprise Sony Ericsson has really usable phones. I had discounted them because their phones lack dedicated answer/hang up keys, but they're actually quite good. Add on the fact that they don't make you do gymnastics to dial a number and I was sold.

Wrong...WebCore, not WebKit

[xeno314]

How hard is it for the submitter/editor to catch this one? WebKit doesn't even appear in the press release...

Good

[pherthyl]

This is great news. The more people using KHTML based browsers the better for website compatibility. I think having 3 browser engines around with non-insignificant market share would be great.

Tabs?

[tivoKlr]

Does it support tiny little tabs across the top of the browser screen? Then it'll be the total "killer app" ;-P

Re:In case

[SteamedPenguin]

Better licensing? What kind of crack are you smoking? The license has not changed.

If you are going to make some sort of comment about licensing then maybe you should see if it applies first.

Re:porting to S60

[BenjyD]

Symbian libc support isn't that bad: there are bugs (in sprintf printing 64 bit integers, for example), but in general it works pretty well. Good enough that you'd probably only have to use S60 libs for directly UI related code.

Think Widgets

[605dave]

The first thing that came to my mind was the new dashboard widgets in Tiger. Remember, Dashboard widgets are written in Javascript, CSS, XML, and HTML. Each Widget is actual a webcore instance if my understanding is correct (or it's one big web core window). Couldn't be that difficult to make it work on this browser. And if you have seen the number of widgets out there (I was just @ WWDC), it is pretty amazing. And a lot of them would be perfect for cell phones. Just something to chew on...

But why?

[Gilesx]

Am I going senile here, or is this the same Nokia that gave a large handout to the Mozilla corporation?

This move just doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever to me, as if you believe the rumours, they had some kind of gecko based browser already up and running. All I can assume is that it just didn't cut the mustard.

Anyone know any more about this?

Re:But why?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

They did gave a large handout to Mozilla. And they do use, and will be using Opera as a browser in their phones. The reason why they are spreading their money and resources is to increase competition. By having three camps developing browsers for phones you get more competition, more innovation and more choices. In other words Opera can't rest or it will soon find itself phased off. The other reason I think is that they want to speed the development of phone browsers in case MS would come up with better phone browser. And we all know that they won't be selling their browser with out their OS. And finally, we are talking about Nokia research here. They are wonderfull in spending and investing money in start-ups and new technologies. It really is pennies to them. Actually they get much more back, because of publicity and maybe more positive view in the minds of developers. Just my 10 cents.

Re:WebCore port could be more...

[iluvcapra]

I seem to remember Dave Hyatt setting us straight on that one. The iTunes Music Store does not use WebCore or WebKit to render its pages.

Just why, I couldn't guess. It seems like a natural application for it.

Irrelevant in the U.S.

[Toe, The]

Has anyone noticed that no matter how cool a phone is, it is usually unavailable in the U.S.?

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and so on all keep coming out with killer phones, and they are completely unavailable from regular American channels. The only way to get most of them is to give hundreds and hundreds of dollars plus your credit card information to some fly-by-night, grey-market operation based in who-knows-where. Much of the time (judging by what I've read in reviews), the result is that you get some Chinese-language phone and no response from customer service.

Why the lack of cool phones in the U.S. when Europe and Asia have such a great selection of the latest and greatest?

Sure, we don't have third generation networks here... but we still appreciate cool phones. WTF is up here?

P.S. And no, the Sony-Ericsson S710a is not a cool phone. It *looks* cool, but has such horrendous design flaws as to be mostly unusable.

Re:Irrelevant in the U.S.

[Toe, The]

After using a S710a for a little while, I found these little glitches...

1. Use it closed. Open the switchblade. Notice that it's upside down now? WTF?

2. Microphone is in the front of the phone. Hold it against your face. Nobody can hear a word you say. You MUST either hold it away from your face or use a BT headset. Genius move there, when they easily could have put it on the bottom.

3. Volume controls are lacking for many functions. There is no way to turn down the deafening camera sound, or to adjust many other sound volumes.

4. Up and down arrows on side don't control volume when not on a call. That's just retarded.

5. Buttons are on the part of the switchblade that moves. So if you use it sometimes-open, sometimes-closed, half the time a button is in one place, half the time it is in another. This makes is very difficult to learn where a button is.

6. Data usage is enormous. I looked through the Cingular online menus and... used up my entire (paltry) 500 KB data allotment. I never actually got any data; just looked at the options.

7. Menus are clumsy. For example, you have to cruise for ever to try to find a picture you recently took. It is easier to open the camera, go to View, then close the camera. Stupidly, that is much easier than following the menus.

8. General comment on switchblade form factor... DUMB! You get all the disadvantages of a wand and a flip. The screen is always exposed, so likely to scratch; yet you have to open it to use the buttons. Extra fun when you are using it closed and need to press a button... slide it open, and the friggin' button is upside down above the screen.

Those are the only flaws I can recall, but I only used it briefly.

Still think it's a good phone?

But your point about Americans buying habits is well taken. We'd rather get a free phone and get stuck into an enormous monthly contract for crappy service than actually pay dollars for a phone. We'll fall for any gimmick except a genuine good deal.

But that said, it is still almost impossible to get a really good phone in the U.S. without going through a very shady reseller.

Animated .GIF bug?

[Jay Maynard]

Wonder if Nokia will fix the animated .GIF display bugs that Safari on Tiger has? I can reliably crash Safari looking at one, and there's another that doesn't display on the web page it's part of, but will display if loaded by itself.

Re:Animated .GIF bug?

[wubboy]

Who the hell wants animated Gif's anyway? I'd Call that a feature.

Re:webkit/webcore/safari on windows?

[Klivian]

Why not port the Qt version? There is already Qt for windows.

Jokes aside, if you use the nox version of Konqueror, you will already have a functional browser. And not simply a html widget and a javascript interpreter which is what webkit/webcore are.

Nokia Email on WebKit mailing list

[cuijian]

Here is an email from Roland Geisler at Nokia that was posted on the Safari Web Kit mailing list (more info at http://webkit.opendarwin.org/contact.html)

From: roland geisler
Subject: [webkit-dev] Greetings from the Series 60 mobile browser team at Nokia
Date: June 13, 2005 2:52:33 PM PDT

RE: Recent press release: http://press.nokia.com/PR/200506/998214_5.html

Hi,

I'm heading marketing and strategy at Nokia for Series 60's new mobile browser that will be built upon WebCore/KHTML and JavaScriptCore/KJS. I am writing you this email to thank you for having built the Konqueror and Safari browser with the two components WebCore/KHTML and JavaScriptCore/KJS. I would like to introduce myself and some members from our core development team, and explain why we at Nokia have selected your code base for our future Series 60 mobile browser. I also hope that this will start a mutual dialogue among us that will support all of our projects in the future.

Not all of you might be familiar with Series 60. Series 60 is a smart phone software platform developed by Nokia, which enables feature rich applications on mobile devices. Series 60 is based on the Symbian OS and is written in C++. More information can be found from http://www.forum.nokia.com/
and http://www.series60.com/.

I copied some of our core development team members on this email so you have their names and contact information. Antti Koivisto, whom you might know already, is one of the co-authors of KHTML and has been working for Nokia Research Center for the past few years and recently joined our mobile browser development team in Boston. David Carson and Deepika Chauhan are two of the original developers of the Nokia mobile browser. Zalan Bujtas, Prabhakar Marnadi, Yongjun Zhang and Sachin Padma have been working with mobile browsers for some years at Nokia in Helsinki and Boston. Keith Hollis has several years experience working with mobile browsers and has recently joined our team in Boston, earlier he was the principal person leading the port of the Opera web browser to the Symbian OS at Opera Software. Guido Grassel, Kimmo Kinnunen and Andrei Popescu are working at our Nokia Research Center in Helsinki (http://www.nokia.com/research/) where we have built the GTK port of Apple's WebCore that we released last year - http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/.

The high performance, low memory consumption and small code footprint of KHTML and KJS make these components ideal for resource-constrained mobile devices. Clean architecture and good design create a good base for future development of mobile features. In addition, Web compliance was another important criteria for us. Congratulations to the KDE Konqueror developer team for building such a great browser.

Big thanks at this point also go to the Apple Safari team that has tremendously improved KHTML and KJS in many areas, in particular in Web compliance and performance. WebCore and JavaScriptCore also offer a cleaner separation to the underlying operating system. For these reasons we at Nokia chose WebCore and JavaScriptCore as the code base for our Series 60 mobile browser.

Our plan is that the new Series 60 mobile browser will be available as a standard Series 60 application during the first half of 2006.

We at Nokia are excited to use WebCore/KHTML and JavaScriptCore/KJS for our future Series 60 mobile browser. I hope that we can start a dialogue with your community and the Apple Safari team on how to "mobilize" WebCore/KHTML and JavaScriptCore/KJS to create the best Web browser based on open-source components for mobile devices.

Best regards,

Roland Geisler
Head of Marketing & Strategy, Series 60 Browser
Nok