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Web Browser Wars Go Mobile
alphadogg writes "A new generation of mobile Web browsers is finally making the Web a reality on handheld devices.
The latest example is last week's beta launch of Opera Mobile 9.5, a native Web browser for high-end smartphones. It's an evolutionary release for the Norwegian software company, but it comes just days after Apple's iPhone 3G, with its highly capable Safari browser, went on sale. Other brand-new entrants, such as Mobile Firefox and Skyfire, are expected later this year, at least in beta form. But the evolving mobile browsers are only one part of the picture. Mobile browsing is affected by the client hardware, ranging from the processor to the kind of wireless network being used, all of which have improved markedly. It's also affected by the design of Web sites being targeted, and there's new attention being focused on optimizing these sites for mobile users."
Opera Mini is the only way to go for mobile devices. It is a graphical client running on micro-java on your phone that talks to a proxy server which actually brings up the web page you want, then translates it into a highly compressed data stream, and then is presented on your mobile device in hi resolution goodness! Obviously flash doesn't work, and some Ajax (although a surprising amount is supported), but the web pages come up fast and in the same format as your browser. The same cannot be said of other mobile browsers, since they have to deal with the original data streams on very slow 3g connections. Opera mini is a much more pleasant experience. Try it!
Just maybe, a browser will emerge for Windows Mobile that doesn't completely suck.
Is the ability to actually SAVE files that difficult for this platform? IE and Minimo say so.
The writing in the description is poorly constructed. When someone reads "It's an evolutionary release for the Norwegian software company, but it comes just days after Apple's iPhone 3G, with its highly capable Safari browser, went on sale" they would reasonably assume that in the context of the article, this "Browser War" has suddenly sprung up, and that all of the opening shots are being fired right now.
Of course, the "highly capable" Safari browser has been out for a year on the pre-3G iPhones too, a distinction that the text confuses terribly.
The 'browser war' has been mobile since the first day God crapped out a WAP-enabled cell phone, and just as humans went from sticks and rocks to atomic weapons, the years of mobile browsing 'warfare' has progressed to a point where the phones are almost within eyeshot of being as capable as the desktop machines.
To declare this a 'new war' is disingenuous at best, and manipulative of page hits for the purpose of generating advertising revenue at worst.
I've gotta say, it's a relief, because so far the situation was pretty abysmal. I regularly browse the web from my N95, both with the built-in Nokia-Apple browser as well as Opera Mini 4.1. The experience is quite abysmal.
Both of them fare quite poorly at rendering the layout of web pages, the Nokia browser is incredibly bloated memory-wise and crashes silently all the time. Opera Mini is much more stable, but functionality wise pretty poor. And both have glaring flaws. For example, on the Nokia one, editing a comment on a forum will often duplicate it. On Opera Mini, it annoyingly leaves the pages everytime you have to type something into a form. Slashdot is pretty much broken in both iirc.
So hallulejah for proper browsers! They're much needed.
You just got troll'd!
I guess that means there's a lot of potential to outclass the competition. Most of these devices have more processing power and RAM than the desktops back when the web started. Sure, the small screens are a challenge, but that's nothing that a quick bird's eye view couldn't fix.
Though tiny web browser is handy at times, the laser keyboards and displays will make small mobile device capable of complete web browsing experience anywhere. Hope the cost comes down for these devices.
hilarious
Go back to Twitter, where people care about your shit.
As long as clicking links works and the screen can adequetely display fleshtones then I don't really care what else it can do.
Good thing I still have my US Robotics Courier V.Everything that I purchased for my BBS when I got the sysop discount.
Now I can put it back into operation to test web site performance.
And to think my wife wanted to toss it since it'll never be used again. Same reason I'm hanging onto my 5 1/4" floppy. I need a bigger basement.
an expensive reality on a handheld.
There. Fixed that for you.
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Where is Lynx?
I was tasked with getting Opera to run on Set Top Boxes not too long ago, and the problem with opera is that its not just install and go like on windows or linux. Granted, it was a custom set-top-box build on linux, once you get the demo binary from opera, it doesn't run and says "cannot open fb0 frame buffer device". Apparently their business trick is to charge you for implementing every driver. They sell a very expensive sdk (more like a ddk), but then you have to develop all of your drivers. We were using a pretty well know SoC (system on chip) from sigma designs, but still didn't have the display drivers and ir drivers. I would suggest going with Mozilla or something that you have the source, otherwise a vendor will tie you in to their solution, and not even give you header files with which to get the embedded browser to work with custom hardware.
Opera Mini kind of sucks, it gets all crashy on my Centro, yet no other mobile browser is coming out for Palm. I like the feel of Opera Mini, but the proxy, or the fact that it's Java, means that pages load much more slowly than with Blazer.
Does anyone have any suggestions, beyond cranking up the memory available for Java apps and threads (which I've done, and it made a huge positive difference), that might make it more stable?
I like music
Who is claiming warfare? Opera has been providing the statistically best Web browser on every prominent OS and platform since before Mozilla, AOL, and Microsoft.
Are there any major phones out there with Java VM's that actually run applets? I have several applets implemented, but as of yet, haven't seen them running on cell phones. Someone told me that iPhones don't have Java.
Opera Mini is the only way to go for mobile devices. [...] Opera mini is a much more pleasant experience. Try it!
Ugh, I've had a terrible experience with this browser on my Treo 680 (and before that on my Treo 650). I've tried various versions of Opera Mini starting with version 3, then 4, now 4.1, and each time it's been a pain to try to figure out how to keep it from crashing. I was able to get 4.1 working a little better using these instructions, but even then Opera Mini 4.1 still frequently locks up the device, forcing me to have to remove the battery. With earlier versions of Opera Mini 4 I've even reset my Treo to factory defaults and reinstalled everything, and that didn't fix the problem.
Your mileage may vary, but Opera Mini has been extremely crash-prone and disappointing for me.
the JoshMeister on Security
-So let's just say that Opera Mini has a strong hold in the one market....
-And WebKit/Safari already won the other.
I was watching homestar runner on my 2001 pocket pc, but flash is still a pipedream for handhelds?? what the hell. many of the highly successful and even nerd oriented websites are flash required (yes I know iphone has a youtube client)... Why the hell am I still not watching zeropunctuation on the subway??
It is super annoying that the palm client for flash (which still functions btw, just not the latest greatest) and the Pocket PC client for flash both have been around for half a decade, yet somehow the mobile internets are still "well yeah everything except the second most prolific format for web content"
As long as web developers can continue to design our sites to work with standardized code (XHTML, CSS, etc.) and not have to create a 2nd web site for mobile devices, we will all be happy.
I've got a Blackberry through T-mobile. The only time I use the internet on it is if I absolutely must have some information, like an address or phone number, that I forgot to write down before I left.
It is so painfully slow it makes dial-up, which I haven't done in over a decade, look good.
What is the appeal of wireless internet if this is as good as it gets?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I've had it running on my Moto Q for several months. Buggy but usable. Better than the Internet Explorer that comes with Win Mobile 5.
Invent a better bandwidth and webmasters will come with even more junk to fill it.
I guess you don't remember when 14.4 kbps modems were considered blazing fast
The main difference on the intertubes is that back then, there weren't already java- or flash- based ads that take 1/4 of your screen estate and play video and audio.
Speed of internet connection isn't the same as back then but neither is anymore the content of the pages itself (at least if you disable for a moment AdBlock / FlashBlock / NoScript or whatever is your tool to keep the web usable )
because to me bringing up most websites in Safari on my iPhone 3G is very snappy unless
This is one of the little situation where it is a blessing that the iPhone uses plain standard HTML/CSS/Javascript and has no (official) support for "thick clients" like Java of Flash. Which are currently the web <strike>vandals'</strike> advertisers' tools of choice to spit their scum.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I wanted to get a small website working with phones recently and it was hell. Some quite good browsers completely ignore the css for handheld, others insist in reading the css for screen whether or not handheld is specified. Others just do strange things with image or font size or colours that just have to be coded round. There's some sites offering a service to transform your pages to every browser type just to get round the problems. Opera is very good - boy would I like it if every phone ran it but they don't.
thou discernest my thoughts from afar
Ugh, I hate this 'browser wars' and 'DE wars' and 'os wars' and '... wars' built for a competition that doesn't really exist. A war is a contest for property or argument, but there's no argument in software because it's not the goal to assimilate as many users as possible.
These artificial EPIC BATTLES could only be if it were inevitable that all users would eventually use a single anything, one OS, one browser, one desktop environment, one everything. But that's not how it is or ever will be, there will always be different groups developing their own software and different people who use them. One day, Opera, Firefox, Safari and that one other guy will all be gone and there will be a whole different level of web access to replace them and make them forgotten, and there will still be idiots purporting a '... war' that doesn't exist.
Isn't it at all possible that maybe, just maybe, all these things can coincide and leave people to make their own decisions instead of always having to conflict?
Sure, Microsoft has forced itself on the computer market for decades, but it wasn't a conquest or an ideological reasoning. It was just business. When competitors came along, it wasn't a war, it was the big guy stepping on the little guy until the little guys got big. And occasionally on occasion eating the little guys.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I've been using the leaked version for awhile now. I like it alot better then Opera Mini or the Opera Mobile 8.65. The double tap zoom and overview makes viewing pages like slashdot alot easier then on say IE on my phone. Which is a HTC 6800 from Sprint. Anyway I like the way the whole Mobile browsing is headed. Plus the benefit of tethering to my laptop when needing a bigger screen or more power is an option also.
Skyfire is already in beta. I got my invite in April after I applied a couple of months prior.
I'm using it on a Motorola Q with EVDO from Verizon. It's a really powerful browser. Finally, I'm able to surf just about any website and it just works. Flash embeds work perfectly. It really broadens what I can do with my phone while on the road.
Skyfire does server-side rendering, therefore it's not really a browser. It's more like a viewer. Because of this, start up times are annoyingly slow (15 - 25 seconds). But pages load really fast and I don't experience breaks in audio or video when listening to podcasts or YouTube videos while driving down the interstate.
I kind of like the idea of offloading page rendering/transcoding to a server. Then again, if the Skyfire servers ever go down I'm SOL.
I rarely use the browser because using mobile websites in pocket IE is good enough for 90% of what I do. If the Motorola Q was a touchscreen device, I would enjoy Skyfire more.
-516
The iPhone is a very capable internet device, and coupled with 3G it can provide internet access anywhere.
The writing in the description is poorly constructed.
And by the way, they are confusing
- Mobile Firefox which is a 3rd party (not Mozilla-made) version of FireFox 1.5/2.0 repackaged in a way that make it executable from whatever computer you want, without installation, from a simple USB stick.
It's mobile as in "movable between desktops", not as in "small protable device".
(which is globally similar to Portable FireFox.)
and the Mozilla projects :
- MiniMo Mozilla's browser engine (Gecko) ported to portable devices running Linux or Windows CE
- Fennec - Mozilla's effort to create a FireFox for mobile device.
Given releases are announced very soon, I think, Fennec is the project the description was referring to.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The Safari browser on my iPod touch is entirely capable of displaying full, un-mobile-optimized sites just fine, thank you. It's irritating when a site detects that it's a mobile device and pushes out the lame, mobile-optimized version. As browsers improve on all mobile devices, seems like developers could just can the optimized version and have one-size-fits-all content.
I own a HTC Wizard which unfortunately came with windows mobile.
Mobile IE sucks so much as entire windows mobile.
All the UI design is a failure, one has to constantly move the horizontal and vertical scrollbars to view the webpage.
If the screen wasn't small enough, Back/Stop buttons are extremely BIG which makes the viewport area even more small.
Also, Mobile IE is unable to properly handle mime types, it fails to save binary files other than .zip
And of course, like the desktop IE, Mobile IE is incapable of correctly rendering the "small" footprint html used on mobile webpages.
It doesn't support tabbing browsing not even multiple windows!!
I wonder what a piece of crap like this is doing on a PDA with GPRS/EDGE and WIFI
Wireless Week had a similar story earlier this month: http://www.wirelessweek.com/Article-Mobile-Browser-Question.aspx
The sheer volume of data one can display "per page" on the web versus mobile precludes that. It can be done but the problem is you end up with a generic page that can work on both platforms, specifically for the smaller resolutions and small memory footprint. So essentially you end up developing for the smaller and weaker platform.
But in real life the user wants the best on both platforms and such compromises simply don't work. We end up using the same data to display a different view of that data. Fortunately this has been a solid design pattern in UI design for as long as I can remember, the view.
For a good example look at www.cnn.com vs m.cnn.com and how different views call for a different design.
I really don't care (and I've seen Safari on iPhone). Mobile browsing is just horrible.
Give me a real simple site that does the things I might want to do on your site in a mobile context (so, Mr Railway Company, a "what time is the next train") and keep it real simple.
Both work really well, and I know Mini-Mo on the N800 supports flash ok as well as adblock.
Browser wars should fuel hardware advances on mobile devices, since it will likely follow that Flash, YouTube, and dare I say Silverlight (shill-verlight as I refer to it) will be expected to run smoothly. Some browsers are mostly there already, but there will be more hardware accelerated graphics, higher resolution displays (OLED plz k thx), more memory, and faster CPU's (et tu AMD?). And the sad part is that while the browsing experience will be great, all these companies don't give a crap about your battery life.
I've already tried Skyfire Beta and it sucks. It does some cool stuff, but ultimately it is too slow, and I have serious doubts about how it will ever be able to scale (Microsoft tried something similar and abandoned it). It also makes me nervous to send sensitive info since they are acting as a middle man.
I would love to try the new Opera Mobile, but I got so fed up with my Windows Mobile device that I gave up and sold it on eBay already... sold it for $400 and turned around and got the new iPhone for $199. Unless the whole phone is really usable, you won't notice how good the browser is.
I think one of the biggest obstacles on the mobile platform is the overall user experience, not just the browser. On Windows Mobile I had constant crashes, and freezes, and most of the features I frequently used were buried several levels deep in the OS. Very poor. Also the GPS would take like 5 minutes to get a signal. I pity the fool paid $400 for my phone on eBay!
Treo MIDP implementation sucks, that's why it's crashing on your phone