Mozilla Shows Off Junior, a Simple Browser Built for iPad

The Verge reports that Mozilla last week showed off a prototype browser built for the iPad called Junior, based on a simplified interface and gesture-based controls. Junior — remember, not a shipping product — is full-screen, and lacks tabs; most controls are off-screen until called up with an on-screen button, to emphasize whatever page is loaded. See the video demo for an idea of what Junior is like in use.

Comments

Good, but a little pointless.

[Sasayaki]

More browser competition on the iPhone is fantastic, but it'd be even better if iOS allowed you to change the default browser so that when you tapped a link in an email it would open in that browser. Currently this is not possible; no matter how many browsers you have installed, you tap a link in an app (such as Mail) it opens in Safari. You can't change that, and you can't uninstall Safari, although you can remove it from your quicklaunch tray if you want and put something else there. Doesn't fix the problem though.

I don't really care much for being able to remove Safari -- it's probably arc-welded to the OS anyway, and if you take it off your quicklaunch and change the default browser you'll never see it -- but without the ability to make Junior/Opera/Long Awaited Chrome For iOS/etc your default browser, choice is a bit of an illusion.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[gl4ss]

it would be even better if they allowed other engines on the app store.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[Sasayaki]

This is extremely unlikely. I very much doubt that, ever, Apple will ever allow a non-native toolkit to be installed on the iPhone. Their philosophy is "We own and control everything down to the sandboxed app level and manually approve every app", and the official reason why they do this is because it allows for a uniform user experience without weird bugs caused by strange combinations ("When I use Chrome with Gecko some pages render funny!"). The fact that doing so allows them to make dump trucks full of money out of the defacto walled garden is incidental.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[Sasayaki]

Yes, if you jailbreak you can do anything, obviously. Removing WebKit would be a *bit* harder, since I assume it's basically built into the OS in a very deep level, but hey. You start the kickstarter to fund having a team look at ways of replacing it with a suitable alternative, I'll throw in some cash. ;)

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[MachDelta]

This post gave me deja-vu. I swear it was only a few years ago we were all sitting around complaining about Microsoft "arc-welding" IE to Windows and limiting customers' ability to change browsers. Only difference this time is that Apple doesn't have quite the same market stranglehold that Microsoft did/does. It does make one wonder though - given the mass shift away from desktop PCs towards more portible devices, and if Apple did come to utterly dominate the laptop/mobile market, how long would it take for Apple to wind up in a courtroom? If ever?

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[janek78]

"Utterly dominate" as in ~8 % of the mobile phone market? Or ~25 % of the smartphone market? Apple is big, but utter domination looks different, IMO.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[wvmarle]

Safari is too integrated then, pity. But not surprising.

Anyway this Junior is a prototype browser, an experimental interface. It must be seen like that: an experiment with new interfaces. This is also the interesting part of it, and that they do it on the iPad may be just a marketing ploy. "New browser for iPad" sounds much better than "new browser for Android tablet". The the average consumer the iPad is hot hot hot, the Android tables are the cheap second choice.

It is great that these experiments are done, it shows people that there are more ways to do the same task. Not all experiments will work though, others may refinement, or will inspire a third party into making something that does work well.

If this browser is released, and if it gains significant popularity, then people will call on Apple to allow them to change the default. Maybe Apple will listen, maybe people will defect to Android systems where they can use Junior, let the market decide.

While it's sad that Safari is so tightly integrated, we're still talking about a single product line of a single vendor. There is a lot of competition: on the hardware side there are dozens of other hardware vendors producing tablet computers, on the software side there is Android, plus some secondary choices like Windows 8 (RT for tablets, iirc). Linux vendors are also creating typical tablet interfaces (like Ubuntu's unity). Neither has any traction near what Android has, but they are there nonetheless.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[ThePeices]

Only difference this time is that Apple doesn't have quite the same market stranglehold that Microsoft did/does.

Apple has a complete and total monopoly on the iOS market.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[Nerdfest]

Allowing other browsers doesn't stop people deom using webKit, it just gives them the option. You're disagreeing with giving people the option (and so is Apple).

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you know? You can't install anything else.

"No siree, ain't nothing ever going to be better than a good ol' horse and buggy. I mean, look at them horseless carriages.. I don't need to try one to know they are inferior, come on, they don't even have a horse!"

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[Savage-Rabbit]

Apple doesn't have quite the same market stranglehold that Microsoft did/does.

And that's a pretty important difference. Thanks to Android and Samsung, Apple does not have a stranglehold and cannot play kingmaker like MS could on the PC market
.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[MightyYar]

Vendor lock-in is an important factor to consider.

You ain't kidding! I have all of these options I bought for my Ford that won't even work at all with my new Chevy! What the hell?

Ford has a monopoly on Fords, and it is disgusting.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[ncc74656]

More browser competition on the iPhone is fantastic, but it'd be even better if iOS allowed you to change the default browser so that when you tapped a link in an email it would open in that browser.

Browser Changer will do that.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[shutdown -p now]

Or 80% of the tablet market?

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[BasilBrush]

Remember, Apple came from nowhere in these markets. When they launched the iPhone in 2007, they had an ambition to get just 1% of the phone market. A year later when they launched the App Store, there was no predetermined inevitability that it wold work. Smartphone apps had been around for a decade as a tiny niche. When they launched the iPad, various other companies had tried and failed to create a commercially successful tablet.

Yes for sure these markets make them dump-trucks full of money. But there is only one possible reason for that. Because vast numbers of people like what Apple creates, products and surrounding ecosystem. Their "official reason why they do this is because it allows for a uniform user experience without weird bugs caused by strange combinations" is very, very popular. To put it more succinctly "It just works."

For sure Apple won't be allowing any other browser engine on iOS. Because there is no benefit to the consumer in doing so. Browser rendering is a essentially a commodity. But a few trivial differences in browser engines can mean that occasionally a web-site will behave badly on a particular browser. By standardising on a single renderer, the consumer is better served - any web page that is intended to work with an iPad will work with any iPad browser. No incompatibilities. And as Google's Chrome also uses Webkit, essentially any web-site intended to work on mobile devices will always work perfectly. A Mozilla rendering engine would do more harm than good. And for what? The idea of Open Source? Webkit is open source anyway.

Re:Good, but a little pointless.

[yincrash]

So why aren't we all just using Internet Explorer 6

Mozilla Edsel?

[Tablizer]

Like the PC Junior name did so well for IBM.

Finally!

[matunos]

A browser that can consume all available memory *and* offer a simple UI!

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

A browser that can consume all available memory *and* offer a simple UI!

The anti-M$ people might downvote this on autopilot, but it is interesting how everything called out as new in the summary about this new Mozilla browser is taken from Metro IE10 in Windows 8: "based on a simplified interface and gesture-based controls. Junior — remember, not a shipping product — is full-screen, and lacks tabs; most controls are off-screen until called up with an on-screen button, to emphasize whatever page is loaded" this is all exactly what Microsoft has been showing with Metro IE10 in Windows 8.

Re:Finally!

[transporter_ii]

And it is already at version 8.02

Re:Finally!

[CastrTroy]

I think the reason that laptops are outpacing desktops is because desktops hit the "good enough" stage quite a while ago. If you look at people who aren't power users, they have no reason to upgrade. Most now only buy desktops to replace their current one when it breaks down. Also, most households probably have one desktop computer. Laptops on the other hand are still in the position where they are worth upgrading every 2 years because of lack of ability to upgrade certain components, and because there are still quite a few advancements being made. My desktop is currently 5 years old, and I see no reason to upgrade it. It still does every thing I need it to do. My laptop on the other hand is only 1.5 years old, and I can already see some reasons for getting a new one, although I'll probably hold onto it until it's at least 3 years old. Also many households probably have 2 or 3 laptops. If you got a family with 2 teenage kids, it wouldn't be uncommon to have 4 laptops in the house..

But ...

[mister2au]

More importantly, will it render quickly? I suspect given Apple's policies it will need to use webkit and therefore not much to gain there.

My pet hate is trying to scroll complex pages in Safari - don't care about gestures, tabs, hidden GUI elements

Showing off junior

[LongearedBat]

Isn't it illegal to show off bare bones juniors on the internet?

Re:Isn't this against their mission?

[ChunderDownunder]

If it's a concept-UI only, perhaps the feeling is they wanted to share concepts with the fussiest group of guinea pigs - Apple users.

iOS enjoys market penetration and a fan base picky about software that doesn't gel with the look and feel of the host platform. In this sense, it's a reasonable strategy - if you want a killer browser for mobile, to out-safari safari is a good start.

If this thing smashes all expectations amongst Apple fans, its conceptual UI could migrate to Mozilla's fledgling boot to gecko project. B2G is a nice idea but it's not ideal to prototype ideas to a mass user base - which currently consists of a maybe a handful of people outside Mozilla who decided to void their Galaxy S2's warranty.

More than likely it's just the work of a couple of bored Firefox for OS X developers wanting to hone their skills on iOS, and potentially sharing some of the non-gecko, darwinesque infrastructure. The effort might not necessarily be wasted should Apple ever unify iOS and OS X by applying a Metro-like veneer to the Mac!

Re:cat got my tongue

[arkane1234]

I hate to break it to you, it's already being used.
The difference would be that Mozilla would be on it to use.

Re:YES! NO!

[pandronic]

If you want to try a new great browser from Mozilla, try the Firefox Mobile Nightly for Android: http://nightly.mozilla.org/
It still has some bugs, being a nightly and all, but the performance is great, the UI is miles ahead of anything on Android, it has Flash support and IMO, the best rendering engine on Android.

Re:Be a Better Parent – Protect Your Childre

[couchslug]

Doing something to fuck up these SEO posts is looking better and better.

Might be time for an "Ask Slashdot" on the subject...

Browserchanger in Cydia sets default browser

[blahbooboo]

More browser competition on the iPhone is fantastic, but it'd be even better if iOS allowed you to change the default browser so that when you tapped a link in an email it would open in that browser. Currently this is not possible; no matter how many browsers you have installed, you tap a link in an app (such as Mail) it opens in Safari. You can't change that, and you can't uninstall Safari, although you can remove it from your quicklaunch tray if you want and put something else there. Doesn't fix the problem though.

I don't really care much for being able to remove Safari -- it's probably arc-welded to the OS anyway, and if you take it off your quicklaunch and change the default browser you'll never see it -- but without the ability to make Junior/Opera/Long Awaited Chrome For iOS/etc your default browser, choice is a bit of an illusion.

Browserchanger in Cydia jailbreak app store allows you to set default web browser.