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.

[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.

[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!"

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: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!

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.