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Mozilla Heading to Mobiles

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Dec 13, 2004 02:09 PM
from the it-was-inevitable dept.
Mozilla The Internet Portables Hardware
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."
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  • Eventual PPC port? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SIGALRM (784769) * on Monday December 13 2004, @02:10PM (#11074497) Journal
    "We can be ported to many platforms that Opera can't," he said. "Mozilla has been developed to work on every flavor of Unix and every type of processor, chip or widget set."
    Exciting project. I hope they eventually port Minimo to the Pocket PC; I have an iPAQ 6315 PPC Phone Edition and happily abandoned Pocket IE in favor of the far superior Thunderhawk browser [bitstream.com]. However, Thunderhawk is subscription-based ($49.95/yr), so I'd be very interested in a Mozilla port for my PPC.
    • I'm sure they'll get to a PPC port. But I currently use NetFront [access.co.jp] on my iPAQ, and that'll take some beating. The "Smart-Fit" page rendering does an amazing job of reformatting pages to be readable on the small screen. Plus tabbed browsing, very high degree of "big browser" compatibility, and a JVM for good measure. NetFront ain't free though, so a decent PPC version of Minimo would be velcome.
    • At the moment Minomo is targetted at Linux devices using GTK, so you'll have a while to wait yet. There was apparantely a Windows CE port of Moz at one point but there doesn't appear to be much in the tree.

      In theory porting a Win32 app to CE should be fairly straightforward since much of the API is similar. In theory. But in practice anyone faced with porting Moz to CE would probably ground down by hundreds of little issues - porting NSPR, libjpg, libpng etc and other dependent libs first, flags and APIs

    • I tried Thunderhawk yesterday and it was completely unreadable, even the UI. As such, I couldn't find any options that appeared to affect the rendering engine in order to fix it.

    • Re:Eventual PPC port? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Herr_Nightingale (556106) on Monday December 13 2004, @05:00PM (#11076265) Homepage
      I've been following the project for a while now, and Pocket PC is not even on the roadmap; Minimo is strictly *nix. Also, it requires a gigantic chunk of memory (min. 32MB) to run, and it's far from fast. There is absolutely no comparison to Opera. None.
      Mobile Opera is tiny (like 200k!!) and super-efficient, but only runs on smartphones right now.
      It looks like we have a chance of seeing Opera on the iPaq sooner than Minimo, even though Opera too doesn't care much for Pocket PC.

      In the meantime, try NetFront 3.1 - it's sweet. But it doesn't work on 2003SE in landscape mode.

  • Palm in the future? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ISEENOEVIL (206770) * on Monday December 13 2004, @02:11PM (#11074506) Homepage
    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.

  • I'd use it if... (Score:5, Informative)

    by teiresias (101481) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:12PM (#11074514)
    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.
    • Depends on what kind of web-pages we're talking about. Browsing news or forums with a mobile is pointless due to screensize, but I use my mobile on the net quite often. It is quite useful for things like bus schedules, cinema programs for tonight, finding the nearest ATM or gas station. But then again I live in Scandinavia...
    • 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.

      I browse the web with OmniWeb (and sometimes Opera) on my Zaurus (C750) - the screen is more than enough to handle something like the mobile version of Slashdot, as long as you block the flash ads (which are 20-30x the size of the content).

      It's great since it talks to the bluetooth cell phone in my bag and the batteries are good for over two hours each way

  • Ummm... (Score:4, Informative)

    by LWATCDR (28044) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:15PM (#11074549) Homepage Journal
    32 to 64 megs is lightweight?
    Man that seems like a pretty heavy memory requirement.

  • Not there yet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m50d (797211) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:15PM (#11074551) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • The Minimo page says that their focus has been Linux-based devices with 32-64MB of RAM. The willingness to move to other platforms seems to really indicate PocketPC/Windows Mobile devices, which is one platform that lacks Opera (though there is apparently an Opera version for the fairly new Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 edition).

      I still need to install Opera on my Nokia 3660. The small-screen rendering features I've heard mentioned in this discusion make it all the more tempting.
  • I need this for my desktop. Firefox is pretty heavyweight. Currently it takes 133MB of ram. If they reduce this by half I can put it on smaller computers.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Here's what top shows, for those of you in disbelief. The only window/tab open is the one I'm typin right now. It always seams to take this much.

      PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
      5146 mpalczew 15 0 135m 57m 35m S 7.6 13.2 7:45.43 firefox-bin
      3016 mpalczew 15 0 126m 41m 32m S 0.0 9.4 0:17.09 mozilla-thunder
    • I haven't seen this anywhere, but how much work would it take http://www.dillo.org/ [dillo.org] to run on a mobile device?

      Straight from their page:

      # Dillo is small: source is less than 400 KB, and the binary is around 350 KB !
      # Dillo aims to be a multi-platform browser alternative that's small, stable, developer-friendly, usable, fast, and extensible.

      I don't do much coding, but wouldn't it be trivial to take such a small code base and use it for the phone or pda? They have it available for the iPaq here [dillo.org] It looks l

  • Minimo is fine and good, but how about "Tweety?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chillybott (835894) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:17PM (#11074557)
    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 may need to disable FreeType in your .mozconfig:

    . $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
    ac_add_option s --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2
    ac_add_options --disable-freetype2

    I'm working on a small "embed Mozilla in a GTK window" project, and some helpful fellow on IRC suggested this configuration.

    Incidentally, if you're doing something like that, be sure to check into gtkmozembed. It encapsulates all the XPCOM stuff, so all you have to do is include it and do a:

    GtkWindow *window = (GtkWindow*)gtk_window

  • banner ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gad_zuki! (70830) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:23PM (#11074612)
    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.

    • Opera has a proxy service [opera.com] that resizes images and stuff to make web pages on mobile devices faster to download.

      When you buy Opera (at least for a Series60 Nokia phone) you get a 90 trial. It is well worth subscribing to.

  • Will it work on cell phones? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by d_jedi (773213) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:23PM (#11074614)
    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.

  • Easier done than said... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GillBates0 (664202) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:23PM (#11074620) Homepage Journal
    bash$ ln -s lynx minimo
  • 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?
    • They will always clame whatever version is bloadware. The problem is they are looking back in the days of 8 bit computing and these darn 32 bit executibles are 4 times a large to do the same job. Plus often forgotten are a lot of the new features added which makes the file more bloated if you go back to netscape 2 and try to browse the web you will see where a lot of the bloat went to.

  • Dandy, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Universal Nerd (579391) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:26PM (#11074645)
    ...how about finishing roaming profile support?

    Come on folks, it was built into Netscape 4.7, why is it so hard to build it into Firefox and the Suite? ...sigh...
      • Out of curiousity, when did it become the user's job to code in new features?

        I use open source software where I feel it's the right tool for the job, I do not (can not) code. The bottom line is, as the developers' "customer" it is their job to make the software usable for their customers.

      • Re:Dandy, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by poot_rootbeer (188613) on Monday December 13 2004, @03:09PM (#11075138)
        Either quit bitching or MAKE THE APP SUPPORT it.

        You presume that most people using Open Source application $X are also skilled enough programmers that they could implement any desired missing features themselves, given the inclination. That has the mark of a self-fulfilling prophecy to me -- if non-developers are made to feel unwelcome, then only developers will bother using Open Source projects.

        Those who can, do. Those who can't, ask those who can nicely to consider adding the features you want for you. If you can prove your idea is good, someone will be willing to help.
  • 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...

  • Got to feel sorry for the guys at Opera (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:33PM (#11074721) Homepage
    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*.

    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 :o)

    *Do you see any lawsuits? Threats? Whining? Almost unbelievable in this day and age.
    • I think Opera will survive, they will keep following some niche market. I just gave them US$40 the other day, for Opera S60 - a brilliant piece of software. Full-blown webbrowser for my nokia 7610, which renders pages extremely well on the small screen and even does Javascript!

      Very cool.

    • It's a race to the bottom (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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
      • It's all a matter of value. If people don't see enough value in Opera vs Minimo to pay for Opera, it makes no sense for them to buy Opera. "Quality" counts for jack-shit --- the only thing that matters is cost vs benefit. That's just how capitalism works, and so far, we haven't found any better model.

  • Minimo! (Score:4, Funny)

    by matt4077 (581118) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:36PM (#11074750) Homepage
    Stop humping the laser!
  • Minimo was introduced 10 months ago (previous mention [geekzone.co.nz]). It takes a long time for people on the mainstream media to pick a story :0

    Anyway, their site says "The primary focus of Minimo to date has been system with ~32-64 MB of RAM, running Linux and using the GTK toolkit". Think that the latest Nokia based on Symbian OS 8.0 comes with only 7MB available, and most Pocket PC come with 64MB (sometimes only 50MB available after all loaded). This browser needs to be at most 5MB to be usable. Try using Access Netf
  • a.k.a., konqueror.

    *ducks!*

    But seriously folks, you'd probably do better to start with links, w3m, arachne, dillo, Contiki [www.sics.se], HyperLink [armory.com], The Wave [videocam.net.au] -- any codebase that was designed to be relatively lightweight from the start. Or, especially in the case of the last three, probably just write a new one. :(

    Now on my desktop, I use konqueror because it's snappy; of course the mobile device game is totally different, but I'd expect that people would want some of the same things--notably, a responsive, un-bloated

  • I mean, if Mozilla can be ported to the Amiga [mozillazine.org], surely I can run it on my shiny new Treo 650. :)

  • Not Minime? Hopefully it's just as fierce. Smash the competition baby yeah!

  • VGA PPCs (Score:3, Informative)

    by chman (746363) on Monday December 13 2004, @02:55PM (#11074989)
    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.

  • Define port (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slapout (93640)
    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?
    • Yes Ill bite. But the main difference between say Dvorak Keyboards and Mozilla is the amount of time it takes to switch. Switching to IE to Mozilla besides the install time is rather short and using Mozilla is not much of a stretch to use. Vs. Switching keyboard styles. It take a lot of practice to change your typing behavior because you put a lot of time learning to type in that method. And typing is more of a reflex action. Plus the amount of characters you type are more mental action then using a web
      • 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.

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