Slashdot Log In
Web Browser Wars Go Mobile
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:44 AM
from the beep-beep-beep-beep-yeah dept.
from the beep-beep-beep-beep-yeah dept.
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."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Opera Mini (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Opera Mini (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you kidding? "very slow 3g connections"? I guess you don't remember when 14.4 kbps modems were considered blazing fast because to me bringing up most websites in Safari on my iPhone 3G is very snappy unless I'm somewhere with bad coverage so that my phone has to resort to connecting using Edge.
Also, the user interface when using Safari on the iPhone 3G is vastly superior to anything else I've experienced on a cellphone, including a bunch of Opera-using ones. My last phone came with Opera and I really tried to like it but the UI made me want to smash my phone into little pieces....
/Mikael
Parent
Build a better mouse... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 vandals' advertisers' tools of choice to spit their scum.
Except for Flash/Java games. And YouTube. Now, YouTube is available on the iPhone but only some videos, and it is a lot easier and cheaper to just watch the music video on YouTube then to buy it on iTunes or hunt for the song on Last.FM or your favorite 'Net radio stations. And Flash games would just be awesome using the touch screen....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Safari on the iPhone lacks "open in new tab" and it also forces a reload when you switch back to a tab. So no loading a tab in the background and switching to it once it's loaded. Also, no loading at home on WiFi and reading on the road.
Issues with Opera (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point, the support might be worth it, but my point was that getting an embedded browser working on Linux isn't that easy. With the source code to a browser it considerably easier (assuming you have the skill set), and you aren't limited as much as with a pre-packaged browser. Granted, opera is in business to make money, so they charge for their SDK, which is totally fine with me. It might cost less for an unskilled team to have opera do the integration, whereas a more skilled team will be able to co
Re:Opera Mini (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that everything goes through Opera's proxy server is good for speed (usually, I've had plenty of times where it sat processing for over a minute on large pages), but do you really want your bank info being pulled up there? And what is this very slow 3G connection you're talking about? Pulling up slashdot on Opera Mobile 9.5 on AT&T's 3G takes about 6 seconds. Formatted perfectly too. Mini is great for simplified browsing, but Mobile is just so much nicer for "real" browsing.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Mini is great for simplified browsing, but Mobile is just so much nicer for "real" browsing.
Agreed... about the best thing one can say about Opera Mini is that it's better than PIE.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice, but the downside is that all ads (and other GeoIP/location-based content) are in Norwegian.
Furthermore, Opera Mini uses the handheld media selector in CSS, which is odd because it's supposed to give you the full browser experience.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Opera Mini works great... when it isn't crashing (Score:5, Informative)
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 [typepad.com], 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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Blazer works well enough for most quick data lookup purposes. I've knocked together a beer list web app [alfter.us] with it in mind, so that it runs reasonably quickly on my phone. While a more fully-featured browser in my phone would be nice, if push comes to shove, I can just h
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh pardon? All Nokia devices these days ship with a WebKit (essentialy mobile safari) based web browser.
Re:Opera Mini (Score:4, Interesting)
Although I'm not sure why this is relevant, it might be worth noting that the Nokia N60 uses WebKit (the same engine as Safari) by default, as will all the Android phones. It's also at the core of many other applications [webkit.org]. What's more, there have been several reports that Safari has the highest mobile market share in terms of actual use, rather than mere installed base.
Parent
Poor writing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
While the first-gen iPhone may have been available in a handful of countries for a year it's not until now that it's readily available to a lot of people (there are lots of us who weren't too thrilled about having to jailbreak (and potentially brick) a non-3G phone).
/Mikael
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
No they wouldn't. Why do so many people read things with the attitude of, "well, *I* understand what they said, but this is going to be confusing to the average reader [who is naturally not as smart as me] and thus I must step forward and defend these poor souls who will naturally draw wrong conclusions that only super-smart people [like me] will realize aren't true."
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.
No it doesn't. It mentions that a new generation of iPhone is out, in context with a new version of Opera, and that entirely new browsers ar
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true, but one has to consider that previous browsing experiences, be they through WEP or even through Opera Mini, were at best mediocre and at worst unusable. Websites didn't render properly, content was jumbled together, tables made things far wider than any mobile screen, text was illegible or far too big. It was just an all-around unpleasant experience, and one that I would rather do without than try to muddle through.
This new generation is far different, letting people browse websites the wa
Firefox product name mix up (Score:5, Informative)
The writing in the description is poorly constructed.
And by the way, they are confusing
- Mobile Firefox [mobilefirefox.com] 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 [framakey.org].)
and the Mozilla projects :
- MiniMo [mozilla.org] Mozilla's browser engine (Gecko) ported to portable devices running Linux or Windows CE
- Fennec [mozilla.org] - 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.
Parent
Hallelujah! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well I wasn't even aware it existed until now :-/
Whatever... (Score:5, Funny)
Making the web (Score:4, Insightful)
There. Fixed that for you.
WTF!? (Score:4, Funny)
Where is Lynx?
Re: (Score:2)
Whereever you install it. I use [url=http://s2putty.sourceforge.net/]Putty for Symbian OS[/url] myself, but I'm sure SSH clients exist for most smartphones.
What's wrong with the Palm... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Preparing to be modded to oblivion....
The safari browser crashes all the time too. No clue why it does this, but it does it on my wife's phone too. It would be a lot better if they'd allow some sort of adblocking on the phone. It's just painful to load pages on EDGE.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was able to get Opera Mini 4.1 working a little better on my Treo 680 using these instructions [typepad.com], but even then it still locks up the device, forcing me to have to remove the battery. You can try bumping up the memory to 8 MB instead of 4 like the TypePad article suggests. I haven't tried it at 8 long enough to know if it makes much of a difference. Hope that helps!
Be sure to post again here with instructions on making it more stable if you come across any good tips.
War? (Score:2)
-So let's just say that Opera Mini has a strong hold in the one market....
-And WebKit/Safari already won the other.
why the hell is "no flash" a given (Score:5, Insightful)
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"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why the hell am I still not watching zeropunctuation on the subway?
I just spent a few days at a cabin with my friends. Using my Nokia N73 we watched quite a few youtube videos(asshole mario is fun when you're drunk, even if the screen is smallish). Since there was no TV we also watched the latest news broadcast from the web with my phone. So Flash videos do work. All you need is an decent phone, though I suppose since you Americans are hailing the iPhone as the second coming of Jesus you lack such things..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Stick to standards, mobile browser developers... (Score:2)
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.
What am I missing here? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
put opera mini on it. I use mini's RSS reader all the time from my blackberry to keep up to date on stuff while sitting around in doctor's offices, car service, etc. Being able to easily make your own 'search engines' from a form on any web site is really nice too. Weather underground, IMDB for example. Google's mobile pages work great (movies, news) too. The killer app for me isn't really the web browser though, but google's calendar sync. And if you have a curve, or something with gps, google maps i
Re: (Score:2)
What is the appeal of wireless internet if this is as good as it gets?
I know that was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but what you're missing is that your experience is nowhere near as good as it gets, or at least as it could get.
When I tether my Sprint EVDO handset to my laptop, I get great data speeds. When I use my friend's iPhones I get great page rendering speed and quality. Once the two are combined (maybe now in the iPhone 3G, hopefully soon on EVDO networks with Android-based handsets or with mobile Firefox) mobile web browsing will be a much better experience
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have t-mobile also but I use the built in wifi on my device and it's pretty fast. Over edge it's not something I want to do a lot, but on wifi it's nice.
IMO the main hurdle is the fact that most of the web is designed for PC browsers on larger devices with not as many restrictions. We need better mobile design across the board. Some sites are really slick, but some sites are so heavy they become impossible over a mobile device. This makes the experience even more painful. But if every site had a lightweig
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the browser as much as the connection. I have an original (EDGE) iPhone and a co-worker just got a BB which also runs on (AT&T) EDGE. For fun I put them next to each other and tried to open Slashdot on each. The iPhone took a bit, as you've doubtless seen--20, 30 seconds or so. The BB's screen went dark several times while I was waiting for it to load and I finally cancelled it after a couple minutes. Looking at a few other pages was literally a step or two above using lynx over ssh. THe iPhone, as
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The fastest networks available in the US these days are the UMTS (3G successor to GSM) services, where you'll see speeds up to 1.4 Mbps, and CDMA2000-EVDO wireless services, with a max down of 3.1Mbps, max up of 1.8Mbps, More than fast enough for web bro
Skyfire (Score:2, Interesting)
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 secon
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They only work if you have a nice flat, stable surface. It wouldn't work too well in the passenger seat of a car or on the bus.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I personally have been underwhelmed with just about every mobile browser I've used (Blazer, Mobile IE and Opera Mini are especially awful), but this Opera Mobile Beta [opera.com] is pretty much amazing. It goes out of its way to ape Safari Mobile - and it shows. The smooth scrolling, slick interface and zoom gestures are all lifted rather liberally from Safari. My only real criticism is that I'd like to see the finger gestures fine-tuned and further explored, but it's still a great browser.
I'm not a huge fan of Appl
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... interesting. I've been using http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/ [opera.com]
which is based on 8.6, but was significantly better than any other web browser on WM5 at the time. It sounds like I should be looking at upgrading.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Opera mobile does exist for WM5. I use it. It is far better than the other browsers, but does have a few small missing features. IIRC, there is no find on page feature for example. For the free trial see http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/winmobileppc/ [opera.com]