Mozilla Aims For Mobile Browser Market

[Kris Kumar]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5483683.html' target='_blank'>http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5483683.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Mozilla is hoping to move on from its success in the browser desktop market to tackle browsers on consumer devices such as phones, PDAs and television set-top boxes. Doug Turner, the project leader of Minimo, the slimmed-down Mozilla browser, said Mozilla hopes to build on the success of Firefox. "If Firefox is the greatest browser on the desktop, we need the greatest browser on devices and are working hard on it," Turner said."</i><br /><br />The following statement made by Doug Turner, the project leader of <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/">Minimo</a> got my attention: <i>"With Minimo, if it renders OK in Firefox, it will render OK in Minimo."</i> 8O Doug claims that Minimo will support frames and offer superior JavaScript support. Minimo team has a bunch of cool features lined up for the future releases. On the other hand the major success claimed by the Minimo team, the shrinking of images and wrapping of columns into one, is already available on Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition devices. The one feature I would love to have on my Smartphone browser is tabbed browsing or have multiple browser sessions. Pocket PC world has third-party applications that let you extend the pocket Internet Explorer. Waiting for a similar application for the Smartphones.

[Bacco]

Yes Kris...multiple browser sessions (tab style as in Firefox would be best for me) and frames would be great.

[Pr0phetX]

so how long til we see a beta?

[Bacco]

It seems they're in talks with phone companies trying to get them on the phones. I'm hoping for an Opera style install.

[Kris Kumar]

It seems that right now they only support Linux based platforms or variants. They have a version of the Pocket PC, but it requires the Linux (Familiar) to be loaded on the PPC. :?

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/

I was very excited initially, but as I read more, it seems we may not see a Windows Mobile version anytime soon. I hope I am wrong. We need more players in the mobile browser segment, so that we see some innovation.

[Mike Temporale]

I would love to see another browser hit the WM market. Opera is a welcome change, however that's set to expire soon, and there is no indication what will happen after that.

Tab browsing? How would you work that? It would be really awkward to change tabs. Plus it would waste a little screen space to show off the tabs. I would much rather see support for multiple windows. Menu/Change Window/ and then you select the open browser window you want. Just like how Word and Excel handle multiple docs. :D

[Kris Kumar]

Tab browsing? How would you work that? It would be really awkward to change tabs. Plus it would waste a little screen space to show off the tabs. I would much rather see support for multiple windows. Menu/Change Window/ and then you select the open browser window you want. Just like how Word and Excel handle multiple docs. :D

That is the way I would prefer it too. I agree having the tabs would be tough. I was merely refering to Tabbed Browsing, because that is an easier term, more self-explanatory term. ;-)

[Bacco]

I was the one that really favored the tabbed browsing, so I'll say my piece.

I don't know much about programming, so this may not be practical, but why not assign a number to each tab and just pressing that number would bring that tab forward. Also, flipping tabs would seem a faster way to bring up an alternate browser window than choosing another iteration of IE or whatever app is used.

Finally, again a programming question, having tabs versus a 2nd or 3rd browser open...which would require more memory? Anyone know? Just curious.