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View Full Version : Why hasn't anyone made a freeware web browser?

Tye
07-23-2004, 11:15 PM
OK, before anyone attacks me let me be more specific...

I'm just really surprised that with all the wonderful freeware projects going on that nobody has created a browser "from scratch". No doubt, it is a huge project but there are many other freeware programs that I would imagine are just as complex.

Everytime I use ThunderHawk I get visions of just how good a PPC browser *could* be. Small fonts, true landscape, Images that are scaled to preserve the webpage layout. But there's no scrolling and the interface is awful.

So anyway... Just curious? Is anyone working on this?
mara6
07-23-2004, 11:33 PM
Guess you don't look very hard. There is FtxPBrowser. It features multi-tab surfing, and you are able to save images on webpages!! PLUS IT'S FREE!

http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=686
Tye
07-23-2004, 11:46 PM
Guess you don't look very hard. There is FtxPBrowser. It features multi-tab surfing, and you are able to save images on webpages!! PLUS IT'S FREE!

http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=686

Hi marko,

Thanks for the input.

My understanding was that the ftx browser is an extension to PIE like MultiIE. Not that that's a bad thing but we're still stuck with the limitations of PIE. If I am incorrect please let me know.

As I mentioned in the above post it would be nice to have things like landscape and scalable pages that preserve the page layout. I know NetFront does something similar to this but the program is somewhat expensive and, personally, I don't really care for the interface.
mara6
07-23-2004, 11:57 PM
It IS a seperate program. Built from the ground up. If you don't believe me download the program. :wink:
surur
07-25-2004, 11:57 AM
No, Tye is right. Ftxbrowser is an PIE shell, like Netcaptor , Avantbrowser and MyIE on the desktop. Whats needed is some-one to port firefox to a PocketPC handheld.

Maybe in the next year?

Surur
Zack Mahdavi
07-25-2004, 06:03 PM
Browsers are extremely difficult programs to write. They are some of the most multithreaded programs available to the consumer. I think it would take up too much time and energy to write a really good browser that would be better than IE.

On the other hand, someone in the open source community could write a Pocket PC port to Mozilla. I'm not sure how complicated that would be..
Janak Parekh
07-25-2004, 07:47 PM
People are working on building a handheld Mozilla solution, but it's going to take some time.

--janak
aliensub
07-25-2004, 10:41 PM
People are working on building a handheld Mozilla solution, but it's going to take some time.

--janak

Itīs called minimo and can be found here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/

So far thereīs only an alpha release and is only working in linux (GPE), but in Milestone 2 it looks like they will try to port it to windows (ppc).

Looks pretty interesting.
Zack Mahdavi
07-25-2004, 10:57 PM
Itīs called minimo and can be found here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/

Wow, cool! I was wondering why a Mozilla PocketPC project hadn't been created yet..... I guess I spoke too soon.
Tye
07-27-2004, 11:57 PM
Thanks, everyone, for all the replies.

It's funny that I missed the Minimo browser because I did (I thought) a pretty thorough web search *and* downloaded the FireFox beta on the same day Minimo was mentioned. :roll:

I knew browsers were complicated beasts but didn't realize a handheld version was *that* complicated. Live and learn.

Thanks again!