Port Mozilla To The Pocket PC?

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.sourcesupport.org/?project=40' target='_blank'>http://www.sourcesupport.org/?project=40</a><br /><br /></div>A group of people seem to be tired of having "pocket" web browsers on the Pocket PC platform, and would like to have a full-featured solution instead. As a result, they've taken up the idea of porting Mozilla. While this is theoretically doable, as Mozilla is a fairly modular system (with, most importantly, a separate rendering engine called "Gecko") which runs on most platforms, some work would need to be done in the UI and reformatting aspects to make it feasible.<br /><br />To this end, they've set up a pool for people to make contributions to entice open-source programmers to build such a port. I think it's a great idea -- there's nothing wrong with getting more software on the Pocket PC, and if a first-class desktop HTML renderer could be ported over, we'd have a superior web browsing solution to a lot of the tools we have now. The Pocket PC certainly has the processing power, so why not? ;) If you're interested in contributing <i>or</i> working on the project to try and win the pool, check it out.

[Paul]

Yeah! Let's see some MozillaFirebird action on the PPC!

[prismejon]

What I want most of those features is actually landscape mode, but intelligent scaling wouldn't hurt either :D

[dean_shan]

Do it. Do it. DO IT! (If I was smart enough I would help :oops:)

[Gremmie]

If we are moving to the route to install better 3rd party solutions I think we need to either:
-Have more PDA's with extended ROM space to store these application
-Allow uninstallation of PPC ROM Applications to free ROM space for alternatives.

For some reason I feel the latter would be most interesting. If you don't know it, you can uninstall Windows applications in order to free space, but this doesn't matter as much on desktops with x+100 gigs of space. I am hesitant to install duplicate programs in my RAM when I can use my ROM programs. While 3rd party soluations are generally better, RAM is still precious.

BTW, Janek, you're a grad programmer, you should open a site for PPC open-source alternatives ;)

[szamot]

If we are moving to the route to install better 3rd party solutions I think we need to either:
-Have more PDA's with extended ROM space to store these application
-Allow uninstallation of PPC ROM Applications to free ROM space for alternatives.

For some reason I feel the latter would be most interesting. If you don't know it, you can uninstall Windows applications in order to free space, but this doesn't matter as much on desktops with x+100 gigs of space. I am hesitant to install duplicate programs in my RAM when I can use my ROM programs. While 3rd party soluations are generally better, RAM is still precious.

I agree, would it not be nice to install XP on the desktop without the IE, Outlook Express and the rest of the junk that XP feels compelled to throw in. I too would help with the port if I could but I still can't get Godzilla out of my head, never mind getting my head around Mozilla. :lol:

[dean_shan]

If we are moving to the route to install better 3rd party solutions I think we need to either:
-Have more PDA's with extended ROM space to store these application
-Allow uninstallation of PPC ROM Applications to free ROM space for alternatives.
Yes and yes. That would be sweet. I might have to buy a new PPC it it allowed that.

[ppcinfo]

Is the Mozilla source code (Windows-based) available?

ppcinfo

[jage]

Is the Mozilla source code (Windows-based) available?

ppcinfo

Sure it is. http://mozilla.org/.

Personally I don't think we're going to actually run Mozilla any time soon. Maybe when everyone has 128MB SDRAM and 800MHz CPUs. Once again, remember that the MHz you get on Pocket PC is not comparable to desktop systems. I don't want to rant again, so check my earlier post about Pocket PC processing power http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15088&highlight= instead.

Well, the first thing to do would be Pocket PC native user interface, from scratch. You're NOT going to be able to port whole mozilla, just gecko at most. And it would run very very slowly on PPC, try Mozilla on 90MHz Pentium with 32MB of memory to get the idea...

[gohtor]

I'd definately help if they're using .net to code it =)

I hope it's our answer to much of the limitations of PIE.

but seriously... how badly do we want javascript and the other stuff?

[dean_shan]

but seriously... how badly do we want javascript and the other stuff?

True, some javascript stuff is annoying. Like un wanted popups.

[klinux]

Moz with Gecko is highly portable and is available on Linux, Windows, and Mac. Shouldn't be that hard to port to PPC but then again I am not a programer.

Firebird, the lean and mean browser from Mozilla, would be an even better candidate but it is only at 0.6.1 on the desktop version.

Mozilla is my browser of choice and it would be great to see it on PPC.

[wocket]

Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org/ ) is quite nice as well.

It's built on Linux and i've used it on the Sharp Zaurus pda even Apple like it.

[juni]

I like konqueror too + the landscape on the fly in Opie is pretty nice :)

[Zensbikeshop]

Firebird on my iPAQ would be great.

I can't program at all but would be happy to Beta test.

Opera's small screen rendering is pretty amazing; that's what Pocket Firebird needs to aim for.

[sponge]

I agree, would it not be nice to install XP on the desktop without the IE, Outlook Express and the rest of the junk that XP feels compelled to throw in. I too would help with the port if I could but I still can't get Godzilla out of my head, never mind getting my head around Mozilla. :lol:

You need xpLite. It's only a beta, but can get rid of all that crap.
http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

[Oleander]

Ooooh! Firebird and Thunderbird please!
And then, just a small sync app between the PPC and my PC and i could get rid of Outlook once and for all :twisted:

[kyoukoku]

I would prefer Opera 7 to be ported as I already use it as my primary browser alongside IE6 on my desktops. Besides Opera is already optimised for the small screen so it shouldn't be that hard to port the code to the PPC platform.

It kicks mozilla's butt as well. :wink:

[Zensbikeshop]

I would prefer Opera 7 to be ported as I already use it as my primary browser alongside IE6 on my desktops. Besides Opera is already optimised for the small screen so it shouldn't be that hard to port the code to the PPC platform.

It kicks mozilla's butt as well. :wink:

Nah! Opera is amazingly flakey; never known a browser crash so often.

Got fed up with it and gave up.

[guinness]

I don't think you'll ever see Opera on the PPC, they had quite a tiff with Microsoft. That I always found Opera flakey as well, even though it was small and fast. Still prefer IE overall, then Netscape 7.1 for the tabbed browsing, it just needs the Google Toolbar.

[qmrq]

I don't think you'll ever see Opera on the PPC, they had quite a tiff with Microsoft. That I always found Opera flakey as well, even though it was small and fast. Still prefer IE overall, then Netscape 7.1 for the tabbed browsing, it just needs the Google Toolbar.
I'm sure everyone knows how I feel about IE (it's trash), so insert your favorite past rant [here]. :p

Phew! Now that that's out of the way, you really should check out Phoenix - now called "Mozilla Firebird". http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/

[sirtin]

Check out http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ if you want the google bar in Netscape/Mozilla

[RickP in AZ]

I have switched wholly to Firebird for all of my browsing and Thunderbird as an "email" filter for Outlook.

Firebird is small, fast, and clear of the usual Mozilla clutter. And even my wife, an in frequent web user, is loving tabbed browsing. Best of all, with Firebird I haven't seen a single pop-up, and the ability to only load images from "this server only" really speeds up browsing on dialup. I just wish that there was a toolbar button to turn images on and off.

Oh yes, I'm sticking with Firebird and will only use IE for sites which may not work properly (banking sites.)

Firebird on Pocket PC/WM 2003 would be wonderful as long as it supported landscape mode, tabbed browsing, the ability to turn off images, and a wonerful "fit to page" mode. I'd willingly sacrifice several MBs of RAM for that.

[brntcrsp]

Ooooh! Firebird and Thunderbird please!

Funny thing is that Thunderbird uses the same engine as Firebird - Geko. If any of you run your own web server, check out your logs some time when you hit the site using the Thunderbird browser - the user agent string reports Geko (or it did when I tried it 2 years ago).

[bsoft]

I run Mozilla Firebird on an Omnibook 800CT (Pentium 133, 48mb RAM). It's not exactly nippy, but it's not bad.

[DualShock]

Check out http://googlebar.mozdev.org/ if you want the google bar in Netscape/Mozilla

Actually you don't even need that. Mozilla has built-in support for Google. Just go into Preferences and change your default search from Netscape Search to Google Search. Now, when you type a search into the address bar, you will see "Search Google for". Just press the Down arrow key to select that, and it will automatically send you to Google with your search results.