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Mozilla The Internet Handhelds Portables Communications Hardware

MiniMo(zilla) Running on Windows Mobile 212

Posted by timothy from the quick-progress-worthy-project dept.
webgrappa writes "If you (yes, yes, you that like OpenSource but use Win all the time) own a Windows Mobile Device, in a near future you'll trash Pocket IE and NetFront. MozillaZine has photos of MiniMo running on Windows Mobile Device."
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MiniMo(zilla) Running on Windows Mobile More

MiniMo(zilla) Running on Windows Mobile

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  • actual pictures (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:39PM (#11884505)
    http://rebron.org/blogarchives/2005/03/minimozilla _com.html

  • handhelds with browsers (Score:5, Funny)

    by fludlight ( 165773 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:40PM (#11884514)
    Yes! No more "cheap viagra now!" popups on my palm pilot!

  • Palm, sometime? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Justin205 ( 662116 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:41PM (#11884519) Homepage
    Come on, when will this be ported to Palm OS? I'm currently using NetFront on my Clie, and while it renders pages pretty great, it's slow. Very slow.

    So, when? Because Minimo on a Palm would be very nice.

    • Re:Palm, sometime? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:49PM (#11884584)
      Clies are slow. You won't get very fast results.

      Try a recent Palm, but if you really want something powerful, Pocket PC is the only way to go.

      Here's an analogy: Palm OS 4 and below are like the original Mac OS or even DOS on the PC (simple, not very powerful, no multitasking), Palm OS 5 is like System 7 on Mac or Windows 3.1 (a bit more powerful, limited multitasking, a bit less simple), and Windows Mobile is like Windows NT/2000/XP (stable, powerful, and multitasking).

      PalmOS didn't even get devices that used *true* filesystems until very recently (instead of the antiquated and outgrown database format, which didn't really support advanced applications).

      • PalmOS DBs vs. filesystems (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7NO@SPAMcornell.edu> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:54PM (#11884968) Homepage
        And the change to filesystem methodology for Palms is a good thing WHY?

        The old database-style techniques were far more efficient. When PalmOne moved to a filesystem-based architecture with the Treo 650, users found that N megs of RAM in the new device was equivalent to N/2 megs of RAM in the old device.

        PalmOS has always been more efficient and far better than Windows Mobile for any embedded device. PalmOS devices have historically been more usable despite 1/10 the processing power of a WinCE device thanks to the fact that PalmOS was designed from the ground up for mobile devices, while WinCE and its bastard brethren are a horrendous hack.

        Unfortunately, PalmOS 5.x is a step backwards. POS 5.x runs on significantly faster hardware than OS4, with practically no benefits in 95% of situations. It's still a hell of a lot better than any mobile version of Windows.

        • Re:PalmOS DBs vs. filesystems (Score:5, Informative)

          by nxtw ( 866177 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @12:09AM (#11885078)
          And the change to filesystem methodology for Palms is a good thing WHY?

          New applications. Multimedia. More demanding games. Because the competition is both more advanced *and* has taken over market share.

          The old database-style techniques were far more efficient. When PalmOne moved to a filesystem-based architecture with the Treo 650, users found that N megs of RAM in the new device was equivalent to N/2 megs of RAM in the old device.

          It was never "equivalent". First, PalmOne should have included more RAM in the Treo 650. Second, a sacrifice in efficency is necesarry. However, the way in which they mapped old databases to files was not very efficent. The old system was hindering the platform greatly.

          PalmOS has always been more efficient and far better than Windows Mobile for any embedded device.

          PalmOS was very kludgy, not 32-bit, etc. If by "embedded device" you mean "plain-jane simple organizer", I agree completely.

          PalmOS devices have historically been more usable despite 1/10 the processing power of a WinCE device

          WinCE has had the same basic architecture from the beginning. While it didn't work out as well to begin with (the OS wasn't very mature and hardware wasn't too great,) it has evolved and is now a very decent platform. PalmOS devices have always been usable, and rather simple to use, but you can't use it for much.

          As for processing power - clearly they needed more. The old Dragonball CPUs took a few seconds to decode JPEGs and had no hope at playing mp3s.

          thanks to the fact that PalmOS was designed from the ground up for mobile devices

          It was designed for simple organizers.

          while WinCE and its bastard brethren are a horrendous hack.

          That's an unsubstantiated anti-Microsoft troll.

          PalmOS still does not have anything close to the mutlimedia support present on Windows Mobile (yes, people *do* like to put music on their PDAs and watch movies too), nor does it have the advanced gaming or emulation support (yes, people like to play games too.) For those that like to multitask... they can. I can run IRC, AIM, browse the web, and play music (streaming radio if I want it to be), all at the same time. And you can do so much from the device itself - you don't need to have a computer with the right software to be able to install software, mess around, etc.

          Unfortunately, PalmOS 5.x is a step backwards. POS 5.x runs on significantly faster hardware than OS4, with practically no benefits in 95% of situations. It's still a hell of a lot better than any mobile version of Windows.

          Step backwards? Do you think they switched to ARM because it was a step backwards? No. They needed to move forward. Windows Mobile does so much more, and people see that. PalmOne is really struggling to catch up now. People enjoy using their PDAs to go online and play mp3s. "95% of situations" of what Palm OS did originally won't benefit from a faster CPU, but what people want to do now requires a faster CPU.

        • And the change to filesystem methodology for Palms is a good thing WHY?

          Well, it depends on what you think a PDA is for, doesn't it?

          If you think of the PDA as a general computing platform that fits in your palm, a conventional file systems is a good thing. It's flexible. Why should a particular piece of informaiton in the file systembelong to a particular application? Why should I bundle all of my like data in a common database? Oh, these aren't real limitations, but there's definitely an impedence m

    • Re:Palm, sometime? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:06PM (#11884720) Journal
      http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6 097 [mozillazine.org]

      No, and from responses to previous times this question has been asked (it gets asked at least once every time someone mentions Minimo...), porting to Palm OS 5.x or below would be very hard. There was speculation that Palm OS 6 would make it a bit easier (but it'd still require someone to invest a bunch of time...)

      Dan East

  • Nice to have a choice. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:41PM (#11884520) Homepage Journal
    Apparently though if you're on a page with a word larger than seven characters, apparently you get the famous screen-widening effect.

    I just wish they'd distribute Firefox instead of Mozilla -- it makes a noticable difference on the desktop, and I'd imagine an even more sizeable one on a cellphone. Although I just recently saw a DivX movie on a friend's system, so maybe they're powerful enough to tolerate a little bloat.

    • Firefox shares the same code base as Mozilla, but is rewritten without the non-browser stuff to make it faster. Likely Minimo is also written without the extra junk (who needs Composer on their cell phone?) already, so basing it on Firefox would probably not make any of the kind of differences you're talking about.
    • The most interesting screenshot as far as potential users are concerned is missing. I do not see the screenshot of the mail client. While I am not a particular fan of IE, it works to some extent so the users of Win CE have a working browser.

      What they do not have is a working mail client.

      The built in portable outlook only fetches recent messages and only from Inbox. You cannot access IMAP folders other then INBOX and have no means of accessing your old mail. To add to that, Pocket PC Outlook on the Smartph
      • The built in portable outlook only fetches recent messages and only from Inbox. You cannot access IMAP folders other then INBOX and have no means of accessing your old mail.

        Perhaps the 2003 edition is different, but mine does IMAP folders just fine. In fact, it's the only client I've seen that gives reliable unread counts next to the folder, without having to go into the folder to refresh the cache.

        To add to that, Pocket PC Outlook on the Smartphone Edition does not have client side SSL certificate sup

    • I'd be cool if they would make it default to using 'handheld' media stylesheets rather than 'screen' as in the desktop version. That way sites can provide a simpler version of their design for small-screened devices. Of course, it'd be even better if someone would implement something like Opera's "Small Screen Rendering", which actually transforms the HTML a little to make sites which do not provide a special handheld stylesheet more usable.

      As to the speed thing, the PocketPC systems I've seen have had rea

  • Fantastic! (Score:4, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:41PM (#11884522) Homepage
    I got a Dell Axim x50v right before Christmas and I love the little thing to death. It's screen is amazing. Some parts of WM2003se aren't perfect, but overall it is a nice little device.

    That said I am often frustrated by PocketIE. While it works (and rather well) the fact that you can't have more than one window open (no tabs) SERIOUSLY hampers me. I can't tell you how many times I'd like to open a link in a second window/tab to look at in a minute or load while I continue reading, or open a collection of 2/3 links to look at. But instead I have to choose one or the other and read that now. Then I have to remember how to get back to where I was to find the other links, and remember which links those were. I haven't browsed using a single window on any platform in at least 5 years, probably more. So this feels like a HUGE limitation to me and really cramps my browsing style.

    Having not only a second option from Pockete IE, but one that might allow me tabs/windows would be fantastic. I will download it the second it's released.

    Horray for MiniMo!

  • Minimo on desktops? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shachaf ( 781326 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:42PM (#11884525)
    Since Minimo seems to require a relatively small amount of memory (compared to Mozilla or Firefox), has anyone ever considered porting it back to the desktop so it can be used as a very lightweight browser on desktop?

    • Lightweight browsers (Score:2, Informative)

      by r3jjs ( 189626 )

      If you really need a lightweight web browser for an older machine, I would recommend

      Dillo [dillo.org] - a nice lightweight browser, but no CSS or Javascript. Requiress GTK something.

      Links 2 [mff.cuni.cz] - Runs in X, frame buffer, SVGA. Some CSS and Javascript support.

      Both are very lightweight and I've used both on ancient machines that needed "something." I'll usually include Firefox as a backup for sites that really need it.

  • this is part relevant (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    On the topic of those who profess to love OSS and free software but do not use it, who has a link to the slashdot usage statistics?

    I remember seeing only about 20% mozilla and 80% IE on windows or something for a slashdotting. Pretty disgraceful (not all of that can be "we have to use it at work").

    Links would be nice for a little sub-discussion of the issue (issue which was brought up in the topic for those "off topic" happy mods).

    cheers.
    • I remember seeing only about 20% mozilla and 80% IE on windows or something for a slashdotting. Pretty disgraceful (not all of that can be "we have to use it at work").

      Luckily this is a "News for Nerds" website and not a "News for OSS-zealots" so that yes, we can have people who are computer nerds and do like Microsoft. Minorities are often very vocal, I'm not surprised if the vocal people here are in the minority. I imagine there are plenty of people who don't even read the comments.
    • I remember seeing only about 20% mozilla and 80% IE on windows or something for a slashdotting. Pretty disgraceful (not all of that can be "we have to use it at work").

      Well if Slashdot actually got its own site to render properly in FireFox, that percentage might go up. :o

  • Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by koreaman ( 835838 ) <uman@umanwizard.com> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:44PM (#11884540)
    That's what Opera is for. Mini devices. Fork over the $30 or however much it costs, it's worth it if you use your device to surf the web.

    • Re:Honestly... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by StarManta.Mini ( 860897 )
      Or... you know.... download Mozilla, and not pay $30 for what is free everywhere else in the world. (The ability to browse pages on a less crappy browser)

      • Re:Honestly... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rits ( 453723 )
        Difference is, you can browse the web now with Opera on millions of mobile devices powered by Symbian and Linux. There is even a test version of Opera for Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition.

        That Minimo Google-on-phone screenshot didn't look exactly inviting. Getting small-screen rendering right is not the trivial effort some people think it is. Opera has spend a lot of time and resources on getting it right.

      • "Or... you know.... download Mozilla, and not pay $30 for what is free everywhere else in the world. (The ability to browse pages on a less crappy browser)"

        Oh my. Not everyone thinks Mozilla is better than Opera. Opera is certainly smaller and faster than Mozilla, and runs comfortably on normal mobile phones today with all these features like proper zooming, small screen rendering, and so on. As opposed to Mozilla's struggle to get things right that Opera has done right for years.

    • Re:Honestly... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm sorry, but no it isn't. The Internet is free, and a browser is the most basic componant to access the net, so it too, should be free.
      • The Internet is free? Really? You mean I've been writing these checks to my ISP all these years for nothing?
      • My 7610 came with a browser from nokia.

        After trying to use it for various sites I grabbed the Opera bowser and life became sweet.

        It is worth the $30 several times over!
      • "The Internet is free, and a browser is the most basic componant to access the net, so it too, should be free."
        Nothing is free. Not even Mozilla. Someone pays for Mozilla, you know. Huge companies like Nokia and IBM. Opera is an independent browser which doesn't rely on donations from huge corporations to survive. That's a plus in my book.

    • Re:Honestly... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Duckman5 ( 665208 )
      In all truth, that was the first thing I went to do as soon as I saw how crippled Pocket IE was on my Dell Axim, but upon reviewing Opera's download page [opera.com] I realized that they do not have a solution for my platform. You can see in the right where it clearly states that the Windows Mobile version of Opera does not run on Pocket PC devices. Total bummer.
      Now, with Minimo, I have another choice in browsers. Hopefully this will support the features that I want, not the least of which is the ability to have mor
      • Yah. I've been hanging out for a PPC2002 (or whatever an Asus 716 runs) version of Opera for ages. I've already bought it for the S60 and I'd buy it for my PocketPC the moment it's available.
    • That's what Opera is for. Mini devices.

      A-frickin-men. I mean, why does Mozilla Foundation have such a push to PDA devices [google.com] when Firefox/Thunderbird isn't exactly "perfect" yet for the desktop? There's lots of stuff that they can devote and focus on without worrying about devices that 95% of the populace dont use at all... as a personal anecdote: of the 100 people who were at our wedding reception, I'd say maybe 10 or so might own a PDA, and I'd bet only 2 or 3 of them actually use it even monthly... and t

      • "Leave Opera alone to battle PocketIE in the PDA browser market"
        Actually, Opera runs comfortably on normal mobile phones. It doesn't need to battle any PDA browsers at all, since it seems to be very popular on mobiles.
      • Firefox/Thunderbird isn't exactly "perfect" yet for the desktop?

        Not sure where Thunderbird comes into any of this (I thought we were talking about a web browser, not a mail client). Anyway, admittedly FireFox has some bugs, what software doesn't, but it has a darn site less rendering bugs than Opera I'm afraid (ask anyone who's tried to write a XHTML 1.1 Strict + CSS2 website - Opera gets a lot of stuff wrong unfortunately).

        In any case, why are you complaining about a project to give people mroe choice?
    • My old P800 came with Opera for free.

      I'm surprised that mozilla haven't ported to symbian as that's got the mindshare outside the US (plus it's a darned sight easier to use... had one CE device... ditched it after a week).

  • thank you! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <.carywiedemann. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:45PM (#11884553) Homepage
    Thank god. The crappy html browser in the windows smartphone platform (bastardized internet explorer) was the only thing holding me back from getting one of the smartphones out there today. Symbian is still a hot contender but most symbian phones are way too bulky for my use. For some reason the windows smartphones seem to be much slimmer. Sendo has a nice proprietary smartphone setup with their Sendo X [sendo-x.com] but they still haven't worked all the bugs out [howardforums.com]. The ability to use a "real" browser with a smartphone just tipped the scales, goodbye Ericsson P910!
    Link to minimo project [mozilla.org]
    --Fairfax Underground [fairfaxunderground.com]: Where Fairfax County comes out to play
    • ugh hate to respond to my own thread but the sendo-x link is broken. something about reffered links from slashdot.
      anyway, this [howardforums.com] should work for the sendo x forum and a review can be found here [howardchui.com]
    • Maybe it's just me, but the phrase "bastardized internet explorer" seems rather redundant.

  • Download Minimo (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shachaf ( 781326 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:46PM (#11884563)
    I just noticed that Minimo for WinCE can already be downloaded at http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6 097 [mozillazine.org].

  • Name Game (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:48PM (#11884570)
    MiniMo? Some other suggestions:

    BrushFire
    DamnSmallMozilla
    MoWin
    Fox Trot (it's a mobile device, isn't it?)
    Fox-CE (pronounced Foxy)
    Small Fox (it can be a catchy epidemic)
    LilMo

  • Meh. (Score:5, Informative)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @10:58PM (#11884652)

    On my Zaurus SL-C860, I can run the real Firefox [pdaxrom.org] (or Mozilla) with pdaXrom [pdaxrom.org], not to mention a whole load of other apps [pdaxrom.org], including abiword, gnumeric, and other apps that, while not exactly full-blown on the PC side, completely blow away anything on the PDA side.

    With the latest betas, things are working with very minimal headache. If you're looking for PDA apps, this is a dream come true; if you're looking for a unix workstation in your pocket, this is also a dream come true. Or if you want gvim and gcc in your pocket. Or if you want snes9x in your pocket. Etc. You get the picture.

    It's really awesome to have a Linux workstation in your pocket that can dial via bluetooth through your cellphone anywhere you can get reception. Take photos with your camera, edit them right there with the latest GIMP, upload them to your server.

    It may seem obscenely expensive for a PDA, but it's also obscenely functional. You can't find a laptop this size, and it does just about everything you'd want a laptop to, except play the latest 3D games.

    • Cool (Score:2)

      by wiredog ( 43288 )
      Now if only they'd get it running on an sl-c3000. None of the embedded distros I've seen run on that yet.
    • It's really awesome to have a Linux workstation in your pocket that can dial via bluetooth through your cellphone anywhere you can get reception. Take photos with your camera, edit them right there with the latest GIMP, upload them to your server.

      I've pretty much got that with my WinCE 2003 device as well. Granted, the terminal is an ssh session to my home box, but that's more powerful than a local session as all my resources are on that network. WiFi is a must, mine has it built in.

      I've considered look

  • MiniMo seems lonly (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkMantle ( 784415 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:03PM (#11884696) Homepage
    I think Minimo needs some companions.

    Like MiniLarry, and MiniCurly.
  • It's critical that a PDA browser be intelligent enough to fit content to a PDA's display. The bulk of Pocket PCs are 240x320, and only the newest models support 480x640. Anyone who attempts to browse "normal" webpages in their native format on a screen 240 pixels wide will quickly realize that it is completely unusable for most sites.

    It sounds like this project is at the "Hey, we got it to render something!" stage. Hopefully it will quickly mature and supplant PIE, just as Firefox is taking away IE's sh
    • Opera's Series 60 web browser manages to do well on 176x208, so I can't imagine they'd have much problem with 240x320.
    • Anyone who attempts to browse "normal" webpages in their native format on a screen 240 pixels wide will quickly realize that it is completely unusable for most sites.

      I disagree. Granted; it's not as simple as desktop browsing, but must mobile clients have a few different layout options and usually at least one looks good. I surf on my 240x320 device all the time, hitting BBC News, /., and a few other sites that weren't designed for mobiles.

      So long as you have tabbed browsing and can load new pages in th

  • Any news when something like this would be available for Symbian 60 series devices.

    Would be great to use something like Mozilla on my mobile phone, especially if it includes something like FTP client and maybe a decent IMAP client.

  • opera (Score:2, Insightful)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    nothing really compares to the size and quality of opera. It even supports common Linux handhelds (minimo is not Qtopia based so it only runs under X). But more than that opera has the BEST small screen rendering.

  • It Works! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bionic_Baboon ( 684462 )
    It just doesn't render very good. I wrote this post using it on my Axim x50v.

  • Playstation 2 port? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mongoose ( 8480 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:29PM (#11884844) Homepage
    I haven't looked into this, but does it have a Playstation 2 port? Running netfront is ok, but it would be nice to have mozilla on a PS2.

    Hell, I might be willing to help with the port -- you never know when I'll need it for PSP too. hah

    • Re:Playstation 2 port? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
      Mozilla has been available for the PS2 for ages. Just get the Linux kit. I think it was the third thing I installed. (Distributed.Net client, Moria, Mozilla...)
  • Since I do not use Windows really any of the time, I would love to see this ported to a MIDP (Java) app for my Sony V800 (and the multitude of other phones that run Java apps).

    I'm not doubtful this will happen since Moz seems to love interoperability but I certainly would like to see this immediately instead of the long wait because I'm impatient.

    • Re:Windows bleh.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by nxtw ( 866177 )
      No way. Nearly impossible. Not only would it require an extremely long time to do this, such an application would be both enormously complex and so different than the original that'd it be much easier to write a brand new browser. Symbian platform would be a bit easier, as would Palm OS, but as you see here, Windows Mobile handheld platforms aren't too much trouble, and Linux is hardly any work at all. Java MIDP has many constraints, such as the lack of a true filesystem and memory/filesize constraints, th
    • There are some JAVA MIDP web browsers avaialable, that work ok on the SonyEricsson. You may have to google around for it (or look at the Esato Forum which is a good starting point for all things SonyEricsson http://esato.com/board/ [esato.com]

      The thing is MIDP ver 1.0 is not very capable, the SE V800 is a MIDP 2.0 compatible phone, which is far more capable, but I dont know if any web browsers are available for MIDP 2.0.

      I was going to suggest using the inbuilt browser (I have a SE S700i), which is usually quite good
  • I'm surprised at how quickly a port was done from Familar Linux to WinCE/WM2003. I have a Dell Axim X5 from a few years back. When extracted, the current version is about 15MB, 9MB going for winembed.exe. From what I've heard, users running WM2003SE have more problems than those you have slightly older devices. It seems like Minimo isn't using any windows mobile or ce.net specific APIs. The top bar is forced to the bottom of the screen, the bottom bar doesn't exist and the input toggle is forced onto the t

  • So, how about for the Zaurus 5x00/6000? (Score:3)

    by Money for Nothin' ( 754763 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @11:47PM (#11884929)
    How long until MiniMo is ported to the Zaurus 5x00/6000L on the default Sharp ROM or OPIE ROM? I'm going to venture a wild guess of "never", seeing as I'm fairly sure this would likely require a rewrite of practically all the GUI code (to use QTopia libs)...
    • Nah, should be easy because Qt is so nice to program for. The kde devs ported normal mozilla to kde in 48 hours at a conference as a demo, and that includes things like making gecko available as a kpart. Want to try and start doing it?

  • "We've created a clone of Mozilla... (Score:5, Funny)

    by d_54321 ( 446966 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @12:05AM (#11885055) Journal
    ...one eighth your size"

    "I shall call him... mini-mo"

  • Windows Mobile Device (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ah Ha! Now we know where those pesky WMDs are!

  • Zaurus port? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by samdu ( 114873 ) <samdu AT ronintech DOT com> on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @12:56AM (#11885356) Homepage
    When will there be a Zaurus port of this? I'm aware of only one such project, but thus far I've been unable to get Firefox to run on the standard Sharp ROM. I tried OpenZaurus but it was buggy. It certainly would be nice to be able to run Firefox on the many Linux-based handhelds.
    • Won't even install on the sl-c3000 dammit. Apparently the ROM in that model is smaller than in previous ones and some of the os (/usr for example) has to be installed to the hard drive. Naturally, the developers have ensured that the documentation for compiling OpenZaurus/OpenEmbedded for sl-c3000 is at best opaque.

  • Ran Minimo on GPE, wasn't all that (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rwa2 ( 4391 ) * on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @12:57AM (#11885359) Homepage Journal
    So I went to the extra trouble of installing recent builds of GPE and OPIE (based on Familiar 0.8) on an iPaq h5450 I got from work. I ran Minimo under GPE, but didn't find it all that useful. It didn't even have bookmarks, so I'd have to type in my sites by hand each time. The konqueror-based browser under opie was much nicer.

    I got my greatest kick from installing a 1GB CF card in it and running debian-ARM off of it using chroot. I could run mozilla on a 640x480 vnc virtual framebuffer, displayed using OPIE's nice VNC client keypebble in 1/2 scale full screen mode. It was readable, fully functional (albeit a bit slow) and the scrollbars were a nice small size (I don't know why all of the programs in GPE and OPIE need such large scrollbars that take up, like, 5-10% of the meager screen real estate). Unfortunately, keypebble would consume all of the CPU time on screen refreshes, so this wasn't very good for battery life.

    Anyway, the touchscreen crapped out soon thereafter, which means I can't get past the calibration screen under WinCE or OPIE, so now I'm pretty much stuck with GPE (which uses xstroke and isn't as picky as the iPaq digitizer calibration hardware, I guess). But it's still kinda painful to try to push buttons since all my strokes are skewed a bit, no matter how I calibrate the screen now.

    So I'm pretty much back to reading pages with Plucker and occasionally Avantgo on my aging Visor Pro, even though it's starting to lose lines on its greyscale screen and the button don't register half the time unless I stroke them a certain way. For my part, I'm planning on holding out until someone offers a cameraless GSM Treo 650 (so I can use it at work - does anyone know if it's straightforward enough to just open it up and remove it yourself?). From there, I'd hope I could move straight to a Zaurus-phone in a few years, if I could afford to have one knocking around in my pockets.

    It's nice that Minimo is progressing, but I'd much rather see a full firefox with a slimmed UI, especially since the devices are powerful enough to support this already.
  • The current version of MiniMo [meer.net] isn't even usable. I stuck it on my Dell Axim X30 and it pulls my task bar to the bottom (it should be on top) and lays over the bottom bar. The interface is absolutely horrible thus far. It renders pages at full size, but has no ability to shrink them to fit a QVGA screen. Also, it doesn't seem to support landscape mode (as in, it seems to have 240x320 set as a constant instead of changing with size of screen). It looks extremely promising, and I can't wait to use it, but it's
    • Well, according to a description linked of TFA, the prebuilt binary is only the second build capable of rendering anything.

      Personally, my interest in this project is not as a browser, but as a UI platform.

      Think of what Google has done with javascript. Now imagine applications designed for the PDA using those kinds of capabilities. The business logic could be remote, or running on a tiny application server running on the PDA.

  • Better browsers for PocketPC have been around... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shoolz ( 752000 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @01:28AM (#11885560) Homepage
    Try: http://park15.wakwak.com/~ftx/ [wakwak.com]

    I've been using it for about 2 years... tabbed browsing, text sizing, 'simply view' mode (no side scrolling or useless formatting), and the app is a mere 73K. Nice.

  • I'll stick with NetFront for now... (Score:3, Informative)

    by utexaspunk ( 527541 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @02:26AM (#11885853)
    I've got NetFront 3 on my h6315, and it works fairly well. It definitely does a better (albeit still quite imperfect) job at rendering pages for easy hand-readability than Pocket IE. As anyone with a Pocket PC knows, the worst thing in the world is a page that renders in such a way that requires you to scroll left and right and back again over and over to read a column of text. It doesn't look like MiniMo does anything to address that (yet, anyway).

    Anyone here had the misery of trying to read /. on Pocket IE? /. seriously needs to get with the program and create alternate layouts for this stuff. Google's smart enough to detect that you're using a handheld and arrange itself accordingly, why shouldn't /.? Has anyone else noticed that GMail has a non-DHTML version now that works with old/non-standard browsers such as Pocket IE? Of course, I just use the POP mail, but it's nice anyway.

    Other features of Netfront are some Javascript capability, and tabs, fullscreen browsing, and scroll mode (where your stylus moves the page, which helps a lot with the ones that don't render well). MiniMo will need all of these features before I consider switching.
  • I posted about this on PocketPC Thought [pocketpcthoughts.com] about three weeks ago. You can see screen captures there and there's a link to the new version 0.003 (which I can't get to work on my axim v50x) as well...

  • No real zoom though (unlike opera) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ezza ( 413609 ) on Wednesday March 09, 2005 @05:23AM (#11886524)
    If you look you'll see that the Google logo is at 1:1 resolution.
    That's because the gecko renderer doesn't support "true" zoom of text + images (yet), so until that's fixed it'll only be useful if you've got a nice big screen (and/or you like to scroll). Of course the Opera engine has been able to do this for years..
    The relevant mozilla bug is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821
    (copy & paste to your browser)

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