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March 07, 2005

MiniMo(zilla) coming to a cell phone near you

minimo-b.jpg
I thought Asa was going to beat me to the punch with these photos. Here are a couple of photos of MiniMo on a cell phone and PDA taken on my camera by Doug or Asa, not sure who. Anyhow, it's very cool and can't wait for us (well, dougt) to get this out to people. A very rich browser experience on a PDA or cell phone is going to be interesting for both content developers and consumers. The form factor of cell phones and PDAs definitely presents a challenge, but you can see it's not too shabby in these two photos. Having access to the web via these devices is convenient and may prove invaluable.
minimo-a.JPG

**Update**
Even more photos of MiniMo in action. Just in case you can't get enough...

Posted by rebron at March 7, 2005 10:09 PM

Comments

What OS is the phone running? I've got a Windows Smartphone 2003 device waiting for Minimo :)

Posted by: Robin at March 8, 2005 04:37 AM

Robin: the phone is an Orange SPV E200, which apparently runs Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone. The i-mate JAM runs the slightly-overnamed Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Second Edition, Phone Edition. So it would appear that this is the Windows CE version of Minimo (there's also a version for ARM devices running Familiar Linux with the GPE Palmtop Environment).

Posted by: Alex Bishop at March 8, 2005 08:39 AM

*sighs* I wanted a Palm version so badly...

Posted by: Seth Kinast at March 8, 2005 08:59 AM

Does Minimo support the same kinds of extensions as full Mozilla/Firefox? -m

Posted by: Micah Dubinko at March 8, 2005 09:04 AM

Aah, but can it display Google Maps?

Posted by: Anonymous at March 8, 2005 09:35 AM

I realised after I commented that I could enlarge the photos, so yeah, all good news. Are there any test builds of this yet?

Posted by: Anonymous at March 8, 2005 11:59 AM

very cool!!!

ciao

Posted by: spacemarc at March 8, 2005 12:23 PM

"but can it display Google Maps?"

That depends if there's java support for Minimoz / that version of Windows Mobile.

Posted by: That depends at March 8, 2005 12:42 PM

I wonder why they all show Google. Google.com is the site with the smallest amount of content ever. Seeing mozillazine.org on a PDA, resized/rescaled and all would be cooler!

Posted by: Anonymous at March 8, 2005 12:59 PM

Builds for ARM devices running Familiar Linux and the GPE Palmtop Environment are available from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/ and a link to a (very early) Windows CE build is included in http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=42144B49.2000809%40meer.net (usual disclaimers about Minimo crashing, deleting your phonebook and stealing your girlfriend apply).

Posted by: Alex Bishop at March 8, 2005 01:33 PM

That depends: Google Maps doesn't require Java (it does require JavaScript though). To the best of my knowledge, Minimo supports everything Google Maps needs. (Part of the point is that it doesn't skimp on support for Web standards like some mobile browsers *cough*cough* Pocket IE *cough*cough*.)

Posted by: Alex Bishop at March 8, 2005 01:37 PM

so how well does this compare to opera's already fantastic mobile browser (don't tell me it's free because i don't care about that part)?

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/

Posted by: yi8u at March 8, 2005 06:44 PM

You can get the latest copy of MiniMo for Windows CE from http://www.meer.net/~dougt/minimo_ce/

Posted by: cAPTAIN^k at March 8, 2005 06:59 PM

Why can't we have a Qtopia port? Sigh.

Posted by: Trejkaz at March 8, 2005 07:24 PM

Does it run XUL?
I am working on a barcode reader app for one of those PDA scanners.
That would be sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

Posted by: George at March 8, 2005 07:58 PM

Wow, nifty. How did they get the title bar at the bottom? In the pic of the "i-mate", the title bar is at the bottom...

Posted by: iPhil at March 8, 2005 08:50 PM

trejkaz: http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/coding-introduction.html

Posted by: jwb at March 8, 2005 09:15 PM

Will miniMo also run on Symbian (UIQ) sometime? Netfront and Opera are nice, but I like Mozilla better, and if it comes with landscape mode it would be great ;)

Posted by: Cesar at March 8, 2005 10:17 PM

On HP3870 with PocketPC 2003 I cant shut it down. Great work otherwise, I was waiting for opensource browser!

Posted by: Janez at March 8, 2005 11:28 PM

Give me a P800 symbian version and i will die a happy man! :)

Posted by: KB Jørgensen at March 8, 2005 11:37 PM

My experience/status/bug report:
I downloaded the 3rd .zip and it ran off my pocketpc2003 from a storage card. The program took about 6 seconds to draw its basic window, and 25 seconds before google was completely displayed. Tabs do not seem to be implemented yet, and some sites will crash/autoclose the app, including maps.google.com, my.yahoo.com, aximsite.com, etc (perhaps because of javascript?) The return key on the soft keyboard does not automatically 'go' load the page, and i see no method of bookmarks. Scrolling both horizontally and vertically is less smooth than IE, and apparently font size is fixed.
news.google.com wouldn't render correctly, either.
But in all, I'm happy to see it progressing, and look forward to watching it improve! great work, guys.

Posted by: numlock at March 9, 2005 02:33 AM

Alex,

Operas browser only runs on phones, not on PDAs.

Posted by: Frode at March 9, 2005 03:04 AM

Very cool! I've been waiting for this!

Posted by: leon at March 9, 2005 06:12 AM

any chance of getting one for J2me enabled cellphones :-)?

Posted by: Anonymous at March 9, 2005 06:44 AM

Nice pics... but are there any with anything other than the Google site on it?

Posted by: HTNet at March 9, 2005 09:30 AM

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