Poking Around in the Minefield
After getting an initial version of mobile Firefox (currently called minefield) compiled and running on the Maemo SDK, I compiled a version for ARM and put it on my n810:
It’s definitely a very early effort, like all of the pages say. It’s not even a release yet, just a hint of things to come and an attempt to start the effort rolling along. I’m actually impressed that it worked out so well. I was able to build the code for both targets, get it installed, and poke around some. It loads pages, settings work, extensions work, tabs, session saving, etc. All told, fantastic for what is effectively a rough port of the desktop version with few tweaks made.
I installed Greasemonkey to poke around some. I’m just really interested in there being a user contributed set of hacks to get existing web content to work on mobile devices. This seems to provide an excellent way to fool around with that concept. I tried out a few user scripts and they do work, although I had a few crashes here and there while fooling around. It’s still an early effort, so no surprise there.
This whole thing has me really excited. I wasn’t sure what to make of the announcement that there was going to be a mobile Firefox somewhere down the line. With so much momentum behind the Webkit based browsers I wasn’t sure if Firefox was going to be able to make a dent. I’m happy to see working code and an early demo, nothing gets interest for an open source more than a working set of code. Fantastic, this just might work out yet.
One of the aspects that I think is a huge deal is that Firefox is actually open source. When you look at the Nokia open source browser (like that included in the N95) and the Safari browser in the iPhone they’re both based on the open source WebKit project. However, they are not themselves open source. WebKit includes the guts of the web browser (HTML parsing, CSS, rendering engine, JavaScript, DOM interface, etc) but that’s not all that goes into a browser. So there are proprietary bits of code that go in with WebKit in order to make up the browser on my N95. The result being, I can’t decide I don’t like the way my N95 works and get in there and hack up a new version of the browser that suits my taste. With the mobile Firefox browser that will be the case. And I’m hoping that a genuine open source browser on the mobile end will catalyze innovation in the client the same way that having an open source desktop browser has kept things interesting in that arena.
Now if only I could get the browser compiled for a device with a cellular interface in it, or get a Maemo device with a cellular interface.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Greasemonkey is available also for the osso-browser. It seems to be a resource hog, as it abysmally slows down page loading times.
I really hope greasemonkey gets some performance love!
What’s more, adblockplus is a very nice addition to the browser, especially as wasted ad space on such a small display is a bummer.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:04 am
I love the way you surreptitiously prop it up on a PHP book and a VC’s business card. Very subliminal :-)
February 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am
@fizze, thanks for the pointer, I didn’t know about the browsers extra page at http://browser-extras.garage.maemo.org/news/ for MicroB, there’s some great stuff on there.
@James, you know me, subtle, I’m very subtle.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
I’d also like a meamo cellphone, but you do know it’s trivial to hook your N810 and N95 up over bluetooth, right??
I think the reason they don’t integrate them, it the N700&N800 series are too cheap, compared to their phones. If they would integrate cell functions (which would only cost a few $), they either would compete with the high-end phones, or would make them really expensive, which would suck.
In this way they have a nice hacker device, and still be able to sell expensive phones with less open functions.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm
[...] Rowehl conta suas aventuras e desventuras rodando o Minefield (a versão móvel do Firefox) no [...]
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:34 am
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