what we all need is a new web browser

rofl,

Calming there Nick, this is just a discussion on what people would like to see.
As you pointed out, most of the things listed these days are essential.

JS and VBS could esasily be implemented in a new browser if calls were made to the Microsoft library, rather than writing your own. (Although 2.10, 2.11 doesn't have the VBS).

A JVM is pushing it though IMHO. You seldom come accross content that needs it and the RAM overhead for the full Java Library is huge.

I relalize that Java isn't small, but personally i think it should be an optional plugin for those with the space..... .....Steve

Edited by thcrw739 2004-10-05 9:56 AM

Fair enough!
As a plug-in, that's reasonable. I'd like a browser developer / team to focus on the core though.

Whenever I can, I surf on my 720 with a very humble alternative: telnet, go to guest.sailor.lib.md.us and surf sites via text-only.

Obviously, that precludes secure sites, etc., but I don't feel comfortable banking on an IE-lite browser no matter how much SSL it says it has.

But for news and other text, lynx is blazingly fast. On my old Zaurus Classic, with a terminal and 2400 bps, I could lynx faster than any PC-IE surfing.

24Term, fast and efficient, is avaliable for free at http://www.softclub.jp/~zoro/ce/

I realize this is not the alternative people want, but until something comes along...

Jake

Sorry for not having the links handy but:

I read Phillips dumped a large sum of money at Mozilla to port Firefox/Mozilla to whatever pda/phone devices Phillips makes. Perhaps we can nag mozilla org to compile for us HPC types when they've finished their port.

Opera has announced a ppc version of Opera. We need to nag them to create a HPC version for us.

Why write from scratch when two top notch teams are working on the same project? Our efforts would be better spent pleading for Opera and Mozilla to compile for us.

I'd happily pay either company for a decent browser. what's $50 or so to make the most of our handhelds? It's not like we all bought them at full initial retail price did we?

I have read that people have been nagging Mozilla & Oprea to port for hpc a log time....and have failed
Since they are working versions for the ppc's now and such... even if they refused to make a hpce port, wich isnt unreasonable, i just think it would be for ce3 and 4 on the hpc... (seems devlopment like to leave out the 2.11 these days) wouldnt it be esier for some of us to work with a allready pda port? Steve

Jake, it's a nice idea, especially when searching for very basic information.
.. but frankly the idea of going all the way back to text based living... scares me

Actually, text-based surfing makes me feel nostalgic--back in the Wild West of the Internet. When I was still using my Zaurus Classic, to surf the web, you had to log on through a terminal program, then re-program the parity, etc. to get to sailor.md, and it was quite a chore that made a user feel proud to have keyboard

Too many pictures on the Internet anyway, IMHO--the easy upload of a jpeg has atrophied good writing.

Best,
Jake

I'd be interested to know what spec phillip's minimum spec phone is: I'd place money that it has more than 16MB of RAM to work with... That will be the challenge for running/porting Firebox/Mozilla on the HPC. If we're being inclusive, we need to cater for the 680-style machine.

Cross developing from the PocketPC to HPC is not simply a case of pushing a flipping a switch in the compiler options window. The interface supported is quite different. Admittedly, if we could leverage the work in getting the browser to work in the CE environment then that would be a huge leap forward, but it is not a completely trivial task to go from PPC to HPC.

I'll be sure to use gif in the future then ;-)
I don't think that I could handly the nostlaga for too long. But it's great that you've found a way to surf in confort ^_^

Chiark, when you say "680 style". You do release that the HVGA market will be the largest market for any new browser. There are more HVGA's out there than sub-notes or tablets.
Developing for 640x240 is a matter of course is a must. Depending on what the base specification for the browser will be, 480x240 as well.
If you were going to cross develop for the PPC - and understand I wouldn't encourage it - I think that a Palm-size PC target and perhaps PPC2000 would be the zone to aim for. Going after the 2002 and 2003 releases would be a waste of effort.

I would also be deeply concerned, based on past form.
Any project like this that sets out with good intent for the H/PC, may rapidly find itself placing the HPC on the sideline, eventually canning it after PPC development reachs a dizzy height. So again, I wont encourage the effort on a cross-port.
As Chiark says. It's not as easy as many would think anyway.

Ok enough talk has anyone started on this project? snap, snap

Chris, when I say "680 style" I mean WinCE2.11, 640x240, 16 bit colour and most importantly 16MB of RAM. It is the RAM availability that I'm thinking is going to be a huuuuge challenge...

Ah, I see. Apologies.

Why are you forseeing the RAM as a problem. Microsoft's PIE on any of the platforms does the job and doesn't especially sponge up all that much active RAM. Cache on the otherhand...

Add to feature list:
Movable Cache location.

Ideally the binary would be *nice* if it were compiled in universal CPU formats so that it could work all the way up from 2.0 to 4.x. It is possible to create complex applications to do that. I believe that one needs VB6 and the CE toolkits though to do it, over eVT.

Has anyone tried the Java browsers like ICE? I saw one listed on the Yahoo group for the Aero 8000. It says it supports jscript. They include a jre and instructions to register the java classes. Here's a link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aero8000_and_sh4/

I may be trying to get this up this weekend, if successful I'll let everyone know.

Welll, not so successful. The download for the JRE was ok, but the download for ICESTORM did not have the same files that the install instuctions called for.