WinWAP

WinWAP is a web browser for WAP made by Winwap Technologies available for Microsoft Windows and any Windows CE powered device, like the common Windows Mobile powered Pocket PC phones. The WinWAP name is a combination of the words "Windows" and "WAP".

The browser engine is also provided as a Software Development Kit that allows other software manufacturers to add WAP capabilities to their own software applications.

The WinWAP browsers are depending on version available as free downloads, shareware applications or pre-installed on devices.

History

The first WinWAP browser that supported WAP 1.2 was released in 1999 as the world's first Wireless Application Protocol browser for Windows. The newest versions of the browser are WAP 2.0 compatible with support for WML, xHTML-MP and HTML.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Vision Mobile Browser

Vision (formerly nWeb) is an internet browser platform for mobile devices developed by Novarra Inc. The product is comprised of a server that acts as a proxy and a small footprint browser that runs on Java Platform, Micro Edition, BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless), or native handset environments via C++.

Novarra created and holds patents for this distributed browsing architecture that combines an in-network server with a handset browser client. The architecture performs a portion of web page content processing on an in-network server thus reducing the workload on the handset. It also reduces data transferred over-the-air for faster page load times and provides access to more content than is possible by a handset browser alone.

Novarra offers the mobile browser to mobile network operators and handset manufacturers who typically rebrand the software as their own service. It was first made commercially available in 2002 through Palm, Inc for Tungsten (handheld) PDAs branded as “WebPro”. Some later releases of the mobile browser include U.S. Cellular as easyedgeSM mobile browser, Alltel as “My Mobile Web” Celltop application, Hutchison 3G as “www3” in Italy and “3Xplorer” in Hong Kong. Version 8.0 was released March, 2009.

Functionality

Mobile phone users can access and use the same web sites on their wireless handsets that they visit using personal computers. Full web pages load in seconds due to compression and in-network processing of content by the server.

Content Type Support: “Street” HTML, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, XHTML MP, cHTML, HDML, WML 1.1, Cascading Style Sheets v1, CSS v2, W-CSS, Tables, Frames, Forms, JavaScript 1.5, ECMAScript v3, ECMAScript Mobile Profile, Cookies, Basic Authentication, gzip, Multi-Part MIME, GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, BMP file format, WBMP

Multimedia Support: Adobe Flash, FLV, WMV, AVI, MPEG-2/MPEG-4, 3GP, 3GP2, MP3, SVG Tiny, SMIL, MIDI (supported on handsets with appropriate APIs)

Network Protocols and Security: HTTP1.1, HTTPS, SSL2.0/3.0, WTLS, Certificates

Push: WAP 2.0 Push Access Protocol (PAP)

Download: OMA Download 1.0, MIDP OTA 1.0 & 2.0

Features

• On-Device Portal: Locally store pages with categories and sites that can be predefined by the service provider and updated over the air, also "History" and "Favorites" can be customized by the end user

• PC View: Site pages load with a visual representation of the full web page.

• Fit to Screen View: Choice of reformatted layout with image sizes adapted to fit within the width of the phone’s screen.

• Content Prioritization and Mobile Navigation Aids: The browser attempts to automatically find the main information on a web page and focus on that content. Additionally, a user can “jump to” other prioritized content such as login, search or forms.

• Adobe Flash and Streaming Video (Streaming media): The browser adapts Flash animations, Flash video, and other video formats to a format supported by the handset (usually RTSP/3GPP).

• RSS: Users can view or subscribe to an available RSS feed on a site.

• Widget engine: Ability to run widgets on mobile handsets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

UZard Web

uZard Web is a mobile web browser for mobile devices which are cellular phones, smartphones, PMP, navigator, settopbox and etc.
It currently supports Windows Mobile, Windows CE, Symbian, Blackberry (RIM) and Linux. Also it supports BREW, Java and WIPI.

Its first commercial version was released in Feb. 2007 in Korea with SK Telecom, KTF, LG Telecom and KT WiBro(WiMAX)which are carriers(operators).

Overview

In uZard Web , a webpage is fully rendered by a server separate from the mobile device, similar to the operation of a thin client.
This approach is also used by Opera Mini, Skyfire and is usually faster and supports better rendering techniques.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

UCWEB

UCWEB is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones. UCWEB is now ranked #1 in the Chinese mobile web browser market, with over 60 million accumulated users and over 10 billion page views per month by November 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

ThunderHawk (web browser)

ThunderHawk is a mobile web browser from Bitstream available for a full range of operating systems in high end (Windows mobile and Symbian browsers) and mass-market (Java browser) mobile phones and PDAs. It is basically meant for mobile operators and original Equipment Manufacturers and not meant for download for users.

Unlike most browsers, ThunderHawk does not re-purpose or reformats the content, and provides a desktop-like view of the web page. Data is transmitted to the mobile phone in a compressed transport format, i.e., the visible web page regions (text) are received first, while the rest of the images and other data are automatically transferred in the background.



Version history

Bitstream announced the ThunderHawk technology first on June 6, 2001 in Cambridge. The official beta release went off on October 9, 2001 and included enhancements as improved readability, speed, and usability. Sonera, wireless carrier in Finland included the beta release of Bitstream’s web browser technology in Sonera Pilot Program to offer hands-on testing of new UI conventions for future mobile applications.

Later, in the same year, December 17, 2001 Bitstream announced the Wireless Web browsing solution with HP for its HP Jornada PDA customers. The first full-featured Wireless Web Browser for Pocket PCs was released on May 20, 2002.

Standards Supported

AJAX, DHTML Level 1, DOM Level 1, DOM Level 2, CSS Level 1, CSS Level 2, Frames, HTML 4.01, HTTP 1.0, HTTP 1.1, HTTPS 128-bit encryption, Feeds (RSS, ATOM, RDF), Image formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PJPEG), XHTML Basic, XML 1.0, ECMA Script, WML, WAP 2.0.

Functionality

When a subscriber uses ThunderHawk to access the Web, the ThunderHawk client residing on the handset communicates with the server. The server receives a connection from the client and requests an HTML Web page from the Internet. Upon receiving the requested page, the server renders the content on-the-fly and compresses the graphics. The server sends the requested HTML page in a compact transport format to the subscriber’s handset.



ThunderHawk can run on any handset that offers MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.0 and/or CLDC 1.1 software. The browser uses Bitstream's patented technologies for mobile browsing. To display digital content on a small screen device, ThunderHawk accesses the Web site, lays out the content at a virtual pixel resolution and then displays a part of the layout at a smaller display resolution. The displayed content is at a scaled-down resolution size and includes text composed from font bitmaps having character shapes, sizes, and pixel alignments selected to improve readability.

Split-Screen Mode

ThunderHawk allows browsing in the combined overview and magnified view of a web page. The split screen magnifier makes it easier to browse the Web pages in their original format on the small screen of a mobile device. The floating magnifier over the overview area, available with both Zoom-In and Zoom-Out mode aids in finding information and navigating the Web sites. Bitstream holds the patent rights for this split-screen technology.

Rendering Modes

ThunderHawk can show the Web page content in various user enable modes including, overview only, magnified only, and a re-flown single column text view.

Features

* Supports viewing of AJAX pages that are written using ECMA-262/JavaScript 1.5 standard.
* Supports full HTML browsing on the Java/J2ME, Symbian, or Windows Mobile phone.
* Includes HTTPS 128-bit encryption, providing a secure transmission of confidential data.
* Customizable options: A "split screen/full screen" feature that eliminates the need of excessive scrolling. The "History" and "favorites" lists provide fast access to your favorite sites.
* Offers a choice of viewing the mobile version or the desktop version of a Web page.
* Provides image quality control options (low, medium, or high) that reduce the data transferred. The better the quality, higher the color depth and information each image will contain, and more the amount of data transfer. As the quality decreases, the image rendered will have less color depth and information, and hence lesser the download bytes.
* Persistent cookie support, with cookies stored on the server, which decreases the data transfer time.
* Validates certificates for https sites; if there are certificate problems, informs the user and gives the choice to continue browsing the site.
* Incremental rendering that sends visible Web page region first, while the rest of the images and other data are automatically transferred in the background.
* Support to submit web forms and view drop down menus on a mobile device.
* Native character support, ability to view web sites in multiple languages (Western and Eastern European).
* Allows choosing the content size with 5 different levels of magnification.
* Support to bypass or view popup windows.
* Supports playing videos for player-enabled handsets.
* Based on platform capability, ability to use smoothened or monochrome fonts.
* Supports both landscape and portrait viewing

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Teashark

Teashark is a mobile web browser for Java MIDP 2.0. It is a browsing client which works in cooperation with the Teashark servers which transcode (and partly pre-renders) websites and then sends the results to the mobile device, like Opera Mini. Such 'transcoding' is not necessarily faster (as this is extra overhead) than 'direct' browsing like most phones built-in browsers or Opera Mobile does, particularly when Wi-Fi, UMTS or HSDPA is used as data transfer medium. It supports Javascript as long as no interactive actions are used like popup menus or timed events. It features a preview based history, tabbed browsing (up to 3-4 pages open at a time), a list of all visited pages like desktop browsers and a nice bookmarking capability. Moreover it uses an AppleWebkit / Linux user agent which allows viewing full web sites rather than limited mobile sites what other mobile browsers do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Steel (web browser)

Steel is a freeware web browser developed by Michael Kolb under the name kolbysoft. It is a fork of the default browser for Android, taking its WebKit-based layout engine and providing what is intended to be an easier and more "touch friendly" user interface.

Steel was one of the first Android applications to support automatic rotation based on the hardware's accelerometer and a virtual keyboard. This feature is now more common among Android applications. It is currently in Alpha, and its current stable release in the Android Market is 0.1.7.



Features

Steel's UI is intended to be more "touch friendly" than that of Android's default browser, and thus emphasizes ease of use on a touch screen. Back, Forward, Zoom, and Bookmark-related buttons are all on the bottom toolbar. A URL-entry box is on the top toolbar, and beside it is a Refresh/Stop button, which displays if a page is fully loaded or still loading, respectively. Both toolbars are only shown if "pulled out" by two semi-transparent handles at the top and bottom of the display, and after a short period of not being used will hide themselves again. Until 0.0.4, Android's status bar containing system information was only shown when the top toolbar was out. Starting in 0.0.4, it is either visible or not depending on whether the browser is set to run in fullscreen mode.

Hardware controls

Steel will switch between portrait and landscape modes based on which way the device running it is rotated. By contrast, the Android default browser at the time of release required the user to "Flip Orientation" in a menu or, on the T-Mobile G1, open the phone's keyboard.

In an attempt to avoid opening the aforementioned keyboard when possible, Steel has a virtual keyboard which appears when a user selects a text box or the URL entry box in the toolbar. It is modeled after that of the iPhone, and as of version 0.0.4 causes the device to vibrate when a key is successfully pressed.

Reception

Steel's first public release received a 3-star rating from AppVee, praising its user interface and accelerometer support but pointing out that it was not at its current stage an application to rely on completely.

Shortly after the release of 0.0.3, which added multiple features including the virtual keyboard, on December 13, 2008, Steel became the second most popular Communication app in the Android Market, with an average rating of 4 (out of 5) stars from users.

In May 2009 an Android Tapp review gave the Steel Browser a 4.5/5 rating saying that it had a "hands down a better UI for the browser."

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Skyfire (web browser)

Skyfire is a mobile web browser for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and Symbian S60 v3. On May 27, 2009, version 1.0 was released.

It is the first browser software for Windows Mobile which can view Adobe Flash content and streaming video.

In Skyfire, a webpage is fully rendered by a server separate from the mobile device, similar to the operation of a thin client. This approach is also used by Opera Mini, and is usually faster and supports better rendering techniques.

How it works

Skyfire is a web browser which operates by rendering requested web pages on a server using the Gecko rendering engine before sending the rendered output to the browser. The output is sent as images annotated with interactive items such as links and text-fields.

Consequently, the browser is able to use features from a fully-featured desktop web browser without the need to have a powerful mobile device. Features such as Adobe Flash, Silverlight and QuickTime are usable without additional plug-ins on the device, and can be easily updated server-side without the need to update the client.

Supported Devices and Platforms

* Windows Mobile 5, 6, 6.1 AT&T 8525, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Fuze, Treo 750
* Symbian OS, Nokia Eseries and Nseries running Symbian S60, 3rd edition

For a complete list of devices visit the support site

Awards

* 2008 Read Write Web's one of six must have applications for Windows Mobile
* 2008 Laptop Magazine's Mobile Maverick Award
* 2009 Webby People's Voice Award for Best Mobile Application

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Skweezer

Skweezer is a Mobile HTML Transcoder for users of handheld devices such as personal digital assistants and mobile phones. Skweezer reformats and compresses web content in order to reduce a web page's file size and makes the downloaded content easier to view on a small screen . Skweezer was developed by Skweezer, Inc. (f.k.a. Greenlight Wireless Corporation) and initially released in 2003. Skweezer's technology is used to mobilize Web content service by search engines, Web portals, and wireless carriers such as IAC/InterActiveCorp , Bloglines , and Orange SA . Currently Skweezer is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese languages and serves customers in over 175 countries worldwide .

Mobile browsing innovations

Skweezer has introduced several mobile browsing innovations since its inception, including the first:

* Portal-based transcoding engine: Skweezer (2003)
* Globally distributed mobile advertising platform: Skweezer Ads (2004)
* Pagination system that splits large Web pages up for viewing on cell phones (2005)
* Mobile Web page translation feature (2005)
* Portal-based mobile RSS reader (2005)
* "Find in page" search that carries Web search keywords into search result pages (2007)

Controversy

In 2004 Skweezer became the subject of controversy in the Blogosphere when blogger Jason Calcanis objected to advertisements being placed by Skweezer on transcoded versions of blog content . A debate ensued over the legality and propriety of proxy-based services such as anonymizers and transcoders placing ads against other publishers' content and the scope of coverage under "fair use" copyright protection. While this is a subject that is still under debate, Greenlight Wireless stopped placing ads on transcoded content in early 2005.

Skweezer has also blocked WebTV and other TV internet surfing devices on the basis that it is not intended for web browsing but it allows web browsing from computers using Skweezer

Awards

* 2008 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards: Winner - Pocket PC Internet: Web Compression Service
* 2007 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Consumer Software: Mobile Web Content Aggregator / Portal
* 2007 PDA Friendly Website Awards: Winner - PDA Home Page category
* 2007 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Best Software Awards: Winner - Pocket PC Internet: Web Compression Service
* 2006 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Personal Software: Mobile Web Content Provider category
* 2005 MobileVillage Mobile Star Awards: Gold Star - Personal Software: Mobile Web Content Provider category
* 2005 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine Best Software awards: Finalist - Browsers & Web Utilities category

Competitors

* Google Mobile site
* BareSite.com
* Mowser
* IYHY

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. First released as a public beta on 7 January 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Apple has also made Safari the native browser for the iPhone OS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system first released on June 11, 2007 supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.The current stable release of the browser is 4.0.3 for Mac OS X and Windows. Safari had a 4.24% market share in September 2009.



History and development

Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers had shipped with Netscape Navigator and Cyberdog only. Internet Explorer for Mac was subsequently included with Mac OS 8.1 onwards as the default web browser, as part of the five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. However, Netscape Navigator continued to be included. Microsoft released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were bundled with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. Microsoft subsequently released a Mac OS X edition of Internet Explorer 5, which was included as the default browser in all Mac OS X releases from Mac OS X DP4 until Mac OS X v10.2.

On January 7, 2003, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser based on KHTML rendering engine, called Safari. They released the first beta version that day and a number of official and unofficial beta versions followed, until version 1.0 was released on June 23, 2003. Available as a separate download initially, it was included with the Mac OS X v10.3 release on October 24, 2003, as the default browser, with Internet Explorer for Mac included only as an alternative browser. Since the release of Mac OS X v10.4 on April 29, 2005, Safari is the only web browser included with the operating system.

In June 2005, after some criticism from KHTML developers over lack of access to change logs, Apple moved the development source code and bug tracking of WebCore and JavaScriptCore to OpenDarwin.org. WebKit itself was also released as open source. The source code for non-renderer aspects of the browser, such as its GUI elements, remains proprietary.

Safari 2.0 was released on April 29, 2005, and runs only on Mac OS X v10.4.x or later; this version was touted by Apple as possessing a 1.8x speed boost over version 1.2.4.

In April 2005, Dave Hyatt, one of the Safari developers at Apple, documented his progress fixing bugs in Safari to get it to pass the Acid2 test. On April 27, 2005, he announced that his development version of Safari now passed the test, making it the first web browser to do so.The changes were not initially available to end-users unless they downloaded and compiled the WebKit source code themselves or ran one of the nightly automated builds available at opendarwin.org. However on October 31, 2005, Apple released version 2.0.2 of Safari that included the Acid2 bug fixes.

On January 9, 2007, Jobs formally announced Apple's iPhone, which uses a mobile version of the Safari browser. It now features the same JavaScript engine, "Nitro," as its desktop counterpart in iPhone OS 3.0.

Safari 3

At the 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs announced Safari 3 for Mac OS X v10.5, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. During the announcement, he ran a benchmark based on the iBench browser test suite comparing the most popular Windows browsers, hence claiming that Safari was the fastest browser. Although third-party tests of HTTP load times suggest that Safari 3 was indeed the fastest browser on the Windows platform in terms of initial data loading over the Internet, it is actually tied with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox when comparing loading from caches.

The initial Safari 3 beta version for Windows, released on June 11, 2007, had several known bugs and a zero day exploit that allows remote execution. The addressed bugs were then corrected by Apple three days later on June 14, 2007, in version 3.0.1 on Windows. On June 22, 2007, Apple released Safari 3.0.2 to address some bugs, performance issues and other security issues. Safari 3.0.2 for Windows handles some fonts that are missing in the browser but already installed on Windows computers, such as Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, and others. There is also a guide that allows the software to run under Linux with Wine. The final release of the Windows version, Safari 3.1, was offered as a free download on March 18, 2008.

In June 2008, Apple released version 3.1.2, addressing a security vulnerability in the Windows version where visiting a malicious web site would force a download of executable files and execute them on the user's desktop.

Safari 4

On June 2, 2008, the WebKit development team announced SquirrelFish — a new JavaScript engine that vastly improves Safari's speed at interpreting scripts. The engine is one of the new features in Safari 4, released for developers on June 11, 2008. The final revision of the JavaScript engine was marketed as "Nitro." A public beta of Safari 4 was released on February 24, 2009, with new features such as a "Top Sites" tool, similar to Opera's Speed Dial feature that displays the user's most visited sites in a 3D world. Cover Flow, a feature of Mac OS X, was also brought into Safari. While in the public beta, tabs were placed in the title bar of the window, similar to Google Chrome, the tab bar was moved back to where it used to be, below the URL bar, in the final release. For the Windows version, Safari adopted a native theme, rather than the previous Mac OS X look employed. On June 8, 2009, Safari 4 was officially released. Safari 4.0.1 was released for Mac on June 17 and fixed problems with Faces in iPhoto '09. Safari 4 in Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard" has 64-bit support, which can make Javascript loading up to 50% faster. It also has built in crash resistance unique to Snow Leopard, crash resistance will keep the browser intact if a plug-in like Flash player crashes, the other tabs or windows will be deemed unaffected.



Features

Safari offers most features common to modern web browsers such as

* Tabbed browsing
* Bookmark management
* A resizable web-search box in the toolbar which uses Google on the Mac and either Google or Yahoo! on Windows
* Pop-up ad blocking
* History and bookmark search
* Text search
* Spell-checking
* Expandable text boxes
* Automatic filling in of web forms
* Built-in password management via Keychain
* Subscribing to and reading web feeds
* Quartz-style font-smoothing
* The Web Inspector, a DOM Inspector-like utility that lets users and developers browse the Document Object Model of a web page
* Support for CSS 3 web fonts
* Support for CSS animation
* Support for Transport Layer Security protocol (version unknown)
* Bookmark integration with Address Book
* ICC color profile support
* Inline PDF viewing
* Integration with iPhoto photo management
* Mail integration
* Ability to save webpage clips for viewing on the Apple Dashboard
* Private browsing

On Mac OS X, Safari is a Cocoa application. It uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (based on KDE's JavaScript engine named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license.

It includes a built-in web feed aggregator and supporting the standards RSS and Atom. Other features include Private Browsing (a mode in which no record of information about the user's web activity is retained) which has become the origin of the now popular term "porn mode" for web browsers), the ability to archive (using the proprietary .webarchive format) and e-mail web pages, and the ability to search bookmarks.

Beginning with Safari 4, the address bar has been completely revamped.

* The button to add a bookmark is now attached to the address bar by default.
* The reload/stop button is now superimposed on the right end of the address bar.
* The blue inline progress bar is replaced with a spinning bezel and a loading indicator attached to it.

These modifications make Safari look somewhat like Safari on iPhone.



In addition, Safari 4 includes the following new features:

* Top Sites, which displays up to 24 thumbnails of a user's most frequently-visited pages on startup
* Cover Flow browsing for History and Bookmarks
* Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to eight times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3
* Native Windows look on Windows (Aero for Windows Vista, Luna for Windows XP) with standard Windows font rendering
* Support for CSS image retouching effects
* Support for CSS Canvas
* Speculative loading, where Safari loads the documents, scripts, and style information that is required to view a web page ahead of time
* Improved developer tools, including Web Inspector, CSS element viewing, JavaScript debugger and profiler, offline table and database management with SQL support, and resource graphs
* Support for HTML 5
* Completely passes the Acid3 standards test

iPhone OS-specific features

iPhone OS-specific features for Safari allow for

* MDI-style browsing (with up to 8 pages open concurrently, limited by cache storage).
* Pressing on an image for 3 seconds to save it to the photo album.
* Bookmarking links to particular pages as "Web Clip" icons on the Home screen.
* Opening specially-designed pages in full-screen mode.

System requirements

The latest version of Safari requires either a Mac, running Mac OS X v10.4.x or later, or a PC, running Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. Official minimum hardware requirements are any Intel processor or a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 with 256MB of RAM for Mac or a 500MHz Pentium processor with 256MB of RAM. Cover Flow and Top Sites, however, requires a graphics card with 64MB or greater of video memory.

64-bit builds

The version of Safari included in Mac OS X v10.6 is now complied in 64-bit. Apple claims that running Safari in 64-bit mode will increase rendering speeds by up to 45%. However, there is currently no 64-bit build for Mac OS X v10.5 or below, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.

Criticism
Distribution through Apple Software Update

Apple Software Update, which is bundled with QuickTime and iTunes in Microsoft Windows, defaults to select installation of Safari even when it is not detected on a user's machine. John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, stated that Apple's use of its updating software to promote its other products is "a bad practice and should stop." He argued that the practice "borders on malware distribution practices" and "undermines the trust that software companies are all trying to build with users." Apple has responded to Lilly's statement, saying that the company is only trying to ensure users have the latest updates to Safari, Apple also released a new version of Apple Software Update that puts new software in its own section, although still selected for installation by default. In another update, Apple Software Update no longer selects install items in the new software section by default (as of late 2008).

On September 22, 2009, Apple once again checked "Install Safari 4" as a default setting with their update to iTunes v9.0.1.

Browser exploits

In the PWN 2 OWN contest at the 2008 CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, an exploit in Safari caused Mac OS X to be the first to fall in a hacking competition. Participants competed to find a way to read the contents of a file located on the user's desktop, in one of three operating systems — Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista SP1, and Ubuntu 7.10. On the second day of the contest, when users were allowed to physically interact with the computers (the prior day permitted only network attacks), Charlie Miller compromised Mac OS X within two minutes, through an unpatched vulnerability of the PCRE library used by Safari.

In the PWN 2 OWN contest in 2009, an as yet unidentified exploit in Safari allowed Charlie Miller to hack into a Mac in approximately 10 seconds. Apple released a patch for this exploit and others on May 12, 2009 in version 3.2.3.

End-user license agreement

The original end user license agreement for Safari on Windows was self-contradictory for several months, reading in part:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

As personal computers running Windows are usually not Apple-labeled computers, with the exception of Intel-based Mac computers running Windows, it was impossible for most users of Windows to use the software and abide by the license agreement. Within hours of the story breaking, Apple changed the agreement to read:

This license allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on each computer owned or controlled by you.

Updates through Apple Software Update still contained the old license.

Safari on iPhone autofill features

Autofill has been added for Safari on iPhone OS 3.0, to save the user from having to fill out forms manually. The disadvantage of this feature is that it may lead to identity theft if the iPhone is stolen and a passcode has not been set to lock the iPhone. Surfing on the ipod is limited.

Safari cache failure

Safari's cache system fails to retain large byte sized file for immediate display. Sites that have individual content such as Adobe Flash SWF files or large JPG files will not retrieve them from the browser's cache, but instead will download the content again from the server. A simple browse away from the page and an immediate return to the same page results in any large sized content to be reloaded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Web Browser for S60

Web Browser for S60 or the S60 OSS Browser, is a web browser for the S60 mobile phone platform developed by Nokia. The browser is based on a port of Apple Inc.’s open source WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks which form the WebKit rendering engine that Apple uses in its Safari Web browser. These frameworks were themselves based on software ported from the KDE project (KHTML and KJS).

Unlike some other mobile phone browsers which reformat pages to a suitable width for small mobile phone screens, Nokia's web browser allows the user to see a thumbnail image of the full web page which they call "mini maps" and allows users to zoom into the areas they want to read.

The initial version was lacking support for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Wireless Markup Language (WML); version 2 of the browser introduced support for these standards. Hence the Nokia Services (WAP) browser was the default browser on initial device shipments of this platform.

Nokia announced the project in June 2005, and made it available in November. At the 2006 World Wide Web Conference, Nokia announced that it was releasing the source code for its port of WebKit back to the community.

The version included on Nokia phones is named the Nokia Mini Map Browser, after the afore-mentioned "mini map" feature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Opera Mobile

Opera Mobile is a web browser for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed by the Opera Software company. The first version of Opera Mobile was released in 2000 for the Psion Series 7 and netBook. Today, Opera Mobile is available for a variety of devices that run Windows Mobile, or S60 and UIQ user interfaces of the Symbian operating system.



History

The first devices to run a mobile edition of Opera were the Psion Series 5, Psion Series 5mx, then Psion Series 7 and Psion netBook. They ran Opera Mobile 3.6, released in 2000.

Opera Mobile was ported to the Windows Mobile operating system in 2003.

* Version 6.0 was the initial release.
* On June 25, 2003, the first update came in the form of version 6.01, which was a minor update, mainly correcting bugs.
* Version 6.10, released on October 27, 2003, introduced several user interface and usability improvements, considerably optimized performance, and slightly improved page rendering. It was also the first version to support proxy servers, WAP pages, and the first one to be released in localized versions for 9 different languages.
* On July 13, 2005, almost two years after the previous iteration, version 8.0 was launched. This version was the first to require Symbian OS 7 (previous ones could function in Symbian 6.1). This version introduced the Opera Mobile Accelerator, a technology that used an Opera-run external server to slim-down the pages' content to reduce the traffic to the phones. This was also the first version to support dynamic HTML, and greatly improved compatibility with several web standards.
* On November 14, 2005, version 8.5 was introduced. This version introduced password management and form auto-filling functionality, added some more languages for localized versions, and made some improvements to stability and reduced-screen rendering quality.
* On April 5, 2006, version 8.6 was released and was also the first version to support Symbian OS 9. New to this version is the ability to support multiple browsing windows, support for Scalable Vector Graphics, introduction of URL autocompletion as well several changes in the customization aspect. It was also the first version of Opera Mobile that allowed for the possibility to configure it as the device's default browser, allowing for it to be launched whenever a web page was requested to be opened.
* Version 8.65 was released on August 29, 2006, which was mostly a welcome makeover and optimization to the then considered mature 8.60.
* Opera Mobile 9.0 was announced on February 2007 with a planned feature list, "coming soon" banners in the official Opera Mobile website, and official announcements in Opera's Community Forum. With no reason given, version 9.0 was cancelled, all references to it swept from Opera's site and 8.65 went back to being the latest version, being given a very slight refresh in the form of a new build that offered a handful of hardly-noticeable features, some of them platform-dependent.
* On February 5, 2008, Opera Mobile 9.5 was announced and has been given several estimated release timeframes, each of which has been silently ignored with a new one being set after it. An initial beta version of Opera Mobile 9.5 was released on July 17, 2008, although the only platform supported by this version was Windows Mobile.
* A second beta release of Opera Mobile 9.50 was made on October 20, 2008, including support for Opera Widgets, and adding Symbian UIQ3 as a further platform. With this release, the newest version of Opera Mobile for Symbian S60 remains 8.65.
* On March 26, 2009, Opera announced that there won't be any final version of Opera mobile 9.5. Instead they would flip over to developing 9.7 because of changes in the Presto layout engine.
* On June 8, 2009, Opera Mobile 9.7 beta was made available for download. It introduced the new rendering engine Presto 2.2 and Opera Turbo.

Other features planned for 9.7 are an improved Widget manager, Google Gears and OpenGL ES support.

Features

Opera Mobile can dynamically reformat Web pages for narrow tall screens, using Opera's Small Screen Rendering (SSR) technology. The technology itself is proprietary, but Web page authors can affect how their content is handled by SSR with Cascading Style Sheets.

Opera Mobile supports many web standards, as well as Ajax.

Awards

* Smartphone and PocketPC Magazine "Best mobile browser for both Windows-based Pocket PC and Smartphones" 2007
* Mobile Gala "Best program for mobile phones" 2004
* Mobile Gala "Best program for handheld computers" 2004
* Tietokone magazine "Best Software Product of the Year" 2003

Devices



Opera Mobile comes pre-installed on some devices, and often a special build is made for the particular device. Some devices that feature Opera Mobile pre-installed are:

* Nokia N90
* Sony Ericsson P1
* Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1
* HTC Touch Diamond
* HTC Touch Diamond2
* HTC Touch Pro
* HTC Touch Pro 2
* HTC Touch HD
* Meizu M8
* Creative Zii
* Samsung i900 Omnia

Future development

The Opera Software company announced that Opera Mobile 9 would support widgets and offer a more intelligent zoom feature. Opera Mobile 9's internal builds passed the Acid2 test.[ Opera Mobile 9 was being ported from the desktop edition of Opera. It was expected to be released in the first half of 2008. On February 5, 2008, Opera announced that it would now instead be working on towards releasing Opera Mobile 9.5, in order to unify its Opera Mobile and desktop browser product around the same release version and underlying rendering engine. A pre-alpha internal build of Opera Mobile 9.5 was leaked onto the Internet, for the Windows Mobile platform. There are now multiple different versions of Opera Mobile leaked on the internet, with varying rendering speeds and even different way of zooming. Some versions now even support flashlite 3.1 for full youtube and flash webpage support. Opera has since released the official beta: Opera Mobile site

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Opera Mini

Opera Mini is a web browser designed primarily for mobile phones, but also for smartphones and personal digital assistants. It uses the Java ME platform and consequently requires that the mobile device be capable of running Java ME applications. Opera Mini is offered free of charge, supported through a partnership between its developer, the Opera Software company, and the search engine company Google.

Opera Mini was derived from the Opera web browser for personal computers, which has been publicly available since 1996. Opera Mini began as a pilot project in 2005. After limited releases in Europe, it was officially launched worldwide on January 24, 2006.

Opera Mini requests web pages through the Opera Software company's servers, which process and compress them before relaying the pages back to the mobile phone. This compression process makes transfer time about two to three times faster, and the pre-processing smoothes compatibility with web pages not designed for mobile phones.

About 40 million mobile phones have shipped with a copy of Opera Mini pre-installed. Opera Mini's overall market share compared with other web browsers, both desktop and mobile, is about 0.06%. Opera Mini is the second most used mobile browser with a market share of 9.11%.

In August 15, 2009 Opera Software presented the next generation of the product: Opera Mini 5.0 beta. The new version included tabs browsing, better support of Password Manager using touch screen, and a brand new interface/.

History



Opera Mini was derived from the Opera web browser for personal computers, which has been publicly available since 1996. Opera Mini was originally designed for mobile phones that would ordinarily be incapable of running a web browser. It was first introduced on August 10, 2005 as a pilot project in cooperation with the Norwegian television station TV 2. At that time, Opera Mini was only available to TV 2 customers.

A beta version was made available in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland on October 20, 2005. After the final version was launched in Germany on November 10, 2005, and quietly released to all countries through the Opera Mini website in December, the browser was officially launched worldwide on January 24, 2006.

On May 3, 2006 Opera Mini 2.0 was released. It included new features such as the ability to download files, new custom skins, additional search engine options on the built-in search bar, a speed dial feature, and new search engines, and improved navigation.

On November 1, 2006 Opera Mini 3 beta introduced secure browsing, RSS feeds, photo uploading and content folding into its list of features and capabilities. Content folding works by folding long lists such as navigation bars into a single line that can be expanded as needed. A second beta was released on November 22, and on November 28, the final version of Opera Mini 3 was released.

November 7, 2007 saw the release of Opera Mini 4. According to Johan Schön, technical lead of Opera Mini development, "the entire code" was rewritten. Opera Mini 4 includes the ability to view web pages similar to a desktop based browser by introducing Overview and Zoom functions, as well as a landscape view setting. In Overview mode, the user can scroll a zoomed out version of certain web pages. Using a built-in mouse cursor, the user can zoom into a portion of the page to provide a clearer view; this is similar to the functionality of Opera's Nintendo-based web browsers. This version also includes the ability to sync with the personal computer edition of Opera.

Prior to Opera Mini 4, the browser was offered in two editions: Opera Mini Advanced for high-memory MIDP 2 phones, and Opera Mini Basic for low-memory MIDP 1 phones.Opera Mini 4 has now taken the place of Opera Mini Advanced. The older Opera Mini 3 Basic is still available for low-memory phones.

Originally, Google was the default search engine on Opera Mini. However, on January 8, 2007, Opera Software and Yahoo! announced that a partnership to make Yahoo! search the default instead. But on February 27, 2008, Opera Software officially announced that Opera Mini's and Opera Mobile's default search engine would return to Google from Yahoo!. This can be seen as a response to complaints from users of these mobile web browsers, that found the Yahoo! OneSearch service confusing and complex to use, contrasting then with the ease of use and simplicity of Google.

It was published in the New York Times on October 27, 2008 that an iPhone client has been developed but that Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with their own browser Safari.

On April 10, 2008 it was announced that a version had been produced for the Google Android operating system. Rather than developing a new version for Android, this was accomplished by creating a wrapper to translate Java ME API calls to Android API calls.

Functionality

Unlike ordinary web browsers, Opera Mini fetches all content through a proxy server that reformats web pages into a format more suitable for small screens. A page is compressed, then delivered to the phone in a markup language called OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). This compression process makes transfer time about two to three times faster and the pre-processing also smooths compatibility with web pages not designed for mobile phones.



By default, Opera Mini opens only one connection to the proxy servers, and then keeps that connection open and re-uses it over and over. This improves transfer speed and also enables the servers to quickly synchronize changes to bookmarks stored in Opera Link.

The Opera Software company maintains over 100 proxy servers to handle Opera Mini traffic. They run Linux and "are massively parallel and massively redundant."

Small-Screen Rendering

For devices with screens 128 pixels wide or smaller, the default rendering mode is Small-Screen Rendering (SSR). In this mode, the page is reformatted into a single vertical column so that it need only be scrolled up and down. Long lists and navigation bars are automatically collapsed (hiding most of the list or bar) by a feature known as "content folding". A plus (+) sign is displayed next to the collapsed content. When clicked, it toggles content folding on that list or bar.

Web developers can turn on Small-Screen Rendering on the desktop edition of Opera to see how their web site will display on mobile editions of Opera.

In Small-Screen Rendering mode, images are scaled down to no more than 70% of the screen size in either direction.

JavaScript support

Opera Mini has limited support for JavaScript. Before the page is sent to the mobile device, its onLoad events are fired and all scripts are allowed a maximum of two seconds to execute. The interval and setTimeout functions are disabled, so scripts designed to wait a certain amount of time before executing will not execute at all.

After the scripts have finished or the timeout is reached, all scripts are stopped and the page is compressed and sent to the mobile device. Once on the device, only a handful of events are allowed to trigger scripts:

* onUnload: Fires when the user navigates away from a page
* onSubmit: Fires when a form is submitted
* onChange: Fires when the value of an input control is changed
* onClick: Fires when an element is clicked

When one of these events is triggered, Opera Mini sends a request to the proxy server to process the event. The proxy server then executes the JavaScript and returns the revised page to the mobile device.

Pop-ups, if not blocked by the JavaScript restrictions, replace the web page being viewed.

Features

Scrolling is achieved with the device's arrow keys, its number keys, or a stylus.

Opera Mini may also be set to landscape mode, where it will rotate the page 90 degrees. This is useful for screens that are significantly taller than they are wide. However, this feature is not yet available on BlackBerrys and some other devices.

The image quality may be set to "Low", "Medium", or "High". The higher the image quality, the more data is transferred and the longer it will take to load pages.

Opera Mini supports only one font, which can be set to "Small", "Medium", "Large", or "Extra large" size. If a web page uses Courier or a generic monospaced font, the one font is still used, but the characters are spaced out so that each character takes up the same amount of space.

Browsing tools

Opera Mini features a search bar capable of using several pre-configured search engines,with the user being able to add additional search engines. The default search engine is Google.

Additionally, Opera Mini features shortcut keys, skins, and a web feed aggregator. It can save bookmarks, download files, and it remembers the user's browsing history.

Privacy and security

When using Opera Mini 4.0 or 3.0 Advanced, the connection between the mobile device and the proxy server is always encrypted for privacy and security. The encryption key is obtained on the first start by requesting that the user press random keys a certain number of times.When using Opera Mini 3.0 Basic, the connection is not encrypted. Opera Mini has received some criticism because it does not offer true, end-to-end security when visiting encrypted sites such as paypal.com. When visiting an encrypted web page, the Opera Software company's servers decrypt the page, then re-encrypt it themselves, breaking end-to-end security.

Standards support

As of version 4, Opera Mini uses the same layout engine that is included in Opera 9.5. This means that Opera Mini supports almost all of the web standards supported in Opera 9.5. However, unlike the desktop edition of Opera, Opera Mini includes no support for Web Forms 2.0. Also, frames are flattened because of client limitations, and dotted and dashes borders are displayed as solid borders due to bandwidth and memory issues. And because Opera Mini reformats web pages, it does not pass the Acid2 standards compliance test.

Opera Mini supports bi-directional text, meaning that it can display text in right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew in addition to left-to-right languages like English, French, and Spanish.

Low-memory device support

For MIDP 1, low-memory devices, the older Opera Mini 3 Basic is still available. Its features include an option to increase the text size, as the default text size is too small for some web sites. Opera Mini 3 Basic uses less advanced compression, does not support full page view, does not include support for favicons, does not scroll as smoothly, does not feature a built-in clock, and does not support encryption. When browsing an encrypted web page with Opera Mini 3 Basic, the page is actually decrypted before being sent to the mobile phone.

Market adoption

In all, about 40 million mobile phones have shipped with a copy of Opera Mini pre-installed. Opera Mini's overall market share compared with other web browsers, both desktop and mobile, is about 0.06%.

Network operators

The following mobile network companies preinstall Opera Mini on their mobile phones:

* T-Mobile
o Sony Ericsson K608i
o Motorola RAZR V3, and RAZR V3i
o Nokia 6280
* Omnitel (Lithuania)
* Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (Poland)
o Motorola KRZR K1, and RAZR V3
o Nokia 5300, 6070, 6131, 6230i, 6233, 6280, and 7373
o Samsung D900, and Z400
o Sony Ericsson K510i, K750i, and W810i
* Pannon GSM (Hungary)
* Telefónica Móviles de España (Spain)
o Nokia N70
o Sony Ericsson K610i, K800, and Z610i
* TMN (Portugal)
o Nokia N70
o Sony Ericsson K610i, K800, and Z610i
* Tata Teleservices (India)
o Huawei C2900i
* KongZhong (China)
* Spice Mobile (India)
* Helio, the first U.S carrier to sign a deal with Opera, for use on the Helio Ocean device
* Vodafone Germany

Devices

The following devices come pre-installed with Opera Mini. Note that some of these devices only include Opera Mini when bought from certain network operators.

* Motorola V980, E2, L7
* Nokia 2610,3120c, 3500c, 3600, 3600 slide , 3720, 6085, 5130, 5500, 5310, 5610, 3110, 7373, 6131, 6600 slide, 5070, E65, N95, N71, N73,5000, 3110c, 6288, 6103, 6080, 6303, 6300 and 8800 Arte
* Sony Ericsson K310i, K530i, K550, W200i, W760i, Z530i, Z550i, Z780i, W910i
* Samsung X160, E570, E420, F480, X510, X650, E900, E250, U700, ZV60, D900i
* LG K880, KU250, KE970, and KU311
* SAGEM My411x and P9521
* BenQ-Siemens EL71 and EF81
* BenQ E71 fight

Distribution partners

The following Internet service providers, web portals, and other companies distribute Opera Mini to their customers:

* Pannon (Hungary)
* debitel (Germany)
* Grameenphone (Bangladesh)
* PriceRunner
* HT Telecom (Europe)
* Small Planet
* Mobile Weaver (Unwirepark)
* Buzznet
* tribe.net
* Jajah
* Ebay Germany
* Mobileplay
* TDC A/S (Denmark)
* mobilkom Austria
* Onet.pl (Poland)
* Optimus (Portugal)
* Talkline (Germany)
* MegaFon (Russia)
* Meteor Communications Ltd. (Ireland)
* Ten (France)
* Helio (USA)
* Wind Hellas (Greece)

Critical reception

Opera Mini has been greeted with largely positive reactions. Opera Mini competed against its sister product, Opera Mobile, for the 2007 Smartphone and PocketPC Magazine award for the "best mobile browser for both Windows-based Pocket PC and Smartphones" award. Opera Mobile is a more powerful web browser, sold for 24 US$, that runs on smartphones and personal digital assistants. Opera Mini lost the award to Opera Mobile because at the time Opera Mobile supported Flash and tabbed browsing while Opera Mini did not.

Awards

* Laptop Magazine Editors' Choice Award
* Sony Ericsson Content Award for "Productive Mobility" 2007
* Getjar "Mobile Application of the Year Award" 2007
* Mobile Gala "Best program for mobile phones" 2005 and 2006
* CHIP.de Digital Lifestyle Award 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Openwave

Openwave (formerly software.com, phone.com, Unwired Planet, and Libris, Inc) is a messaging software and services company based in Redwood City, California, USA. Openwave is historically significant in its introduction of the Mobile Internet and its expansion into a large successful mobile software supplier in the mobile telecom sector. Openwave is publicly traded under the ticker NASDAQ: OPWV.

Openwave pioneered HDML, a precursor to WML. Openwave was a founding member of the WAP Forum, and is currently an active member of the Open Mobile Alliance.

Products



Major current products include:

* Openwave Adaptive Messaging
* Openwave Messaging Anti-Abuse
* Openwave Integra mobile gateway
* Openwave Mobile Data Analytics
* Openwave Download Manager
* Openwave Mobile Edge
* Openwave MVNO
* Openwave Multimedia Messaging Service Center (MMSC)
* Openwave Voice Mail
* Openwave Email Mx
* Openwave PhoneSuite

* Openwave Mobile Access Gateway
* Openwave Contextual Merchandising
* Openwave Push Proxy Gateway

Products supplied with Openwave software include devices from Motorola, Samsung, LG, Kyocera, Sharp, UTStarcom, and Sagem.

Earlier products included:

* Openwave Mobile Browser
* Openwave Mobile Messaging client
* Unwired Planet .Link Browser
* Unwired Planet .Link Server

History

The company started in 1996 as Libris, Inc. and focused on developing mobile client software for "pull" services while the general mobile market was rapidly growing "push" services based on SMS. In 1998, it changed its name to Unwired Planet, Inc. and launched its proprietary end-to-end mobile network solution for Internet access and web browsing, known as up.link (browser and network server/gateway).

In 1999, with the introduction of WAP standards, it acquired Apiion, Ltd. of Belfast (formerly Aldiscon Northern Ireland, Ltd.), changed its name to Phone.com and went public on the NASDAQ. In 2000, amidst huge growth in revenue and stock price, Phone.com acquired several high tech startup companies with niche products to integrate across its end-to-end solution. In 2001, it merged with Software.com and changed the company name again to Openwave Systems, Inc. With Software.com's large installed base of email servers at ISPs, Openwave expanded by providing its mobile operator customers with software infrastructure for mobile email applications and other multimedia messaging (MMS) applications.

Their mobile browser software shipped on over one billion handsets, at one point approx 49% of the global browser-capable device shipments, over 70 mobile operators.

In 2002 it acquired SignalSoft Corp., the developer of Location Based Services, who developed the first platforms to provide E911 services as per the first FCC (Federal Communications Commission) requirements.

In 2004 Openwave acquired Nombas Inc., the developer of Cmm (later named ScriptEase) which is the forerunner of JavaScript.

In January 2006, Openwave closed the $120 million acquisition of Musiwave, a French music application services provider for mobile phones. Later, in November 2007, Musiwave was sold to Microsoft for $46 million.

In February 2008, Openwave launched a contextual advertising system for mobile phones.

In May 2008, the San Francisco Business Journal reported that NASDAQ had given Openwave a delisting warning for failing to properly report some financial results.

On June 30, 2008, Openwave issued a press release stating: "that Purple Labs has acquired the Openwave mobile phone software business, which develops and markets its browser and messaging client technologies.".

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Obigo Browser

Obigo Browser is a WEB/WAP browser for mobilephones, smartphones and other Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) developed by the Obigo company. Obigo browser can run on various mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, S60 and BREW.


History

Obigo Browser has been around since 1999, when it was the world's first WAP 1.1 browser, but its development process started in 1997.

In 2000, AU-System launched the world’s first WAP 1.2.1 browser, and in 2001, the Mobile Internet Client was the first multi-content and dual stack mobile browser. Obigo MIC became part of Obigo C-line (Mobile Suite 1.0) in 2003, when the Q-line (Mobile Suite 2.0) Obigo Browser appeared as well and the Obigo brand was launched. In 2005, Obigo Browser handled Internet browsing from mobile devices. Obigo is the second mobile browser to pass the Acid2 test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Obigo

Obigo Ltd is a software and services company based in Hongkong. Obigo Ltd is divested from Teleca , which is well known as a software vendor of the Mobile Internet solutions. The headquarters is located in HK, and has 3 branches in Asia, China, Taiwan and Korea(South).

Products

Current products include:

* Obigo Mobile browser
* Obigo Email
* Obigo MMS
* Obigo SMS
* Obigo DRM
* Obigo Media Player
* Obigo Content Manager
* Obigo Framework
* Obigo HTTP/WSP stack

Obigo global market share is at 14%(as of 2007), 3rd place in mobile browser field. More than 600 million of mobile phones are equipped with Obigo products. Major customers are Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Recently, Obigo browser Q7 has been supplied with feature phones as the full-browser that can render web pages like the desktop browsers do.

History

In 1999, Ericsson Korea started sales of AU browser as a reseller of AU System (Former name of Teleca) SK Telecom signed AU browser license.
In 2000, LGE, Motorola, SK Teletech signed AU browser license.
In 2003, Teleca Korea Co. (Legal entity) established (Mar.)
Commercialized NGB(Next Generation Browser) for SK Telecom.
In 2004, Certified as Nokia Series60 & Symbian Competence Center (First in Asia) (Oct.)
In 2005, Developed WAP 2.0 browser & applications for BenQ toward Vodafone, T-Mobile (Europe).
In 2007, Assigned as CTC (Customer Technology Center) for global support & development by Teleca AB (HQ)(May).
In 2008, Commercialized Full Web Browser handset toward Verizon.
In 2008, Obigo LIMITED(*) established in HONGKONG (Nov.)
In 2009, Teleca Korea Co. changed Company name to Obigo Korea Co. (Jan.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/

NetFront

NetFront is a microbrowser for embedded devices developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser.

Mainly deployed on mobile phones, NetFront is available for multiple platforms and has been deployed in Multifunction Printers (MFP), digital TVs, set-top boxes (STB), PDAs, web phones, game consoles, e-mail terminals, automobile telematics systems and other device types.

The browser converts tables in a Web page into a vertical display, eliminating the need to scroll horizontally. This allows the user to zoom in and out on Web pages from 25% to 100%, and can select or scroll anywhere on a page with the stylus on Pocket PC devices. The software can open up to five windows and the user can tab to any one of them.



Compact Netfront

Compact NetFront Plus is a Netfront version designed for the next-generation of mobile wireless services, including international i-mode phones.

Compact NetFront Plus supports Compact HTML, which is popular in Japan; WML (Wireless Markup Language), a markup language based on XML which specifies the content and user interface for WAP-enabled devices used by overseas services; and XHTML Basic, a subset of XHTML.

NetFront supports common technologies such as a TCP/IP protocol stack, AVE-TCP, which supports IPv6 and the WAP Wireless Profile, a JV-Lite 2 Wireless Edition Java environment for cellular phones, and a AVE-SSL secure communications protocol and encryption module.

The latest version of Netfront supports:

* Ajax support
* Document Viewer
* New RSS viewer libraries
* SMIL 2.1 support
* SVG 1.2 + microDOM support

Supported operating systems

* BREW
* ITRON
* Linux: (MontaVista Linux, MontaVista Graphics, QtEmbedded, Qtopia, GTK+, Red Hat, and others)
* OSE
* Palm OS
* QNX
* Symbian OS: Series 60, Series 80, and UIQ
* VxWorks
* Windows CE family: Windows Mobile for Pocket PC/Smartphone, CE.NET
* Touchwiz UI
* Others: OS-9, pSOS, Nucleus RTOS, etc.

Devices

* Amazon Kindle
* Nokia N-Gage (Symbian OS Series 60 device)
* PSP, PlayStation 3 (XrossMediaBar)
* SEGA Dreamcast
* Sony Walkman X-Series
* Sony Mylo
* Sony DSC-G3
* Samsung Gravity SGH-T459
* Sony X-Series *Walkman

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Myriad Group

Myriad Group is a French/Swiss software company in the mobile phone sector. It was established in 2009 by the merge of the companies Purple Labs and Esmertec. The two companies had mostly common owners, and the deal was executed so that Esmertec, a publicly listed company, acquired Purple Labs in exchange of shares of the company. The merged company has around 800 employees.

The original Purple Labs was French, headquartered in Chambéry, and developed and marketed Linux-based software to mobile OEMs and ODMs. With its 2008 purchase of Openwave's mobile software suite, it owns the Openwave mobile browser, one of the most widely-used mobile internet browsers, existing in around 1.8 billion copies.

Esmertec was a provider of Java in-device engines and mobile services platforms, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.

As part of the new company structure, Myriad now also offers products and services for Mobile Operators, including:
- USSD self-service capabilities
- sophisticated graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on Java-enabled devices (including the iPhone and Android-based Gphone).

History of Purple Labs

The company was founded in 2001 by Jean-Luc Botto, Dennis O'Donovan, Sebastien Soyer and Jean-Marie Andre. Current chief executive officer Simon Wilkinson was appointed in October 2007, shortly after the firm raised $14.5 million in venture capital funding. On June 30, 2008, Purple Labs acquired Openwave's mobile phone client software division, which develops browser and messaging client technologies, for $32 million. On July 31, 2008 the company agreed to acquire Sagem Communication's mobile phone software and associated engineering teams.

Products

* Linux Platform
* Application suite
* Purple Magic (reference Linux-based 3G mobile phone produced in conjunction with NXP Semiconductors)
* Myriad Browser (previously Openwave Mobile Browser)
* Mobile Messaging client (previously Openwave, before that Magic4)
* JBed, JavaME Virtual Machine (previously Esmertec Jbed)

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Minimo

Minimo (from "Mini Mozilla") was a project to create a version of the Mozilla web browser for small devices like PDAs and mobile phones.

The project aimed to make it easier for developers to embed parts of Mozilla into systems with limited system resources (for example, machines with low amounts of RAM). This project is still in use although is being outmoded by Mozilla Fennec, another mobile device web-browser.

Background

To minimize the use of system resources, Minimo did not include a lot of Mozilla's functionality, such as support for SVG. In addition, the browser used small screen rendering technology to reformat Web pages for pocket-sized displays. The user interface was also designed to take up minimal screen space, with a single 8px high toolbar and a hidden-by-default address bar. Other user interface functionality, such as bookmarks, history, and search, was migrated into a special homepage called the Homebase. Because Minimo is based on the Gecko infrastructure, developers can decide to build specific versions and evaluate other features such as the canvas, SVG support, and more.

Most Minimo development has centered around ARM devices (such as Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ) with around 64MB of RAM, running Familiar Linux and the GPE Palmtop Environment (where it is now the default browser). Minimo 0.1 was released for this platform in 2004. Version 0.2 came out in March 2007 and represents a product targeted for developers.

A Windows CE version of Minimo was also under development, built against the Pocket PC 2003 software development kit. The first public build of Minimo for Windows CE was made available in February 2005.

Chris Hofmann created the Minimo project during his employment at Netscape Communications. He single handedly saved this project from being canceled many times. The loyal dog, Sparky, is the project's Chief Mascot. Currently Chris works for the Mozilla Corporation. Chris is also responsible for some of the Minimo key features such as the Homebase bar, a format for displaying bookmarks more amenable to mobile devices.

The lead Minimo developer is Doug Turner, who has headed this and additional Mozilla mobile projects such as the Mozilla labs project named Joey. The Mozilla Foundation hired Turner in December 2004 to work full time on Mobile projects. Minimo has been funded by Nokia and others. Nokia's involvement became public in mid-2004.

On December 17, 2006, Turner, in his blog, acknowledged the slow pace of development, and revealed that Mozilla developers are exploring alternatives for Gecko-based web browsing on mobile handsets. Turner issued an invitation for others to "step up" as his own development priorities shift.

On March 31, 2007, Minimo 0.2 for Windows Mobile was finally released. The new version adds tabbed browsing, an upgraded interface, and support for Windows Mobile 5.

On November 27, 2007, project head Doug Turner announced that the project was no longer supported.

By 2008 Doug Turner had begun on yet another mobile web browser, this time known as Firefox Mobile or Fennec.

Criticism

Probably because it was in the early stages of development, the Windows Mobile version of Minimo performs significantly slower than expected.

The quality of rendered pages is congruent with the well-respected layout engine it implements (Gecko), but the program has very high memory and hardware requirements compared to what is typically available on most handheld platforms (e.g. 64 megabytes of RAM, 206–624 MHz ARM-compatible CPU).

Version 0.016 (~8 MB CAB installation; Windows Mobile 4.2 + 5.0) and Version 0.2 (~4 MB CAB installation; Windows Mobile 5.0 only) are not recommendable for end-users not used to running bleeding edge software. In this version the browser may make the Windows Mobile OS unstable and a soft-reset may be required to make the system work again.

Version 0.2 was recommended for developers targeting mobile devices or interested in AJAX- and Web Services-driven Web application for the mobile space. Minimo is compatible with many Web 2.0 applications, such as Gmail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Iris Browser

Iris Browser was a web browser for Windows Mobile smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed by the Torch Mobile company. The first version of Iris Browser was released in 2008. It was currently one of only two web browsers designed for portable devices which scores a 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Iris was also available for Qt.

RIM acquired Torch Mobile on August 24, 2009 and Torch Mobile spokesman George Staikos has announced that Windows Mobile development will not continue.

Features

* WebKit rendering engine
* SquirrelFish Extreme JavaScript engine
* Customizable interface
* Touch screen control
* Advanced HTML and CSS support
* Languages
* Zoom and tap Function
* Multiple windows and tabs
* Input methods
* Software mouse cursor
* Special effects
* Rotating devices
* Advanced security features
* Pop-up blockers
* Advanced mobile key navigation
* HTTP cache optimized for low disk usage
* SSL and authenticated proxy support
* Styled Form Controls
* Netscape plug-in API
* JavaScript/ECMAScript 1.5
* SVG, XPath, and XSLT support
* History Auto-Complete
* Efficient storage of bookmarks and cookies
* Bookmark editor, carrier specified list
* Favorite icons and history
* XHTML 1.x mobile profile support
* Customizable about: pages

Current development

The UI was greatly enhanced all the way up until 1.1.9 which was released on July 6, 2009. Unfortunately, RIM acquired Torch Mobile on August 24th, 2009 and Torch Mobile spokesman George Staikos has announced that Windows Mobile development will not continue.

Performance

According to independent testing, Iris 1.1.5 loads pages more slowly than its closest competitor, Opera Mobile.

According to testing done by Torch Mobile, Iris 1.1.2 outperformed Access NetFront 3.5 and Opera Mobile 9.5 in the SunSpider Javascript benchmark. According to Torch Mobile, Iris 1.1.0 "scores 100/100 on Acid3 with only a couple of minor rendering glitches."

http://en.wikipedia.org/