MicroB was a
mobile web browser
A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized to display Web content most effectively on small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be smal ...
developed by
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
for use in
smartphones
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...
and
mobile devices that run the
Maemo operating system. The browser is
Mozilla-based and uses the
Gecko
Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from .
Geckos ar ...
layout engine.
It is shipped with Nokia's
N800,
N810 and
N900 Internet Tablets, and is also available for the
770 via the '
Hacker Editions' of the operating system. In place of Mozilla's
XUL-based
user interface, MicroB uses the Maemo-native (
GTK-based)
Hildon API and widgets.
History
MicroB was initially released as a
public beta for
Internet Tablet OS 2007 on July 17, 2007 to allow
third-party developers and community members to develop and port
plugins
Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to:
* Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program.
** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features
** Photoshop plugin, a piece of software t ...
, and help shape the development of the browser. It was updated several times before it replaced
Opera as Internet Tablet OS's default browser with the release of
Internet Tablet OS 2008 on November 18, 2007 with the
N810.
Architecture
MicroB is
Mozilla-based and uses the
Gecko engine, but a number of features are omitted due to platform-specific limitations. In particular,
SVG support is disabled due to unacceptable performance, and
XUL is not included to reduce size and decrease memory consumption. As XUL is not included, most Firefox plugins require porting and repackaging before they can be used with MicroB. In place of XUL, MicroB uses
GTK and the
Hildon UI toolkit to provide a native interface.
Add-ons
Add-ons usually need to be
ported. The Maemo Browser Extras project is responsible for a large number of the available add-ons.
Some MicroB Plugins
*
Adblock Plus
*
Adobe Flash 9 (bundled with Maemo)
*
Flashblock
Flashblock is a discontinued Flash content-filtering Firefox extension for Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey.
Extension
Flashblock allows users to prevent page elements, such as HTML object tag browser plug-ins and advertisements, from being displ ...
*
Gears (partial functionality)
*
Greasemonkey – All scripts that work on the desktop version of Firefox work fine in MicroB, extending the capabilities of the browser and even replacing the need for some extensions which are not available for MicroB.
*
MPlayer plugin
*
Windows Media Player Stream and
RealPlayer stream supports via the built-in Media player
*
WML browser
Wmlbrowser Plugin
/ref>
Notes
References
External links
MicroB HomepageMaemo Browser Extras
{{web browsers, mobile
Mozilla
Web browsers
Embedded Linux
Mobile web browsers