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 sma ...

developed by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

for use in

smartphones A smartphone is a Mobile device, portable computer device that combines Mobile phone, mobile telephone and Mobile computing, computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities ...

and

mobile devices A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

that run the

Maemo Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to c ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. The browser is

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, w ...

-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 The Nokia N800 Internet tablet is a wireless Internet appliance from Nokia, originally announced at the Las Vegas CES 2007 Summit in January 2007. N800 allows the user to browse the Internet and communicate using Wi-Fi networks or with mobile ...

N810 The Nokia N810 Internet tablet is an Internet appliance from Nokia, announced on 17 October 2007 at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Despite Nokia's strong association with cellular products, the N810, like preceding tablets produced by Nok ...

and N900 Internet Tablets, and is also available for the

770 __NOTOC__ Year 770 ( DCCLXX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 770 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

via the ' Hacker Editions' of the operating system. In place of Mozilla's

XUL XUL ( ), which stands for XML User Interface Language, is a user interface markup language developed by Mozilla. XUL is an XML dialect for writing graphical user interfaces, enabling developers to write user interface elements in a manner simil ...

-based

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

, MicroB uses the Maemo-native (

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...

-based) Hildon API and widgets.

History

MicroB was initially released as a

public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

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 Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libre ...

as Internet Tablet OS's default browser with the release of Internet Tablet OS 2008 on November 18, 2007 with the

Architecture

MicroB is

-based and uses the Gecko engine, but a number of features are omitted due to platform-specific limitations. In particular,

SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sinc ...

support is disabled due to unacceptable performance, and

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

and the Hildon UI toolkit to provide a native interface.

Add-ons

Add-on BBR Visual Design Software * Plug-in (computing), a piece of software which enhances another software application and usually cannot be run independently. ** Browser extension, which modifies the interface and/or behavior of web browsers ** Add-on ...

s usually need to be

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as ...

ed. The Maemo Browser Extras project is responsible for a large number of the available add-ons.

Some MicroB Plugins

Adblock Plus Adblock Plus (ABP) is a free and open-source browser extension for content-filtering and ad blocking. It is developed by developer Wladimir Palant's Eyeo GmbH, a German software company. The extension has been released for Mozilla Firefox (inc ...

* 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 A gear is a rotating circular machine part having cut teeth or, in the case of a cogwheel or gearwheel, inserted teeth (called ''cogs''), which mesh with another (compatible) toothed part to transmit (convert) torque and speed. The basic ...

(partial functionality) *

Greasemonkey Greasemonkey is a userscript manager made available as a Mozilla Firefox extension. It enables users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to web page content after or before the page is loaded in the browser (also known as aug ...

– 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 MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for ...

plugin *

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as ...

Stream and

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multime ...

stream supports via the built-in Media player * WML browserWmlbrowser Plugin
/ref>

Notes

References

External links

MicroB HomepageMaemo Browser Extras
{{web browsers, mobile Mozilla Web browsers Embedded Linux Mobile web browsers