MicroB was a mobile web browser developed by

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

for use in smartphones and mobile devices that run the Maemo

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

. 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. They range from . Geckos are unique among lizards ...

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 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 fro ...

, MicroB uses the Maemo-native (

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software 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 software, free and ...

-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, and help shape the development of the browser. It was updated several times before it replaced

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

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

and the Hildon UI toolkit to provide a native interface.

Add-ons

Add-ons 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 Hamburg, Manch ...

ed. 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 * 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 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 Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...

plugin *

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

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 multimed ...

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

Notes

References

External links

MicroB Homepage

Maemo Browser Extras
{{web browsers, mobile Mozilla Discontinued mobile web browsers Embedded Linux