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Minimo (from "Mini Mozilla") was a project to create a version of the
Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...
web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
for small devices like
personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...
s and
mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...
s. 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 Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...
).


Background

The Minimo Project was created to test the feasibility of porting a full-function desktop browser engine to advanced mobile devices. To minimize the use of system resources Minimo initially did not include some of Mozilla's functionality, such as support for SVG, although continuing experiments sought to include all the features of the Mozilla codebase. In addition, the browser used small screen rendering technology to reformat Web pages for pocket-sized displays and allowed a platform for UI experiments on mobile devices. The
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 ...
was 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 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 ...
infrastructure, developers can decide to build specific versions and evaluate other features such as the canvas, SVG support, and more. Chris Hofmann created the Minimo project shortly after leaving Netscape Communications in 2003, under funding from Nokia's Maemo team. He single-handedly saved the project from being canceled many times. Currently Chris works for the
Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, s ...
. Chris was also responsible for some of the Minimo key features such as the Homebase bar, a format for displaying bookmarks more amenable to mobile devices. Early Minimo development centered on ARM devices (such as
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
's
iPAQ The iPAQ is a discontinued line of Pocket PC devices produced from 2000 until 2010. It was first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000. iPAQ included Personal digital assistant, PDA-devices, smartphones and GPS navigation device, GPS-navigators. ...
) with around 64 MB of RAM, running Familiar Linux and the GPE Palmtop Environment (where it was the default browser). Minimo 0.1 was released for this platform in 2004. The lead Minimo developer, Doug Turner, headed this and additional Mozilla mobile projects such as the Mozilla labs project named Joey. The
Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...
hired Turner in December 2004 to work full-time on Mobile projects. Minimo was funded 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 ...
and others. Nokia's involvement became public in mid-2004. Chris and Doug teamed up with web developer Marcio Galli as he focused in user interface aspects and mostly creating built in applications for Minimo using HTML instead of XUL — these were refereed in the source code as extensions but served as concept for web-based mobile apps featuring Flickr, Google Maps, and more. A
Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...
version of Minimo was created for
Pocket PC A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile operating system, which is based on Windows Embedded Compact, Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact, and that has some of the abilities of modern ...
2003
software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...
. The first public build of Minimo for Windows CE was made available in February 2005. In June 2006, the 0.16 release of minimo included tabs, a "homebase bar" for fast navigation to frequently used web sites, and featured support for many advanced web development capabilities that made the mobile browser easier to use. On December 17, 2006, Turner, in his
blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...
, acknowledged the slow pace of development, and revealed that Mozilla developers were 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.MozillaZine
/ref> Version 0.2 came out in March 2007 and represented a product targeted for mobile developers. Minimo 0.2 included and 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 Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...
Mobile or Fennec.


Criticism

Probably because it was in the early stages of development, the
Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
version of Minimo performed significantly slower than expected. The quality of rendered pages is congruent with the well-respected layout engine it implemented (
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 ...
), but the program had very high memory and hardware requirements compared to what was typically available on most handheld platforms (e.g. 64 
megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes ...
s of
RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...
, 206–624 MHz ARM-compatible CPU). Version 0.2 was recommended for developers targeting mobile devices or interested in
AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...
- and Web Services-driven Web application for the mobile space. Minimo was compatible with many Web 2.0 applications, such as
Gmail Gmail is the email service provided by Google. it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also ...
.


See also

* Firefox for Android * Mobile browser *
List of web browsers The following is a list of web browsers that are notable. Historical Layout engines * Gecko (software), Gecko is developed by the Mozilla Foundation. ** Goanna (software), Goanna is a fork of Gecko developed by Moonchild Productions ...
*
Comparison of web browsers This is a comparison of both historical and current Web browser, web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost. General information Basic general information about the browsers. Browsers listed on a light purpl ...


References


External links


Minimo Project homepage
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060216103901/http://www.nmcx.com/story.php?news_id=3761 Interview with Doug Turner and Chris Hofmann of the Minimo Projectbr>Photos of Minimo running on Windows Mobile devices


* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100109113437/http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/chofmann/archives/2006/06/ajax_mobile_map.html AJAX Mobile Apps {{Web browsers, mobile Gopher clients Mozilla Windows web browsers POSIX web browsers Free web browsers Embedded Linux Pocket PC software Discontinued mobile web browsers