[Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Helium Mobile Browser is a lightweight QML/Qt mobile browser by Orange Labs UK.

Objective
Build a WebKit based browser using Qt and all the cutting edge related technologies (like QML). The work takes into focus 3 areas:

• Browser Chrome, focused on User Experience and Usability
• Browser Core, focused on the WebCore functionalities that are already in WebKit and, possibly, building in advance some of them
• Browser Extensions, focused on designing a Framework to implement mini-in-browser apps, to deliver small, focused services

Key features

• Support flash and java plugin
• HTML5 support (Websockets...)
• Acid3 100% (thanks to QtWebkit)

FAQ

• How to zoom? Use arrow keys (left and right)

Benchmarks

• Sunspider JS Benchmark

  1. helium browser - Total: 10448.4ms +/- 0.9%
  2. microb
  3. opera

• Browsermark

  1. helium browser - Score: 19899
  2. opera - Score: 16029
  3. microb - Score: 10059

Browser comparison

• sr00t's html5test.com comparison

Where is it?
Currently in extras-devel repository

Changelog

2.0

• Release based on Helium Reborn for Nemo

1.0

• Initial release

Screenshot
Attachment 28806

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I know there is also harmattan port of this. Is it worked on or abandoned ?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Sorry, I don't know about harmattan port. This is only for Maemo5.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqemYmFx6ec
this one

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Ooh, going to try it out right away.

How fast is it compared to MicroB?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I'll do some speed comparison later, but for me more important is better HTML5 support (websockets). Anyway it feels fast.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

how come i cant see it in extras-devel?

edit: found it!

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

It's there. Direct link confirms that:
You should see it in HAM or FAM after update.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Unfortunately the project is abandoned for nearly an year, and helium browser is hardly usable in its current state :( . Not that it does not have potential, but still.

https://github.com/OrangeLabsUK/Helium-Mobile-Browser

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I've used sources from their github. I think that helium has potential. What exactly are you missing? Probably we can do something about it. It currently has good support of HTML5, which I will require later for my webapp project. I've also tried your port of QtMWeb browser, but considered it less stable than Helium. So Helium is currently better option.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

yeah...it feels real fast.....its a welcome development...

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

wow. there is much to be done like more settings and some parts arent working like context menu. but it is fast.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

ouuu, it's realy fast!and websockets+SSE...so cool!
what about User Experience and Usability?
auto zoom (doubleclick on element) sometimes zoomout so many (page is too little)-help double click again.
sometimes i can't open links (for example from google search)
need fullscreen
need adBlock
need java console
and maybe need extensions...or only userscripts and usercss

and what about start's arguments for example -url -fullscreen -hideui
it will be usefull for webapps ;)

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Glad to see it supports Flash!

[Edit] Is there any way to change the default search engine from google.fr to google.com or google.ca?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Why is this an [Announce] thread if the program is old and abandoned?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Great work ! thanks but it needs full screen i tried flashearth.com and it worked !

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Thanks,
it's a v good start. But it chokes on my favorite (rather heavy, I admit) online newspaper : www.hln.be
I need to kill the application to continue regain my CPU (it consume constantly +60%).

Any idea ? Or is it still way too early to expect a site like that to be usable, compared to less heavy sites ?

I can only second Byakabs on his wishlist. Maybe I can also add request to import microb and/or Opera userids/passwords ? It would ease for me the transfer because I have already so much stuff saved.

Thanks again.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

You can't clear the history, there is no password manager, there is no download manager, it is not integrated with maemo5, the program segfaults on exit, etc.

Even my QtMWeb which is not even an alpha quality is more useful than helium in some aspects. And QtMWeb is as abandoned as helium is. Making a browser is not a task for one man ;)

I admit I didn't use you build, but mine for a while, a few months ago. Gave up when PhomeME Opera Mobile appeared.

BTW you may want to join me and zeq (and romaxa) in our efforts to bring latest fennec to maemo5. It scores 329 on html5test.com, while hellium scores 248. fennec does sunspider for around 5000ms, while hellium - for 13468ms (I did the tests while writing this post on my device, OC to 805, thumb-compiled Qt, fennec 16a1)

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I know that, there is deb package somewhere on the forum. But as far I know, this app is not in any of repos (and never was).

I can remove word Announce, if that's the only thing that bothers you. ;-)

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

It definitely has the potential and it needs a surgery to get right.I mean a little bit tweaking might save the earth.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Personally I hate with a burning fury any and all browsers that don't allow you to see the Maemo 5 status bar - all of the info in the status area I have is info that I would like to have access to at any time, without having to exit my current window (and, thanks to the dumb UI decision to make the status area invisible when on the task switcher and menu screens, it can take even more time than the time to exit and re-enter window).

That said, the way things are looking Fennec is probably the way to go - this isn't bad right now, but Fennec is most likely going to be progressing thanks to Mozilla for a while, it would just take extra community members to make the phone.

But I hate how Fennec's only options for cookies are allow/deny, unless you go digging in about:config, and how the web page name and webpage url are in the same bar, so the web page name takes over the url when page has loaded, and even how the loading indicator is the spinning icon, rather than MicroB's little bar that at least vaguelly indicates loading progress by moving across the url bar.

So I would rather see a browser with a UI at least basically like MicroB, but with better control over basic privacy/security stuff, just using an up-to-date engine - and I personally couldn't care less where it comes from - though I think I had some reason to have something against webkit, I just can't remember why off the top of my head, so I think I prefer Mozilla's engine (unless that's webkit based in which case I mean specifically the desktop one [unless that's webkit based too in which case my world will crumble as soon as I find out]). On the subject of things I hate, I hate that I can't say "accept 1st party session cookies, prompt for all else", and that microB will prompt you over and over and over again for a cookie you just rejected unless you say 'reject all from server' or whatever - but maybe I want to just reject all non-session cookies from server, or I want to reject all instances of /that/ cookie, but not reject or still be prompted for other cookies from the same server.

Oh, right, this is about Helium - I couldn't even figure out how to get to the settings during my brief test on it, and it froze when trying to load the desktop version of GMail. So unless someone fixes that, I won't be using it much myself. But I admire whoever got this into the repos because more browser options is a good thing, and the best and most maintainable browser will ultimately win out, or at least so I would hope.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Hi,

I have few questions regarding implementation of Bookmarks and History in this browser. Please let me know whom can i contact for those?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

wow a great work we have but i think if some effort are needed here to put it into stable form because i have seen it hangs up when browsing some sites, plus full screen is very important i would like to see it may be in comming updates if any,

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Helium is also the default browser of Nemo Mobile, haven't they been improving on it already?
The description in Extras actually says it's for Meego - is that a mistake, or is it being adapted for Meego to?

Well I don't have that much of a white-hot hatred for that, but I do find it annoying and it's a problem with all the apps created for Meego's Swipe UI, or for both Maemo and Meego, like e.g. Fmobi. They should all be adapted to have our button to show status area.
If nobody actually is working on Helium anymore, I agree that this thread shuouldn't have the Announce title, that's usually used for new stuff - it does raise attention though, whcih would be a prerequisite for getting Helium back up...?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Helium was originally developed by Orange Mobile Labs for N900 as research project, so the original developers have not been really maintaining it anymore.

Initially in Nemo Mobile we did few patches to first get it running well and we got those also to upstream last summer. Later we did a fork to change the architecture to use Qt Components and now Nemo's fork of the Helium is called Helium Reborn. Helium Reborn can be also run on N9.

I haven't tried, but if the Qt components are now available for Fremantle, then running also Helium Reborn on N900 might be possible.

BR,
Vesku

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

in that case can you please share links for HELIUM REBORN to download and test......on n900

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I did not mean that it exists now for N900. I meant that it if somebody is interested in trying to port it to N900/Fremantle it would probably only require a little bit of work. Probably just recompile and packaging would be enough.

Sources are at:
github.com/nemomobile/heliumreborn

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

IMO this is the way forward for N900 browsing.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Is it complicated to package it?
I've tried compiling from source - not successfully, but I think I might have gotten the hang of it, if all the dependencies are fulfilled.
About the packaging, I'm completley clueless though.
Anyway I'm sure it would be worth it: the current version of Helium seems at least as fast as Opera, if not faster!

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Has anyone gotten round to recompiling/packaging Helium Reborn for Maemo5 yet?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Hey guys, I've just compiled Helium Reborn for N900.

EDIT:

Now it's in extras-devel as version 2.0.

Currently there is no full screen mode, and toolbar is little cropped.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

hmm, seems there is some activity going on, lets see how it will develop.

EDIT:

I wonder how did you compile that. As maemo5 support is dropped.

src/Settings.cpp:13:46: fatal error: maemo5/Maemo5ProxySettingsReader.h: No such file or directory

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I took it from previous Helium Mobile. ;-)

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Excuse Me, mauron85 ocurrer an error in the repositories, Please can you reupload the package again.

Regards

Edit: The packages was reupload, thanks mauron85.:D

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

please try update your repositories. should work.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Took what from Helium Mobile?

Anyway, big thank you for doing this!
Ben

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

so is it "Helium Reborn" or "Helium Mobile" now?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

Excelent, working very good, thanks for compiling this application. waiting for new updates and improves.

Regards.

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

I installed Helium browser 2.0. When I lunch this just can see a black screen. What could be that?

Re: [Announce] - Helium Mobile Browser for N900
 

codebase is from Helium Reborn, but I didn't change the name of app.

Only som headers are taken from previous version, as Helium Reborn drop support from Maemo5.