what is microb
 

Can anyone clarify what exactly microb is?

It's clearly firefox derived, and has been optimized for maemo. Indeed it works very very well

I was surprised to see a rather large performance difference between fennec and microb. Since their both using the same rendering engine (aren't they?) this implies it's probably just a matter of time before fennec catches up

Or is there something else at work here -- is microb using any proprietary components perhaps with additional video acceleration?

Only reason I'm wondering is that microb will probably remain fairly similar, whilst fennec will evolve rapidly, and in the world of the web that could become important -- for example youtube's recent foray into html5+h.264 -- things that microb doesn't (yet?) support (I think)

Re: what is microb
 

Found some useful comparison comments here -> http://blog.mfabrik.com/2010/01/02/m...irefox-fennec/

Re: what is microb
 

interesting question, got me wondering the same thing. But does microb support addons like ff? I only use microb, havnt seen any addon options/functionality. ff seems pretty slow. "microb" is such a cool name btw :) ... hmm i should have that nick ...

Re: what is microb
 

User named Timeless seems to be heavily linked to Microb development. At least if you look guys bug reports. It also amazes me how much he is involved in other projects too.

And looks like he has commented something to that blog also.

.edit
And the thing that should be used more extensively everywhere on N900 is so called threading. To provide smooth user interface experience as same time to load content on background. Microb probably uses this and also look QT demos about this stuff. Its not something new or miraculous its basic stuff.

Re: what is microb
 

Since microB uses the Mozilla rendering engine it probably won't support Youtube HTML5 video soon, since the Mozilla rendering engine only support OGG as format while youtube uses h264 as you mentioned. The Fennec interface is not really greatly optimized I think so that's probably why its slow.

Re: what is microb
 

the rendering engine have basically zero to do with the kind of video formats supported, as the rendering engine will just hand the data of the video file that the url in the tag points to, to any available decoder.

that mozilla chooses to not bundle said codec with firefox or similar, have to do with the licensing needed.

Re: what is microb
 

Yes, timeless* is a Mozilla developer and driving force behind the MicroB engine in the Maemo browser.

Indeed.

* Always with a small "t", it seems. Like "maemo.org" is always with a small "m". Shruggles.

Re: what is microb
 

timeless is a human dynamo.

Re: what is microb
 

whats wrong with default browser? why not just use that?

Re: what is microb
 

MicroB is the default browser