Notices

OK, I'm sorry--I don't understand. Is this just for hacking on, or is this intended (ultimately, when bugs are worked out) to be a MicroB replacement? I know the blog post says, "this is not Mobile Firefox," but later paragraphs in the post lead me to believe that's where this project is headed...

Minefield Firefox:
Firefox minefield = Firefox 3.0

Mobile Firefox:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/schre...nd_mobile.html

In other words, this is a full firefox, not a 'mobile' version, ala MicroB.

Downloading now-can't wait to try it out. Anyone know how the stylus keyboard problem could be potentially solved?

As a workaround, tap anywhere on the D-Pad in a text field.

I'm sure a proper patch will come along soon enough.

You raise an interesting point. MicroB had tabbed browsing in OS2007 --- I wonder what happened to it in OS2008?

Looking Forward

oh how i wish for kinetic scrolling, tabs or easier window switching while in fullscreen, far far better handling of long lists of bookmarks and many more. all as standard.

for an internet tablet, browsing is abit of a chore and it can all be fixed in a simple update.

i'll give minefield a try.

[QUMicroB /OS 2007 had tabbed browsing?.... are you referring to "open in new window"? I found that feature did not work much of the time in MicroB/OS2007. And that's why I'm still using Opera!

I'm most interested in extensions, specifically Google's browser sync (or Weave, I suppose)

Out of curiousity, how many of you would be willing to give up application performance for application functionality? As it were, there are already a number of forum posts here complaining about how slow microB is (personally, I have no issues with it), and some people complain about it being unstable (never had that problem myself)

Assuming that Minefield runs the same Gecko engine (v1.9) as Minefield, and assuming that interesting features such as kinetic scrolling, extensions tabbed browsing etc were introduced, I'm quite sure there would be some compromise to the performance of the browser.

The way I see it, when the system is trying to render a web page, it does not matter if it is doing it over 4 open windows or 4 tabs, the amount of computing power needed to execute the rendering should not be all that different.

At some point in time, we are going to have lots of features and UI improvements and live with performance issues (I'm hoping to stand corrected on this one)

As it were the case today, while microB is not perfect, it gets the job done. The N800 by far, in today's world of fat, bloated devices (the Nokia N95 would be such an example) is a breathe of fresh air. It does almost everything I need it to do, with a good balance between UI and performance, enough to satisfy my internet and media needs, while impressing the heck out of users of iPhones, iPod Touch, and other 'consumer' devices.

While I for one, am not adverse to better UIs and functionality, I would be very careful to tread the thin line between bloatware and an effective+efficient application. Perhaps one way to do so would be to focus on developing Minefield in a very modular fashion that allows users to install the functionality and UI enhancements that they need, thereby allowing users to manage the balance between performance and bling