I wrote to MicroB developer and he updated source code of some PR1.3 MicroB packages on garage project, see: https://garage.maemo.org/plugins/scm.../?root=browser

does this mean we could look at incorporating performance patches into firefox/fennec or, even better, port a later xul/gecko to microb.

This is what MicroB developer wrote me:
So instead lamenting somebody can try it.

PS: Info: MicroB UI is closed

Checking over that code and going by the "last updated" dates, the only source code we now have that we didn't have before is the proper actual PR1.3 source code for tablet-browser-daemon (and not my reverse engineered clone) and the actual PR1.3 source code for browser-neteal (including the correct not-reverse-engineered browser-neteal-dev package)

This is still VERY good though for anyone wanting to replace the browser daemon and all the libraries it pulls in or to change/extend the dbus interface between the browser daemon and the UI layer. And its VERY good for anyone wanting to use the browser in their app by talking to the browser daemon instead of loading the browser directly.

The interesting stuff in the UI layer (tablet-browser-ui, tablet-browser-view, tablet-browser-widgets, tablet-browser-controls, tablet-browser-dialogs and others) is still closed source

In terms of actually replacing the engine with a newer Gecko version, the biggest issue you will face will be any API changes between PR1.3 Gecko and whatever Gecko you move to that cause any of the closed source extensions, plugins or components (e.g. nokia maps, microb-geolocation, media player plugin, flash plugin) to fail to work.

If you are interesting in MicroB, then write to MicroB developer for opening UI code...

(I wrote about tablet-browser-daemon and they updated it from PR1.0 to PR1.3)

Ok, so who here can write to the browser guys and ask for opening up the UI and whatever else browser-released we can get? The worst they can do is say no.

I would ask but I think we need someone with better people skills than me and who can ask in the nicest way possible.

search for Maintainer filed in debian/control file of each browser armel deb package (or sources on svn)

Browser UI components list maintainers as Oleg Romashin <oleg.romashin@nokia.com> and Sudarsana Nagineni <sudarsana.nagineni@nokia.com>

Someone wanna contact them and see if we can get the browser UI code?
Might be harder though since we are asking "hey, we want the code for xyz" instead of "hey, here is code for xyz, can we have the most recent version?" (remembering here that the browser UI code in the garage repo predates the switch to the client-server architecture and the big rewrite that took place at some point (when packages like tablet-browser-view came into existence)

In any case getting the latest PR1.3 source for tablet-browser-daemon and browser-neteal is very useful for people doing browser work

@jonwil, I already contacted them (days ago). And it is not good idea to post email address here (where google bot indexing)...

You already done some work with browser code, so write that you want to continue...

I think what the community wants is the complete browser UI source code, i.e. tablet-browser-ui, tablet-browser-controls, tablet-browser-dialogs, tablet-browser-view & tablet-browser-widgets at a minimum (there may be more that is part of the browser UI though, its hard to follow all the cross-dependencies on various libraries plus there are related items like browser plugins/extensions/components and of course the closed-source bookmark system)