Updated MicroB
 

Hi,

I've installed Opera Mobile and Firefox in my N900 and, though their page rendering and Javascript engines are very very good; I do not find them as useful and comfortable as the built-in MicroB browser.

So my question is, do you know if MicroB is still being worked, has been opensourced or if there is some project that tries to mimic its user experience while rendering using some more modern engine (e.g. WebKit or latest Gecko releases)??

Thanks in advance!

Re: Updated MicroB
 

For MicroB, the engine is open, the UI is closed.

I don't really know why WebKit is in any way better than Mozilla's engine, but that's just my uninformed off the top of my head thought.

No one's working on a recode of the MicroB UI as far as I know - which would be the easiest way I would think towards upgrading the engine - since the UI being closed source probably means you can't just plop in a completely different engine like WebKit (an upgraded Mozilla Firefox engine might be doable, though honestly, I don't know how it needs to be compiled, so someone more knowledgeable can probably state more accurately what could actually be done. MohammadAG briefly worked on a QT web browser that looked very similar to MicroB iirc, but last I asked him he stopped doing anything with it a while ago.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

That's a shame because MicroB, in my opinion, just lacks text reflow to fit on the screen.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

MicroB actually sorely misses mouse support. Was it not for that, it would be the perfect maemo browser.

freemangordon had a browser project, but lacked the resources to continue it himself, and it seems he also lacked volunteers to help him with project.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Maybe I should start development again, but still not sure what will be the result handling such HUGE project alone. BTW isn't there any QT/QML desktop browser, maybe it will be easier one to port it to maemo?

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Wrong.

Even on 770 it was possible to install alternative Webkit engine instead of MicroB.

There is a wiki page that describes browser architecture. Don't have time know to find it.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Correct, but you should rewrite the whole eal layer. And UI will still have the same functionality.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

UML diagrams

http://www.webwizardry.net/~timeless/10/

Re: Updated MicroB
 

I think a full browser would be a very huge task to accomplish, specially with the lack of developers for the N900. If it was a shared project across Meego and Maemo, a QML based web browser could be nice. Other option could be backport Meego's web browser.

I would suggest to try some hack in MicroB to update the engine maintaining the UI or replace the closed source UI with an OSS reimplementation

Porting a Qt web browser like:

QtWeb
Arora (Seems to be unmaintained)
Reckonq (KDE dependencies could be a problem)

Is also a viable (though painful) path.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

But this is not for fremantle and tablet-browser-ui from diablo (which the above is applicable for) does not run well (at least the ancient source on garage) on n900.

I've been playing a lot with microb while developing extmou, starting a new browser project was not an easy decision (having in mind that i find microb very good)

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Once i've tried QtWeb, it compiles and runs OK on n900, but by this time there was too much of windows legacy there. Maybe I should give it a try once again.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Gecko would be pointless i think.. We have firefox for that and MicroB are on a custom lighter gecko engine if i remember it right. To get the same performance would be a lot of work and probably impossible. MicroB will not be obsolete soon either. It got pretty good support for html5..

It would be super cool if freemangordon hacked together another browser.. but to be worth it would need some extra feature set we are missing right now.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Maybe https://github.com/OrangeLabsUK/Helium-Mobile-Browser is worth a look. The QML-based browser bundled with Meego CE.
Compiles easily for Maemo/N900 and runs ok-ish. It sure needs some love, but seems nicely hackable.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

do you have .deb?

Re: Updated MicroB
 

For open sourcing MicroB, I send request here:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12291

Similar bug:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1832

See also Quim Gil comment:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3836#c9

Maybe Quim Gil know someting new.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Attached. Hope it works - my first deb, and I'm in a bit of a hurry. Tell me if not.
It does not install into menu yet - start with /usr/local/bin/helium-mobile-browser

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Thanks, but you are slow :P .
Seriously, which QT and QTM it is compiled against? As latest version from github uses qtm11.

I compiled it against qtm11 and QT 4.7.4 (CSSU unreleased :) ), works almost perfectly. Needs some tweaking to fit hildon of course.

EDIT: flash works too, just slowly, suspect it is because wmode, no fulscreen, should be easily fixable. From time to time UI becomes unresponsive , got one segfault :D. When return home will do a little more tests.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Maybe this will help?

A guide about MicroB Sandboxing
http://browser.garage.maemo.org/docs/build_howto.html

White paper of MicroB showing internal architecture:
http://browser.garage.maemo.org/docs/browser_paper.html

Opera & MicroB score pretty well in acid3 tests:
Opera-
http://i.imgur.com/EUu5s.png
MicroB-
http://i.imgur.com/snt0H.png

I think Firefox Fennec is more prepared for HTML5 but I don't even use it, it's almost unusable, a beast of memory consumption, you cannot browse practically with that browser on N900.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Well, does anybody know for any better documentation than that one?
Do you think architecture was significantly changed between N810 and N900?

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Trying html5test.com
Best so far - Helium :
http://i.imgur.com/7NL7D.png
Opera-
http://i.imgur.com/y14iP.png
MicroB-http://i.imgur.com/wSFM2.png

As you can see, MicroB has it's problems when it comes to HTML5 rendering. It has the worst score of all N900 browsers (well, Midori scores 176, but who uses Midori?)

Fennec scores this:
http://i.imgur.com/7KOk0.png

Again, Fennec is almost unusable but we should aim at that level of compatibility with these standards.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Actually, Fennec isn't really all that sluggish, at least when you look at the older nightlys... http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...key-maemo5-qt/ Has a good example of a browser that's actually on par if not faster than microB.

Could you guys take a look at it? It not too sure what the mozilla team did wrong, but they did mess up somewhere along the line... If you compare this one with the newer builds, it's smoking fast... Not sure where to get the source, though.

I did once try to get volunteers to test other fennec builds... Not much help, there. There's this guy over at the mozilla team, mbrubeck, who seemed happy, willing and motivated to collaborate with others to solve fennec's issues, should anyone want to help in that.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

And what about backporting the web browser from Harmattan? Is it completely open source? Seems very nice.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Bumping this topic, this subject is still worth going over.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Is the Build you posted in this link stable to use? In other words, will it mess my phone up? I really wanna try it out.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

it's fairly stable, but for me doesn't start correctly from menu, but runs completely fine from xterm.(just type fennec)

when started ui shows up after ~5 seconds, becomes responsive after 8-10 seconds.
kinetic scrolling works fine, doesn't lag for normal use, but if you scroll too much, page will take ~100-300 ms to redraw.

much more usable than recent builds, but still microB is faster !

Re: Updated MicroB
 

well I've always thought that the qt builds were much smoother than the gtk builds but looks like they have stopped development for qt

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Not true, they're still developing qt builds, just changed the download directory, you can get them from here:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/tin...ral-maemo5-qt/

latest qt nightly, 9.0-a1 is a lot faster than older versions, page load/scrolling performance is almost on par with microb/opera now

Re: Updated MicroB
 

It's password protected
Could anyone upload last .deb please?

EDIT: Testing it right now

Re: Updated MicroB
 

try using http:// instead of ftp://, opera sometimes has problems with ftp links

Re: Updated MicroB
 

thanks man. i didnt know about this. was using wrong directory

Re: Updated MicroB
 

9.0-a1 is still not as fast as MicroB and unfortunately has got a high cpu usage.

It has improved a lot, but I wouldn't want to use it every day.

Opera only needs ~2 seconds to start up and is responsive right after the window appears. If Fennec would be that fast, it would be the perfect mobile web browser...

Re: Updated MicroB
 

I agree UI can be improved further but javascript and html5 performance is amazing, getting 313 (9 bonus points) on html5test and sunspider 0.9.1 test score of 3644 ms - which is even better than galaxy s2. Plus ability to save web pages as pdf (for offline viewing) is an added bonus.

run the sunspider test for yourself and compare the performance against other leading phones/OS

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4177/s...00-benchmarked

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Argh, I'm having a noob moment.

Which one do I download here for the N900?

Is it the .deb or the tarball?

http://i.imgur.com/6Rsi0.png

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Take a guess which one are the installer and which one is the source. :rolleyes:

Re: Updated MicroB
 

For 10 points I'm going to answer:

.DEB

*round of applause*

Haha, cheers my Swedish friend. You jogged my memory, I knew it was in there somwhere lol.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

The #1 thing I can't stand about the fennec UI is the fact that it blocks out the standard Hildon status bar/menu. I already like having all the status info that it gives, plus I run my own monitor clock plugin for Advanced Clock Plugin, which gives me a bunch of other status info. It bugs me when Maemo 5 programs don't give you the option to use the built in status-bar.

If it wasn't for that, and the lack of the swirl-to-zoom gesture, I'd be willing to convert, methinks.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

and cursor mode. Btw fennec 9 has a problem with textareas. Slow, and unscrollable.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

What I wonder is if it could be possible to replace at least some of the parts of osso-browser-ui to, for example, get a decent portrait support (back button), or tab navigation.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Not without source code.

Re: Updated MicroB
 

Any news on updating MicroB? I see ongoing discussions on IRC about this topic...