@jonwill: I think it's better to contribute to modrana (it is to have vector map support in the future, which is a step from having whole-country offline OSM) than to waste our time on fragile (i.e. it can be completely dropped by Nokia (or M$) any given day) Ovi Maps.

Won't here maps work in-browser provided we have the engine new enough?

this thread as been listed as "Active project"

Feel free to give more info on :

http://wiki.maemo.org/Projects

It's linked from 1st page of http://maemo.org

Another bad example why we really need this project succeed.

So anybody please support/contribute whatever you feel you can do.

Thanks jonwil, marmistrz, misiak, Android_808 and EVERYBODY active herein.

bump !
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What's the state of the project? Trying to summarise the problems and solutions, but the post is too long...

1. Done : Find the version of mainline Gecko that matches with the Gecko version being shipped on the N900 (in the microb-engine package)
2. Done: Identify any patches on top of mainline in the N900 Gecko version (whether they be patches that ended up in mainline Gecko later or whether they were Nokia-specific or otherwise dropped)
3. Ongoing (slowly): Figure out which of the patches from #2 are actually necessary and forward port those to a more modern Gecko version
4. Identify: Make the other changes to the modern Gecko required to get it to function as a replacement for microb-engine and make it work as a browser
5. Too huge to do: Reverse engineer the pieces that talk to the browser (flash player, maps, a couple others) and see if they are tied to the browser's APIs in ways that will break with a newer Gecko
6. Using reverse engieering and whatever else, find a way to make the stuff in #5 work.

First is dealing with things that newer Gecko needs that Fremantle doesn't provide (i.e. kernel changes, GTK stuff etc) and figuring out how to work around those (or how to bring them into Fremantle)

If they are not really needed, disable them (like SVG was disabled in MicroB?). If they are really needed, update them (freemangordon was doing something with newer kernel within FPTF?).

Second is dealing with Maemo/Fremantle specific functionality and changes (e.g. the stuff that deals with network connectivity via various Maemo libraries or e.g. various dialogs and bits present in microb-engine) and identifying all the things that were removed but need to be brought back.

Part of the maemo-specific patches as in 2-3?

Third is dealing with ABI incompatibilities between old plugins and newer Gecko (with the exception of Flash and maybe Maps, we can probably clone all the plugins if we need to)

Flash: better to use the newer one? Adobe provides Flash plugin for Linux, right? Does it provide .deb package built for arm-whatever architecture that could be just dropped into Maemo 5 and work?
Maps... If Ovi Maps are not going to be provided-updated anymore, let's drop them?
If we need to use Flash: not sure if it better to bring NPAPI back in (using Seamonkey code, maybe, if they are still supporting NPAPI? or does it have to be based on old-Firefox-NPAPI-maemo-speicific-code?), or get PPAPI (like Chrome does).

And last is dealing with the external interface used by other things (browser ui, maps, messaging etc) to talk to the browser and making sure we are ABI compatible with that interface.

I do not remember exactly the location, but there is a human-readable file (script?) which defines the Ovi-Maps integration into abook (at least, part of the integration). Similar plugin can be written for Marble or Modrana.

To follow up on this, I have done some further playing around.
Downloaded http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozil...9050ad.tar.bz2 into a microb-engine-stock folder in my Maemo dev VM.
Downloaded http://repository.maemo.org/pool/mae....2.orig.tar.gz and http://repository.maemo.org/pool/mae...%2b0m5.diff.gz into a microb-engine-maemo folder
A diff of both folders shows the only differences being changes to the .hg_archival file and the added debian directory on the maemo tree.
So that confirms that other than the patches in the debian folder, the maemo microb-engine tree (prior to any CSSU changes that is) matches to that specific revision of the Mozilla tree with no missing files or other changes.

Now I have duplicated microb-engine-maemo to microb-engine-built and am doing a build in that tree. Then I will compare the result (with applied patches) to the untouched microb-engine-maemo folder and see what's different.

An interesting, related blog post:

The case for an embeddable Gecko

Sadly there's currently no conclusive solution but at least somebody from Mozilla is interested in putting this right so maybe something will come of this.

Looking at that article...
Brave looks like what would run well for our n900s ...
stripping away ads and blocking tracking resulting in load times 60% faster is pretty much what everyone (I'd imagine) would like...

how easy to implement for our devices is another matter...
I am completely and absolutely ignorant of what such wizardry would be involved..if it is even possible for our devices to run on....

Could we possibly take advantage of Chromium? Maybe it has some mobile interface we could use?

Necro time for an "active thread"
Chromium isn't a bad browser on a desktop...
mobile..dunno...
Since the last few years have passed ...one could hope for good alt's by now...