I am glad I asked, this thread has summed up much new info for me. I knew about the java/opera mini problems, that fennec eventually will come, but there's a bunch of new names here for me... I will read up on each of them.

Yes, the main reason I have issues with MicroB is that I demand more of it than I should expect on a limited memory base. But there is such a thing as graceful handling of resource management, too often I've had to 'debatterize' a hanging nokia, and only when I use the browser. Thus I'd like to check out the alternatives.

However, anything that requires compiling or buiding smells too much like my work hours, so I'm more likely to start playing around with a HTC Touch HD while I waitg, than running debian from the memory card or redpilling. Not that I don't think it's cool that it's possible, I just think my spare hours are too precious and the hardware too limited to spend time getting into a less-documented setup.

On Maemo it's easy to install from the base program libraries... I prefer to stay within those boundaries. FBreader, Pidgin, KeePassX, AbiWord, VNC viewer and Midnight Commander were all quick and painless additions. I wish Opera would extend their mobile products to the current platform, I would pay to download, but not spend all sunday to configure.

I see that there are indeed a few alternatives and I'll see what I can do with those. Thanks.

hang on, am I reading this right? is minefield and fennec two sides of the same, based on the same executables, just different configurations/themes? then why would minefield be stable when everything i've read says fennec is near unusable?

You're not reading it right.

They both use essentially the same engine, yes, but their interfaces are very different. Minefield is a desktop browser compiled for Maemo, while Fennec is Mozilla's new mobile browser.

well, sometimes it's good to be wrong. ...most of the time, actually.

i had best find a current thread about minefield.

I tried to install Fennec a few weeks ago but aborted. The new Alpha 1 direct installation link sported in the recent article on this site worked just fine yesterday.

Liked Fennecs tab idea but the pages were sorta difficult to navigate. On one page I just couldn't get the page to stand still. :B So, looking forward to any 0.3 and 0.5 version here.

Didn't look up much info on Minefield yet... My main PC is giving me crap atm. so I'll be refocusing on that for a while.

You look forward to a 0.3 or 0.5 version of Fennec? But the current version 1.0 alpha 1. Please also be aware the Maemo community has been able to test milestones and builds before the 1.0 alpha 1 version. These versions were even more unstable (crashing etc) than the current version, 1.0 alpha 1. So be sure the comments you read are about the current version! Note the performance issues are a blocker for 1.0 release.

The minefield .deb is an older one, but it does have the newer Gecko and JS implementation. Right now its available here.

Oh.

Then I should be looking forward to 3.0 or 5.0 instead. :B

Yeah, t'was Tear that was in 0.1. And 'was', not is.
The wait from alpha 1 to beta 1 probably isn't too long...

Fennec is more like the big-fat-pig for mobile. Seriously, look at the size of that .... Yeesh .... On my 4GB RAM + 1TB desktop, I don't really care (I even run KDE!) - but on a RAM-challenged NIT?

When will we see Minefield in the application manager? I'm with Volt ("anything that requires compiling or buiding smells too much like my work hours"), and I'm avoiding the red-pill-flash-boot-deblet-hokey-pokey (I got done being impressed with me compiling my own kernels in 1988, 1992, and again in 1998). I'm glad people can do it -- but I'm "stick a fork in me and call me done" with spending my precious sleep hours recovering botched upgrades.

Maybe you should look into some posts here or some information on Mozilla.com about the roadmap of Fennec. They first wanted it to be stable and feature complete. Now they're porting it to different platforms (this is good for catching bugs as well).

After the alpha 1 the blockers are the performance. The bloody thing probably has debugging enabled for pete's sake! Seriously, read their roadmap. The developers are well aware of the performance issues. And, you won't see Minefield in the Application Manager because its not meant for Maemo.

I think a big part of the problem with the stock MicroB are the plugins; The Flash9 plugin in particular has been causing me loads of problems recently (It just spins up to 100/100 CPU/RAM use then crashes).

I had the same problem on my Eee until I put Opera and hacked a beta of Flash10 to work on it (Final version of Flash10 doesn't work on the Eee900 because it's linked to a newer glibc).

I find disabling plugins and javascript improves speed and stability by miles, but MicroB's small-screen rendering is bloody awful compared to Opera's and without the CSS tweaks (Apparently disabling javascript disables CSS and user CSS tweaks as well...?) it's almost painful to use on many sites...

Oh how I miss the heady days of HTML3!!