Yet another interesting project comes from Mozilla: MiniMo is a mini-Mozilla browser for PDAs and embedded systems. It requires anything between 32MB and 64MB of RAM and it currently runs on ARM CPUs using GTK+ (screenshots). Having just uploaded our latest OSAlert web site for mobile devices, we hope that the MiniMo developer team have added a special/unique word in its user agent, so we can add it in the list of browsers that render our mobile version of our site instead of the desktop version.
MiniMo 0.1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Mini is 32-64 *megs* of RAM? (Insert laughter here) The folks doing Moz must really have no grip on reality if they think that’s small. Although compared to Moz’s desktop bloat, I suppose it’s an improvement. I really think that a PDA browser is going to have to fit in a *much* smaller footprint.
Guys, if someone has this browser up and running on its PDA or emulator, please visit this page http://www.osnews.com/ua.php and send me the Minimo user agent string as seen there (case sensitive), so I can add it to our list of mobile browsers! Thanks!
32 (and 64 is even more so) is VERY big. Even for a desktop system. Currently my Opera uses 18 Mb of RAM, but Mozilla on PDA uses 32 at min? Geez.
Minimo/0.1 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040226 Minimo/0.1
Anonymous, how did you get this user agent running it on Windows?
Running under PDA emulator.
Thank you Anonymous. Where can I get this ARM emulator? Is it a free download?
BTW, please retry running Minimo with your emulator browsing at OSAlert. I have now added “Minimo” in our list of supported browsers so you should be able to get a better layout!
Also, if possible, please send me 1-2 screenshots of it running OSAlert using its “small screen rendering” feature turned on and its normal rendering version! Thank you!
Just 32-64mb ?
my work computer is strapped for memory (despite having 256 megs, much of it is used in anti-virus, intrusion detection, and other military niceties) and Firefox uses considerably less RAM then IE for my browsing habits. The same number of open webpages under IE consumes over twice as much RAM as Firefox with tabs, and thnx to all that extra free space my machine now feels faster too. Mozilla itself might be bloated, but the underlying tech I don’t think is at all.
> but the underlying tech I don’t think is at all.
Either you know it or you don’t. Assuming that the underlaying technology is NOT bloated won’t help you here. Besides it indeed IS the underlaying technology which makes Mozilla bloated.
32 – 64 free space.. for the install files maybe? dont gotta pda.. now really know how they hold data/ use ram.. but thats what i thought of when i read 32 – 64.. it prolly uses ALOT less.. it just needs that much space to install to.. once again.. i dont use pda’s.. so i dont know..
People, realize that’s it’s a 0.1 project. At FOSDEM the developers who talked about minimo in the mozilla developer’s room are aware of those footprint issues. If you look in bugzilla, most of the minimo bugs are fooprint issues.
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http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/
Not only is it a 0.1 project, but they stated that “The primary focus of Minimo to date has been system with ~32-64 MB of RAM, running Linux and using the GTK toolkit.”. That doesn’t mean it uses all thet RAM.
Then why does FireFox, for me, use less memory then IE? It can’t be that bloated. Mozilla, sure, its not just a web browser, but also an email client, irc client, etc – but just the web browsing part? What do you consider not bloated, something as lightweight as Dillo? Dillo is nice, but its not as complete as Gecko…
I wish I could actually browse on my PDA. I have a Viewsonic V36. I tried using one of those WiFi cards but the Pocket PC would lock up hard so many times while browsing assuming I could actually link up with my WiFi hub. And the battery was drained faster than reasonable. I ended up returning the card after a week.
And to answer Eugenia’s question, you can download the PDA emulator along with Microsoft’s handheld/embedded development kit which is free on their website.
> you can download the PDA emulator along with Microsoft’s handheld/embedded development kit which is free
I already have that installed, but installing the Familiar Linux PDA distro is a lot of work as I am having an issue with my Pocket PC emulator, I can’t ActiveSync with it (no matter if I am using “Virtual Switch” or a null serial cable, on any settings I tried), so I can’t install any other OS image on it (I need to be able to sync in order to install its boot manager AFAIK).
> Then why does FireFox, for me, use less memory then IE?
You can’t compare the one with the other and we are not even sure whether you measured the values correctly or not. A lot of Internet Explorer parts are embedded in the OS structure itself.
> It can’t be that bloated. Mozilla, sure, its not just a web
> browser, but also an email client, irc client, etc – but
> just the web browsing part?
FireFox is build ontop of the Mozilla code. It’s not just a derivate work, no they share exactly the identic code base. The only slight difference here is that it doesn’t build things like email client, irc client and has a different looking UI (which on the otherhand is STILL based upon XUL). You can achieve the same goal when you compile Mozilla AS IS without email client, irc client etc. And technically it should be as fast, use the same memory and behave similar to FireFox. Because that exactly IS what you know as FireFox (besides the little UI change which get compiled instead of the Mozilla UI).
> What do you consider not bloated, something as lightweight
> as Dillo? Dillo is nice, but its not as complete as Gecko…
Dillo is a Webbrowser similar to Atlantis http://www.akcaagac.com/index_atlantis.html while Gecko is just a rendering engine and the others what we call a full Webbrowser – Two total different things. The problem why people think Mozilla is bloated is because of the fact that Mozilla offers MORE than just Webbrowsing it’s an entire development architecture. If they did a bit more then you could even say it’s an OS of it’s own. Own Widgetset, own Toolkits, own framework and so on. But if you want something light (as many people already realized) then people should stick with KHTML (the rendering framework used in KDE) this IS light, it’s maintainable, you can overview the stuff and it embedds totally into the other framework around KDE. Due to its light kind it’s therefore choosen by many developers as prefered rendering solution for Systems like KDE (Konqueror), MacOSX (Safari), MorphOS (soon in Atlantis) and so on. It doesn’t have all the clutter that no one really requires (like XUL the own toolkit etc.).
> Then why does FireFox, for me, use less memory then IE?
“You can’t compare the one with the other and we are not even sure whether you measured the values correctly or not. A lot of Internet Explorer parts are embedded in the OS structure itself.”
Well sure, various parts of IE are embedded, and that would speak even worse for it if – with the very same webpages – it ends up consuming more RAM then FireFox.
> What do you consider not bloated, something as lightweight
> as Dillo? Dillo is nice, but its not as complete as Gecko…
“Dillo is a Webbrowser similar to Atlantis http://www.akcaagac.com/index_atlantis.html while Gecko is just a rendering engine and the others what we call a full Webbrowser – Two total different things.”
Oh I realize that Gecko is just an engine and not a full web browser, but I believe I’ve read that Gecko itself is not that big at all. XUL is what makes Moz and its kin largish, but not Gecko.
I’ve had little problem running FireFox/Bird on older machines with limited amounts of RAM, responsiveness and RAM use feems fine by me. But, how I judge fine may not be how you would, of course.
My favorite web browser is Camino, without question. Some features from OmniWeb are quite cool, but Camino is it as far as I’m concerned. I /love/ bundled shortcuts, I can place all favorite web links in a single “super” shortcut on my toolbar, and when I first launch it I can then click on it and boom, several tabs open and load my favorite pages. Very snazzy. The nightly builds are quite stable too.
I’m curious, does minimo also compile and work under Linux on x86? My laptop is a bit short on ram, which makes firbird(/fox) really slow. I’ve been looking for a browser that’s really small, yet renders things correctly.
Don’t you think maybe they mean it runs on 32Mb and 64Mb devices, rather than flat out requiring 32Mb min? Don’t be crazy.
Perhaps it’s a typo, and perhaps mini was meant to be macro? ;P
The 32-64MB refers to the requirements for the target device, not the RAM available for minimo. You can see a profile of memory use for minimo durning a similated browsing session at the following URL target device. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/releases/arm/0.1/
Minimo starts out at about 14MBs and grows to about 25MBs durning the browser session as we fill caches and such to optimize performance.
It would be interesting to see what other small device browsers have enough javascipt and standards support to run the page loading bendmark, and to see a comparison of their memory use profile during that test run.
If you have access to some small device browsers and your interested in helping us to collect this data send mail to [email protected] and [email protected]
thanks
they could have done with a good browser like this … a free open source one at that too
at one time or the other we will have to scrap that “internet browser” concept based on parsing syntax. From the start internet should have been a complete virtual machine (someting in the 20K-200K range depending on the GUI nature of the host OS).
The bad part is that the only way to acheive that now would be a virtual war, with the goal of groing bigger than the actual internet (www at least). Flash and stuff like that is a good start but it’s not open and even worst no a complete platform.
The 32-64MB refers to the requirements for the target device, not the RAM available for minimo. You can see a profile of memory use for minimo durning a similated browsing session at the following URL target device. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/releases/arm/0.1/
Minimo starts out at about 14MBs and grows to about 25MBs durning the browser session as we fill caches and such to optimize performance.
Looking at current devices, 32-64MB is a fairly top-of-the-line PDA (at least from when I was shopping for one for XMas 2-3 months ago). I’ll have to look at the use statistics, but 14-25MB while running seems somewhat unreasonable for a device containing that amount of RAM (unless, of course, you are looking for a device with that amount of free, unused RAM, not including memory cards). Then again, if you’re including browser cache, it seems somewhat more reasonable, as clearing the browser cache on a PDA is a somewhat routine thing (if you don’t set it up to do it automatically) to clean up a significant amount of space.
It would be interesting to see what other small device browsers have enough javascipt and standards support to run the page loading bendmark, and to see a comparison of their memory use profile during that test run.
If you have access to some small device browsers and your interested in helping us to collect this data send mail to [email protected] and [email protected]
I’ll have to see if I can get a chance to take a look at the benchmark when I get home. That being said, taking the PDA away from my girlfriend is like taking a pacifier from a baby; it’s not recommended even for short periods of time once they’ve grown an attachment to it. The fact that Minimo has been tested on the HP 5555 gives it a better chance of working, though the 5555 has about 2x as much RAM.
I think it is quite amazing to see all this mozilla bashing !!
This is a ZERO.DOT.one preview release, a work in progress, a pre-pre-pre alpha version of what will be, in the future, a finished ONE.DOT.zero product…
Keep in mind we’re talking about Linux PDAs, where memory is generally hogged. Just Qtopia+Linux on my Zaurus C760 took up 18 MB on boot…