Puneet Varma (Editor)

Vision Mobile Browser

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Developer(s)
  
Novarra Inc.

Operating system
  
cross-platform

License
  
Proprietary

Initial release
  
October 2002

Type
  
Microbrowser

Vision Mobile Browser

Stable release
  
8.00 / 2009; 8 years ago (2009)

Vision (formerly nWeb) is an internet browser platform for mobile devices developed by Novarra Inc. The product consists of a server that acts as a proxy and a small footprint browser that runs on Java Platform, Micro Edition, BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless), or native handset environments via C++.

Contents

Novarra created and holds patents for this distributed browsing architecture that combines an in-network server with a handset browser client. The architecture performs a portion of web page content processing on an in-network server thus reducing the workload on the handset. It also reduces data transferred over-the-air for faster page load times and provides access to more content than is possible by a handset browser alone.

Novarra offers the mobile browser to mobile network operators and handset manufacturers who typically rebrand the software as their own service. It was first made commercially available in 2002 through Palm, Inc for Tungsten (handheld) PDAs branded as “WebPro”. Some later releases of the mobile browser include U.S. Cellular as easyedgeSM mobile browser, Alltel as “My Mobile Web” Celltop application, Hutchison 3G as “www3” in Italy and “3Xplorer” in Hong Kong. Version 8.0 was released March, 2009.

Functionality

Mobile phone users can access and use the same web sites on their wireless handsets that they visit using personal computers. Full web pages load in seconds due to compression and in-network processing of content by the server.

Content Type Support: “Street” HTML, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, XHTML MP, cHTML, HDML, WML 1.1, Cascading Style Sheets v1, CSS v2, W-CSS, Tables, Frames, Forms, JavaScript 1.5, ECMAScript v3, ECMAScript Mobile Profile, HTTP cookies, Basic Authentication, gzip, Multi-Part MIME, GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, BMP file format, WBMP

Multimedia Support: Adobe Flash, FLV, WMV, AVI, MPEG-2/MPEG-4, 3GP, 3GP2, MP3, SVG Tiny, SMIL, MIDI (supported on handsets with appropriate APIs)

Network Protocols and Security: HTTP1.1, HTTPS, SSL 2.0/3.0, WTLS, Certificates

Push: WAP 2.0 Push Access Protocol (PAP)

Download: OMA Download 1.0, MIDP OTA 1.0 & 2.0

Features

  • On-Device Portal: Locally store pages with categories and sites that can be predefined by the service provider and updated over the air, also "History" and "Favorites" can be customized by the end user
  • PC View: Site pages load with a visual representation of the full web page.
  • Fit to Screen View: Choice of reformatted layout with image sizes adapted to fit within the width of the phone’s screen.
  • Content Prioritization and Mobile Navigation Aids: The browser attempts to automatically find the main information on a web page and focus on that content. Additionally, a user can “jump to” other prioritized content such as login, search or forms.
  • Adobe Flash and Streaming Video (Streaming media): The browser adapts Flash animations, Flash video, and other video formats to a format supported by the handset (usually RTSP/3GPP).
  • RSS: Users can view or subscribe to an available RSS feed on a site.
  • Widget engine: Ability to run widgets on mobile handsets.

    • References

    Vision Mobile Browser Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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