1. What is the status of Minimo? Which parts are done, which parts require still quite some hacking?

We have completed lots of footprint work. Currently our memory usage (RSS) is quite stable and close to zero growth. Compared to similar browsers in this market, we are doing quite well.

Some work went in to making the Mozilla code base very configurable. We have pull the most important stuff out of the Mozilla code base, and leaving things behind that don't make sense for small devices. This has two important outcomes. First, it allows you to get the bare-bones application that supports a wide range of internet standards. Secondly, we have the ablity to add back functionality that may be important to a given target market. We have been working with some vendors to target the right set of features and functionallity. We think we can start to look at adding a few things back like (maybe) xul support, and web services. The great thing about it is that you pay-as-you-go. If you want xul, it will cost you x, y, and z. If you want webservices, it will cost you x, i, and j. It is as easy as rebuilding with different options and, or course, testing.

Minimo, is really two parts -- it is an effort which aims at providing a small embeddable browser for small devices. We think we have done a good job at this. The second aim is to provide a best-of-bred application for small devices. We have just started to work on the second aim. You should expect to see some very good UI for Minimo in the next few months.

2. What kind of devices is Minimo targetting? What are the required specifications?

Minimo can run in about 25 MBs of RSS. I run Minimo on my 64MB IPAQ 3950 without any problems. Running on a 32MB device, might be tight, but if that is the only major app running at the time, it should be fine.

Minimo requires GTK. Our offical releases are for the Familiar 0.72 Linux distrubution with GPE.

3. Are there plans to streamline Minimo (e.g. remove functionality/code) to be able to run on some smartphones or BlackBerries?

The funding for the project has been to target 32-64MB arm. Lots of products from device makers seem to be targeting that range. It seems to make sense.. If you try to run a browser, any browser, in less you quickly run into problems. For example, when we try to run pocket IE on our pageloader tests it can't because it doesn't have enough javascript support because it appears to be based on a very old version of the IE code base without much support for basic web standards. Also, when we run tests using opera on 32MB sharp zuarus it runs out of memory before getting though the first cycle. The pageloader test can be found here.

Both of these claim the high ground for small footprint but the user experiance on sub 32MB devices just seems to be substandard.

So if pocket IE, opera, and minmo all need a 32-64MB form factor then you start to look at which browser offers the best value. Mozilla has the best support for all the web standards, and offers cost advantages because their are no royalties or license fees. We think this is going to be a compelling solution to small device vendors where cost is king.

4. How is the SSR implementation moving on? What are its good points and which parts of it still need some work?

Daniel Glazman has been doing some incredible work making websites look better on small devices with CSS. This coupled with content viewing will make web browsing much easier on the enduser. However, the real problem is bad site design. No amount of SSR will fix large ugly sites.

5. There are some who say that the PDA market is declining and that at some point all PDAs will also be Phones (two markets will merge). Do you share this opinion?

Hard to say but that looks like what might be happening. The cell phone vendor that is funding our research on minimo has basically given us PDA targets to shoot for, so I'm guessing future cellphone products will have many of the hardware characteristics of current high end PDAs.

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