A microbrowser , micronavigator (or minibrowser ) is a navigator designed for the use in a portable and miniature device, like PDA or the mobile phones.

Because of reduced storage capacity of the support mobiles, the micronavigateurs are optimized to post the contents on screens of small size.

In order to optimize the core use and the band-width, of many functionalities are often not implemented. It is in general about navigator standard ranges.

It should be noted that, today, some microbrowsers are able to manage technologies like AJAX or CS 2.1.

Technologies used

The first generation of microbrowsers was not able to be connected to traditional Web servers by using a connection HTTP standard. The microbrowsers used protocol WAP. The cellular network returns in this case of the contents written for the microbrowser. That can be XHTML (WAP 2.0) or WML (Wap 1.3 based on HDML). WML and HDML are formats adapted to the transmission of information through weak band-widths.
With the Japan, the company DoCoMo, its I-mode based on HTML I-mode. HTML I-mode is in fact an extension of C-HTML (Compact HTML).

The standard WAP 2.0 supports a mobile version of XHTML and standard CS. These mobile versions are very close to the standards defined for these technologies by W3C.

The most recent microbrowsers nativement support all modern technologies of the Web: HTML, WML, HTML I-mode, CHTML, CS, ECMAScript, and of the plug-ins like Flash of Macromedia.

Technical constraints

As that was evoked above, the microbrowsers must use less memory and adapt to screens moreover small size that the traditional navigators.
A very detailed attention must be brought to returned. Moreover, the band-width is limited and the disconnections are frequent.

Microbrowsers for cell phones

• NetFront of Access Co. Ltd. (Japón).
• Nokia Series 40 Browser of Nokia.
• Nokia Series 60 Browser of Nokia.
• Obigo by Obigo AB (Sweden), of Teleca Systems AB (handles IN Systems)
• Openwave (Redwood, CA) (of Phone.com, historically Unwired Planet).
• Opera of Opera Software ASA (Norway).
• Pocket Internet Explorer of Microsoft Inc.

Microbrowsers to install oneself

• Andromeda
• Bluelark Bluelark compro of Handspring Inc.
• Dory of Anygraaf OY (Vantaa, Finland)
• NicheView of Interniche Technologies Inc.
• Minimo of the Mozilla Foundation.
• Palm™ Web browser Pro of PalmOne, Inc. (Milpitas, the United States)
• Picsel of Picsel Ltd Technologies. (Glasgow, Ecoose)
• Pixo of Sun Microsystems (Pixo was aquis by Sun in July 2003)
• RocketBrowser Rocket Mobile, Inc. (Silicon Valley, the United States).
• SAS
• Skweezer of Greenlight Wireless Corporation
• Thunderhawk of Bitstream Inc. (Cambridge, the United States)
• Wapaka
• WebViewer of Reqwireless
• Novarra

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