BOSSA - Browser Lunch BOF

During the BOSSA conference we had a very productive discussion about browser trends in mobile/embedded market, some Mozilla plans in this regard (not only minimo=), as well as ideas for pushing minimo on linux embedded, SoC projects (???) and so on. It was there Ilias, Henry, Anderson and I (from INdT) and Chris Hoffman and Marcio Galli (from Mozilla).

• Porting some WinCE specific features to linux:
• Context sensitive menus (partially done)
• minimo/components/gps/
• minimo/components/softkb (ported to maemo already)
• minimo/components/phone/
• minimo/components/device/

• Adding XPCOM-DBUS and GCONF support on minimo.

• Testing helix-mozilla plugin with minimo on n800.

• SoC:
• "webpage content summary": a graph model of a single web page is made up of hundreds of basic elements that are linked to each other in a very complex manner. Such structure is similar to the whole Internet, which is also made up of many interrelated web pages. The main point here is applying Information Retrieval techniques into webpages, providing a content zoomed page. Focus: reduced screen mobile devices.
  
• Development of mobile web applications which use FOF for relationship networks.

• Joey Project: Marcio, Doug and Chis are behind this.

• Launching Minimo 0.2 . They believe minimo has reached a mature enough stage so that it can get launched ... lets wait ! ;)

• "Local web served widgets as a means to access the OS built-in apps and
  functions". It rocks, but I can talk much ... ;)

• Usability improvements of minimo for not-so-educed-screen devices, like n800 and n770. Some SVG stuff already done by Marcio, and already available at newest minimo maemo port releases. What else do we need ?

Well, time to put hands on them.

--Antonio Gomes

BOSSA conference was a success

From March 12th to 14th, BOSSA conference took place in Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, Brazil, one of the sites of INdT. It was a great experience for all who attended, from both the technical and non-technical point of views: high quatily talks during the days, and *free* dinners, parties and delicious food and drinks after that.

• 1st Day:

• Milko Boic's talk about "Building Digital Media Solutions with Helix DNA Client" - specially the demos part - showed how powerful this open source multimedia framework is. However, what really paid me attention was its robust plugin-able capabilities. After the talk, I came to him and asked if he was aware of any work being done around an embeddable Helix based plugin for mozilla browsers, and he said there are some already , and I am going to follow them :-).
  
• Chris Hoffman's talk about "Minimo: lessons learned, and New directions for Mozilla Mobile Development" was the best of the day (at least for me). He pointed out
  
• the evolution of Minimo and Firefox in the market share;
• pictures of minimo getting mature since its conception;
• some problems of web sites design in the mobile world;
  
• plans of mozilla for for reduced resource devices. VERY COOL !!!
  

• 2nd Day:
• Win Taymans (Gstreamer), John (J5) Palmieri (D-Bus Desktop Glue - reshaping our thinking of application development from embedded to the desktop) and the showman Marcelo Oliveira/INdT (Canola) both proofed how simple and efficient their technologies are.

• Furthermore, Chis Hoffman (Mozilla), Marcio Galli (Mozilla), Ilias (INdT) and I (INdT) had a productive talk about how we can push minimo and mozilla to linux based embedded devices during a "Browser Lunch BOF". Btw, I am going to blog about in separate.

• Juho Paasonen (Interaction design in open source environment: introducing the Movial Widescreen UI) was very interesting as well, showing some cool GL-like stuff.
  

• 3rd Day:
• Johan Bilien (latest evolutions on Hildon) and Johan Dahlin
  (PyGTK) were the highlights.

To be continued ... =)

--Antonio Gomes

Patching minimo

Dougt from MiniMo has improved and checked in a patch I sent to him applied against the spatial navigation mozilla extension.

** new minimo maemo port release is coming.

** we are heading to BOSSA 2007 =) !!!!!

--Antonio Gomes

What is about to come ???? - update

Follows a list of features I'll be working for minimo maemo port for the next couple days:

• Add hardware key support (especially zoom_in/out and fullscreen).
• Updating minimo through default Maemo's Application Manager has problems.
• implement context sensitive menus for a stylus-oriented device.
• missing "home bar". (where is it ???)
  
• bookmark are not being properly persisted. (not yet implemented in minimo ???)
• Hack built-in flash plugin to make it work with minimo.
• make proxy work for FTP and HTTPS protocols.
• default home setting does not work.
• investigate crash on https://agenor.equipement.gouv.fr/ - maybe certificate ?
• problems inputting hebrew, russian, finish characters via vkb.
  

minor ones:

• clipboard operations (cut, copy and paste)
  
• track mozilla bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=313665 (minimo exits crashing if X button if pressed)
• try to fix download dialog crash.
• 'open file' does not work.
  
• remove 'pushd/popd' commands from run-minimo script uses - they seem to be not supported. (FIXED in 0.16.8-1)
• proxy are not being set properly via vkb. (FIXED in 0.16.8-1)
  
• keep tarsbar on the top on fullscreen mode by default. (FIXED in 0.16.8-1)
• add menu item for toggle on/off spatial navigation / scrolling via arrow buttons. (FIXED in 0.16.8-1)
• remove 'enable ssr' and 'Set minimo as default browser' check buttons from preferences-general tab. (FIXED in 0.16.8-1)
• addind back ' X' button for tab closing. (FIXED in 0.16.8-2)
• look for a rotate screen solution.

ps : this list might grow up. It depends only on your feedback. Feel free to suggest anything.

--Antonio Gomes
tonikitoo at gmail dot com

Newest minimo coming with patches available.

Wow, after a "busy" Sunday (actually I woke up at 2 PM :)) I finally I got newest mozilla minimo cvs snapshot (18th Nov) built on maemo i386 environment. Even better, I got all my patches uptodated as well as a directory struture for building it. It looks like:

[sbox-maemo2-i386: ~/minimo/newest] > ls -R minimo/newest/
build/:
mozilla/

./do_it_all.sh

patches/:
armel-specific failed general maemo-specific old ongoing

patches/armel-specific:
buildfix_lots.diff buildfix_missing_chk_files.diff buildfix_preparea_and_dispatch_arm_sbox.diff old

patches/armel-specific/old:
075_OPTIMIZATIONS_xpcom_arm.diff 145_MAEMO_cs_mthumb_hack.diff 185_MAEMO_CODESOURCERY_hack_prdtoa.diff buildfix_shligsign_arm_sbox.diff

patches/failed:
185_MAEMO_CODESOURCERY_hack_prdtoa.diff minimo_shared.patch

patches/general:
ongoing runfix_encryto.diff runfix_gtkmozembed.diff

patches/general/ongoing:
command_line_parser.diff

patches/maemo-specific:
adding_debian_folder.diff adding_maemo_specific_files.diff disable_ssr_component.diff fullscreen_stuff_and_disable_google_view.diff prefs.diff softkb.diff~
adding_maemo_specific_code.diff bigger_menu_default_font_size.diff fix_loggin_bustage_mika.diff linking_against_dbus_and_osso_stuff.diff softkb.diff

patches/old:
adding_debian_folder.diff psm_working_on_minimo.diff.bak update_linux_package.patch

tarballs/
mozilla.tar.bz2


I am building it to armel right now, tomorrow I will see how good it runs on maemo 2.1. Hopefully, minimo will also completely move to garage.maemo soon. Keep tuned.

--Antonio Gomes

Firefox 2.0 and Helsinki Lauching Party - update

ps: This post is TOO LATE :)

We have a launching party also here in Helsinki for celebrating Firefox 2.0 releasing. Some goods shots ...




Check some of its new features out.

--Antonio Gomes

I've been abroad

from last week until december, I believe, I'll be out for work stuff in Helsinki, Finland ...

helsinki and espoo are great cities, nice people and bealtifil girls. Nokia build and infrastructure are also very good ...