Nokia has unveiled the new Web browser for its smartphone software, the S60 platform. The new browser is aimed to provide smartphone users with a true Web experience and better performance when browsing full Web pages on the Internet using a smartphone. The new Web browser is available to S60 licensees as part of the S60 3rd Edition offering.
"Nokia's approach to browsing on smartphones in the 3G era is to offer a premium solution for content discovery and download, with equal access both to Web sites on the Internet and mobile optimized content. The new Web browser is poised to make Web browsing fast, intuitive, and more enjoyable for both consumers and enterprise users," said Heikki Heinaro, Vice President, S60 Applications, Nokia Technology Platforms. .
As announced earlier this year, the new Web browser for S60 is based on the WebCore and JavaScriptCore components of Apple's Safari Web Kit, an open source full Web rendering engine for mobile devices that Apple uses in its popular Safari Internet browser. Based on KHTML and KJS from KDE's Konqueror open source project, this software has enabled Nokia to achieve major improvements in Web site usability on smartphones, through the re-use of a proven desktop rendering engine that has been developed and optimized by a large open source community over many years.
The new browser provides a True Web experience trhough features such as preservation of the original page layout; easy navigation of Web pages through page miniatures, reducing the amount of scrolling; pop-up blocking, enhanced start page, and simplified menus; visual History, showing miniature views of previous pages; web Feeds, providing easy access to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from Web sites, blogs, and news stories; Dynamic HTML, supporting dynamic menus, rollovers, and scripted behavior such as AJAX applications.
The browser's open source codebase and extensible architecture will enable other industry parties, such as S60 licensees and the open source community, to develop new features for the browser. S60 application developers can use open APIs to build on top of the browser, using it to render rich content within their application. Nokia is committed to open source, and intends to actively participate in the open source community to further develop and enhance the browser, contributing Nokia's expertise in mobility.
