MiniMo (mini-Mozilla) developer Doug Turner has posted a mini-roadmap outlining four dot-releases culminating on Dec. 22 with MiniMo 0.012. The MiniMo project, rumored to be sponsored by Nokia, aims to build a version of Mozilla for small-display embedded systems with 64MB or more of RAM, running Linux or Windows CE.

(Click for larger MiniMo screenshot)

Turner and project co-leader Chris Hofman introduced the MiniMo project to LinuxDevices.com readers in May of 2004, saying that MiniMo can provide a high degree of standards compliance with a “resident set size” (RSS) footprint of about 25MB. The project hoped to solve small-screen-size problems with a combination of CSS (cascading style sheets) and direct magnfication, the developers said at the time.

Turner's MiniMo mini-roadmap outlines four dot-releases over the next four months, codenamed respectively “dancing,” “leaping,” “piping,” and “drumming.” Planned new features include a unified Linux/Windows interface, Debian and Windows installers, a build for Smartphone 2003, and documentation for customization using XUL (XML user-interface language). The releases will also address a number of bugs; see the complete mini-roadmap for a full list.

Who's MiniMo's Daddy now?

CNET reported last summer on rumors that the MiniMo project was funded by Nokia. Nokia has not specified what browser its forthcoming 770 Internet Tablet (pictured at right) will use. A prototype reportedly ran the Opera browser, which Nokia licenses for many of its phones.

However, the 770 could well use MiniMo, since the tablet is designed to run normal Debian GNU/Linux X applications, rather than PDA applications based on embedded graphics frameworks such as Qtopia. Nokia also sponsored improvements to the Matchbox window manager project, as part of its 770 development efforts.

However, most of the recent activity within the MiniMo project, and much of the planned activity, relates to Windows CE support, not Linux. Nokia seems unlikely to back such improvements, and Microsoft even less. One possible MiniMo benefactor on the Windows side could be Intrinsyc, which offers a PDA phone software stack based on Windows CE.

 
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