Mobile Browser Support Notes

Posted September 20, 2010, 6:13 p.m.

Finally, the universe of mobile browsers seems to be stabilizing. While there are many mobile platforms out there—iOS, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone, and Symbian—almost all of them are settling on a single browser display engine. All of those platforms except Windows Phone use the WebKit engine, or will soon.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS platform switches to WebKit with version 6, which will be coming out soon for a number of newer BlackBerry phones, leaving Microsoft Windows Phone as the last major holdout. However, this is still great news for web developers. We basically have to support WebKit and the mobile version of Internet Explorer, rather than a multifaceted hodge-podge of proprietary and non-proprietary mobile browsers. To add even broader support, just add Opera Mini and Firefox Mobile too. Those four cover pretty much everybody.

Anyway, the main reason for this entry: BlackBerry OS 6 and Windows Phone 7 are both coming out very soon on new phones (and, in RIM’s case, for some old ones too). Both platforms have completely new browsers. I’m pleased to announce that Off on a Tangent already works in the default browsers for bothof these platforms, and will be officially supported in them moving forward (in addition to the wide support I already offer for most of the platforms listed above).

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.

Elie Wiesel

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Lao Tsu

Thinkers are rare; doers are rarer; and thinker-doers are rarest.

Fred Brooks

But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God.

Peter the Apostle

Some acts are always wrong—that is, intrinsically evil—and may never be done, no matter what the intention or the circumstances.

U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.

Unknown

Wealth is nothing more or less than a tool to do things with. It is like the fuel that runs the furnace or the belt that runs the wheel—only a means to an end.

Henry Ford

From a moral point of view this is certain: even if a doubt existed concerning whether the fruit of conception is already a human person, it is objectively a grave sin to dare to risk murder.

Catholic Church

Natural endowment is far less consequential than the ability to use it productively, and that ability is an outcome of culture.

Ibn Warraq

He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

Jesus Christ

What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.

Abraham Lincoln

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Winston Churchill

When the people rules, it must be rendered happy, or it will overturn the State, and misery is apt to stimulate it to those excesses to which ambition rouses kings.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Many economic fallacies are due to conceiving of economic activity as a zero-sum contest, in which what is gained by one is lost by another.

Thomas Sowell

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

Mahatma Gandhi

All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We’ve got to make it unthinkable.

Norman Thomas

We must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior. We must treat all people as individuals rather than as members of special interest groups.

Bobby Jindal

We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations.

Freeman Dyson

When schedule slippage is recognized, the natural (and traditional) response is to add manpower. Like dousing a fire with gasoline, this makes matters worse, much worse.

Fred Brooks

I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!

Jesus Christ