Mini-Mozilla marches towards Windows mobiles

Current versions of Minimo work only on Linux-based PDAs (personal digital assistants), but a future version will debut this northern summer on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, which is used on a variety of Pocket PCs and smart phones.

Lead Minimo developer Doug Turner posted the first development build of Minimo for Pocket PC 2003--which is based on Windows CE--on a Web site last week. Turner said he hopes to release a stable version later in the year.

"The first release to the general public will be in about four months," he said. "We are hoping to be producing nightly builds starting at the end of March. Nightly builds are...for quality assurance and those that live a bit dangerously."

Minimo developers have already completed basic work on the project, but they are looking for extra developers to work on improving the user interface, Turner said on the MozillaZine news site.

"If you try the build now you will find there is a lot of Windows integration work that needs to happen," Turner said. "Another thing you will notice is the UI (user interface) for the application is terrible. I really need your input and Windows CE coding skills here."

Turner is confident that he will get a lot of help on the project from the open-source development community. "I have got many responses from very qualified developers that are interested in helping me make a great browser on the Windows CE platform," he said. "Based on the feedback, I think that this project is going to do very well."

Although Minimo is not as well-known as Firefox, Mozilla's most popular browser for PCs, it has already attracted interest from device manufacturers, including two mobile phone makers, that need an embedded browser.