Vision Mobile Browser
Vision (formerly nWeb) is an internet browser platform for mobile devices developed by Novarra Inc. The product consists of a server that acts as a proxy and a small footprint browser that runs on Java Platform, Micro Edition, BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless), or native handset environments via C++.
Novarra created and holds patents for this distributed browsing architecture that combines an in-network server with a handset browser client. The architecture performs a portion of web page content processing on an in-network server thus reducing the workload on the handset. It also reduces data transferred over-the-air for faster page load times and provides access to more content than is possible by a handset browser alone.
Novarra offers the mobile browser to mobile network operators and handset manufacturers who typically rebrand the software as their own service. It was first made commercially available in 2002 through Palm, Inc for Tungsten (handheld) PDAs branded as “WebPro”. Some later releases of the mobile browser include U.S. Cellular as easyedgeSM mobile browser,Alltel as “My Mobile Web” Celltop application,Hutchison 3G as “www3” in Italy and “3Xplorer” in Hong Kong. Version 8.0 was released March, 2009.
Mobile browser
A mobile browser is a web browser designed for use on a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA. Mobile browsers are optimized so as to display Web content most effectively for small screens on portable devices. Mobile browser software must be small and efficient to accommodate the low memory capacity and low-bandwidth of wireless handheld devices. Typically they were stripped-down web browsers, but some more modern mobile browsers can handle more recent technologies like CSS 2.1, JavaScript, and Ajax.
Websites designed for access from these browsers are referred to as wireless portals or collectively as the Mobile Web. They may automatically create "mobile" versions of each page, for example this one.
Underlying technology
The mobile browser usually connects via cellular network, or increasingly via Wireless LAN, using standard HTTP over TCP/IP and displays web pages written in HTML, XHTML Mobile Profile (WAP 2.0), or WML (which evolved from HDML). WML and HDML are stripped-down formats suitable for transmission across limited bandwidth, and wireless data connection called WAP. In Japan, DoCoMo defined the i-mode service based on i-mode HTML, which is an extension of Compact HTML (C-HTML), a simple subset of HTML.
