Understanding Blazer Mobile Browser

As the development of "mobile Internet" begins to dawn, it was logical that these Internet-capable mobile phones should also have an online browser that would enable to display web sites in its mobile version.  Unlike the browsers in your desktop PC, mobile browsers are default on several mobile phone models, meaning that it is already bundled.  One of these mobile browsers is the Blazer

What is Blazer?

Blazer is a mobile web browser available for Palm handheld devices that run on Palm OS 3.1 or higher.  Its current version is Blazer 4.3.  The original version of Blazer was developed by Bluelark Systems and was released in November 2000.  The company was then acquired by Handspring a month later.

Early history

The first version of Blazer was released in late 2000 and was only available for Palm handheld phones.  It supported HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), and i-mode, a popular mobile Internet service provider in Japan.  Blazer 2 was then released in early 2002. 

It had the ability to use proxy servers, Transport Layer Security (TLS), and 16-bit color.  On September 2005, all copies of Blazer 1 and 2 were rendered inoperable as the proxy server for these browsers was taken offline by Palm.

Introduction of Blazer 3 and 4

Replacing the old versions of the mobile browser was Blazer 3, which was considered a significant upgrade in the series.  Palm, Inc. dumped the original code for Blazer and started from scratch with NetFront Browser Engine (which was also used in Sony Clie). 

Its next version, Blazer 4.0, was bundled with the Tungsten E2, Tungsten T5, and Treo 650 and 680 smartphones. 

New features in the latest Blazer version included faster loading time, an improved user interface, Virtual Private Network (VPN), the ability to save images and HTML files to a memory card or the device, homepages, bookmarks, and being able to start on your last viewer page. 

Blazer 4 also features support for many web standards like HTML 4.01, XHTHML 1.0, WML 1.3, SSL 3.0, cHTML, JavaScript 1.5, CSS 1.0 and 2.0.  However, the use of some advanced features may cause the browser to crash if it is not in the Wide Page mode.

Blazer 4.3 became available on Treo 650, TX, and LifeDrive.  Among its additions is the fast mode option, which removes images as well as disabling cascading style sheets.  Blazer 4.5 was released in May 2006 along with Treo 700p.  It offers faster page rendering, as well as support for streaming video using a built-in version of Kinoma Player. 

However, this media player does not support Adobe Flash Player, making one unable to view popular videos on YouTube or ESPN.com. 

This issue has never been resolved by Palm, but Kinoma has released an upgrade to its video player that supports Flash Video that can be purchased for many Palm phones.  However, this improved video player is not part of the Blazer web browser.