User-Installable Microbrowsers

The mobile device environment is rapidly gearing towards integration into the World Wide Web. And since today's cyberspace grew with a different infrastructure in mind, this have led the need for mobile tools and applications that will let the Internet to be tailored for mobile gadgets. This need has given birth to the development of the microbrowsers.

Microbrowsers are essentially a simplified form of a web browser. Most web browsers used for desktops will not work well when used in mobile gadgets. The primary reason is simply a huge difference in resources between an ordinary desktop PC and a mobile gadget.

Most mobile gadgets have limited processing resources that require special forms of applications that fall within their processing and memory capacities. In short, mobile microbrowsers need to be a stripped down version of regular web browsers requiring considerably less processing and memory requirements to make it run in a mobile gadget.

There are now quite a number of microbrowsers available that offer to give mobile devices the ability to connect and access the Web.

A variety of today's mobile gadgets such as Internet-enabled cell phones and PDA's have already been marketed with their own default microbrowsers. There are also several microbrowsers available that can be installed on a mobile device by users themselves. Here are examples of user-installed microbrowsers.

Opera Mobile

Opera Mobile is a microbrowser that can be installed in most smartphones and PDA's. It was developed by Opera Software Company.

This mobile browser can reformat web pages dynamically for mobile devices using its proprietary Small Screen Rendering technology. The Opera Mobile can be installed by users for free for the duration of a 30-day trial period after which use of the microbrowser would require a fee.

Opera Mini

The Opera Mini was initially developed and designed for mobile phones but has since included smartphones and PDA's. This microbrowser makes use of the Java ME platform and so requires mobile gadgets that are capable of running Java ME applications. It was also developed by the Opera Software Company. But this time, installing and use of this microbrowser is free, supported with the company's partnership with Google.

ThunderHawk

This is a microbrowser developed by Bitstream made available for mobile gadgets and devices running on both Windows Mobile and Symbian phones as well as Java enabled mobile phones and PDA's. Unlike other microbrowsers that reformats web page content for mobile devices, ThunderHawk offers users a desktop-like view of a web page.