The free Mozilla mobile browser, Minimo, has just been updated to the version 0.2. It is compatible with Windows Mobile 5.0 and is reportedly smaller and faster than previous versions. Minimo is promoted by its creators for its speed in accessing sites and other features such as tabs, better security and widget support. The Minimo project, which isn"t a Mozilla Corporation endeavor but is hosted by Mozilla.org, was one of the earliest third-party mobile browser initiatives. However, back in the middle of 2004, users were posting questions to the Minimo forum asking if the project was still alive. Now, even after the most recent release, the future of Minimo is unclear.
In late December, Doug Turner, the leader of the project, wrote that he wouldn"t be dedicating much time to it in the future. "There are lots of browsers in the space, the market is tightly controlled by cellular operators, and the end users aren"t using the browser. This will change, but not for a few years," he wrote on his blog. Minimo may end up heading in a different direction in order to better compete. "At the Firefox Summit, we had a brainstorming session that exposed some ideas that would help improve the lives of Firefox users that have mobile phones without having to build a full browser for the mobile handset. Things that we could do in a few months, rather than many years," Turner wrote in the blog posting.