Seems RIM (the maker of BlackBerry) is working on a set-up that resembles Opera Mini a bit (but not quite). Devices will have a proxy server embedded that requests pages from a special server that compresses the (entire?) HTML page before sending it. The proxy seems to serve as a cache in addition to decompressing the page.
(Click on the image to go to the patent.)
As far as I can see there's some difference with Opera's system, although the basic idea is of course the same. Still, it seems that the browser eventually gets real HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images, and not one binary file such as Opera Mini receives.
But I'm not sure of the technical details. In any case, this will speed up BlackBerry browsing quite a bit. Add that to the upcoming WebKit-based BlackBerry browser, and we can conclude that RIM is doing a major overhaul of its browsing infrastructure. That was very necessary.
Blackberry
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WAPReview points out that Iris, the browser Blackberry just bought, has a widget engine and supports the Geolocation API as well as several HTML5 features. (I haven't tested these myself yet.)
The first, especially, is very interesting. Although Blackberry is supposed to have its own widget engine, it's rumoured to use Java wrappers around every individual widget, which is not optimal for interoperability.
WAPReview expects Blackberry to switch to WebKit, discarding its native rendering engine. That could be, I suppose; it all depends on how much (or little) the Blackberry engine resembles WebKit.
Blackberry
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RIM, the makers of Blackberry, acquires Torch Mobile, the makers of the (WebKit-based) Iris browser for Windows Mobile. Apparently the purpose is to improve the Blackberry browser.
Will Blackberry switch to WebKit? At the start of this year I heard a rumour they would, but couldn't find any evidence. Why did they buy a Windows Mobile browser? Maybe just because it was the only browser maker available — it's extremely unlikely that Blackberry is switching to Windows Mobile, after all.
Anyway, this is the first takeover of one browser by another I've ever heard of.
Blackberry
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Blackberry to support W3C Widgets in the future? Of course this article doesn't give technical details, but the inevitable figure with the boxes and arrows pointing anywhere does seem to sketch a widget context.
Blackberry, W3C Widgets
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