A new experience in mobile web browsing
Nokia Browser for N9 is a major update to Nokia's browser family. Built from the ground-up to be a class-leading mobile browser, its clean and uncluttered interface optimises the UX so users can access the information they want faster. This browser is also the world's first based on the WebKit2 rendering engine, so offers a new level of support for HTML5 and CSS3 on smartphones. In addition, the browser supports the creation of app-like websites that can run alongside native applications within the Nokia N9 home screen.
A new dimension in UX
The Nokia Browser for N9 UI is elegantly simple, removing or rationalising the clutter found in some other mobile browsers.
The narrow control bar provides a hybrid URL and search box, which frees the UI to show more of what the user wants: Website content. When entering a URL, the N9 browser offers a hints list based on not only recently viewed web pages, but information on website popularity to deliver truly relevant choices. For search text, similar intelligence combines a search link, recently visited pages, and popular web sites.
When browsing, the control bar offers features to navigate backwards and forwards through the session history and reload or suspend loading of pages. Finally, a pop-up menu offers a truly focused set of relevant actions to the user that can:
- open a new window, for concurrent page viewing.
- share the current page, in a message or on social media site.
- add the web page to the main apps view, making the web page easy to access from the phone's home screen.
- subscribe to any RSS or Atom feed defined on a page, which can then be viewed in a dedicated feeds app or added to the home screen notifications.
Within a web page, pop-up menus offer additional context sensitive features such as copying link URLs and adding images to the N9 gallery.
For mobile users, the Nokia Browser for N9 means no longer having to cope with complex and often obscure menus, so they can focus on browsing the pages they love and discovering new content.
Brilliant web pages with HTML5
When it comes to delivering sophisticated richly formatted web content to mobile, the N9 browser is a brilliant performer.
As the world's first mobile implementation of the WebKit2 rendering engine, the N9 browser can handle just about anything you can add to a web page. With one of the best HTML5 benchmark scores for a mobile browser (a score of 255 plus 14 bonus points on HTML 5 Test) you can be confident that the user of an N9 phone will see your web pages the way you intended.
Key HTML5 features supported by the N9 browser include:
- offline storage.
- Geolocation.
- web messaging.
And as you would expect sophisticated HTML5 support also means excellent coverage of CSS3 features, such as 2D and 3D transforms, borders with rounded corners and images, backgrounds, shadows, and many more exciting CSS3 features.
For more information on the features of the Nokia Browser for N9, see the Web Developer Library.
Take web apps mobile
The N9 browser is about more than just web browsing, its support for HTML5 makes mobile web apps a reality. It does this by combining powerful JavaScript APIs with lightning fast JavaScript processing: In the SunSpider benchmark, the N9 Browser outperformed most other mobile device browsers. So now web apps are a truly pleasurable experience on mobile.
When it comes to adding features to your web app, Nokia Browser for N9 offers you an extensive range of APIs such as:
- Geolocation — access the location of the user's Nokia N9 for smart location aware apps.
- Touch — add rich multiple touch point and gesture based actions to your apps.
- Media match — ensure rich media matches the capabilities of the Nokia N9.
- Data set — attach data to local DOM elements.
- Class lists — drive a better UI through CSS.
- Selectors — gain better methods for accessing your app's DOM.
- History — enables your users to easily switch between application states.
In addition the latest JavaScript methods have been added in N9 Browser: such as filter() and reduce() in arrays and trim() and trimRight() for strings. With N9 browser you can deliver even more functionality to mobile users: web apps that enrich and, because they are always accessible, drive your traffic further.
Get details on the features of the APIs from the Web Developer Library
