N900 MicroB Browser Basics

Every new phone has a learning curve, however brief.  When I got my N900 I expected to have to put a fair amount of effort into figuring out how to use the device.  After all this was not only a new handset for me but I'd never used  Maemo before. Plus, I'd heard that the N900 was a geeky device, not really suited for normal mobile users.

OK, maybe I am a geek, but I think I got up to speed with the N900 and Maemo as quickly as I did with my first exposure to Android or S60. The Maemo user interface maybe daunting initially but with a little research and experimentation it reveals itself as powerful, easy to use and efficient to terms of quickly accomplishing both complex and simple tasks.

My focus is browsing and web apps.  I believe the N900 's MicroB browser is the best built-in mobile browser ever and maybe the best mobile browser, period.  Here are some tips to help you make MicroB work for you.

Understanding the MicroB GUI

MicroB's UI is very clean and quite intuitive. Most actions are accomplished using  the toolbars at the top and bottom of the screen:

• The toolbars are hidden by default except when pages are loading. When the toolbars are hidden, tapping the screen brings up a full screen toggle icon in the bottom right corner (visible in the image below) that can be pressed to display them as shown in the image above.
• The top toolbar has an icon to switch browser windows, a clock, connection and battery status indicators, the page title and an X icon to close the window.
• The page title in the top toolbar doubles as the browser menu button.  Tap it to reveal buttons to open a new window, find text, save the page, view downloads, see page details, refresh the page and open the browser options screen.
• If you want the toolbars to always be visible, tap the page title to bring up the browser menu, tap "Settings" and un-check "Open initially in full screen".
• The bottom status bar  has the URL entry field and icons to open bookmarks, add a bookmark, refresh the page or stop a page load in process and what looks like a back button but actually opens a visual history screen similar to the one in the iPhone and  Symbian browsers.

Shortcuts

MicroB is Firefox at it's core.  As such it can handle just about any site that works in Firefox on the desktop.  It also uses many of the same shortcut keys as Firefox.Like:

• Space: Page down
• Shift:  Space Page up
• Ctrl - N: Open a new Window
• Ctrl - R: Refresh the current page
• Ctrl - B: Open the bookmarks page
• Ctrl - D: Bookmark the current page
• Ctrl - C: Copy selected text
• Ctrl - X: Cut selected text
• Ctrl - V: Paste copied or cut text
• Ctrl - Shift - P: Take a screenshot
• Backspace:  Go back one page in browser history
• Shift - Backspace: Go one page forward in history.

These are only the shortcuts that I found useful in the browser. Other applications and Maemo itself have many more shortcuts.  See Nokia Experts for a comprehensive list.

Zooming and Fit To Width

When you first load a site, Micro B fits the page to the screen width. This is fine for some sites like HowardForums, shown above, where everything is quite readable in full page view.  But on most pages you will want to zoom in. There are three ways to

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posted by Dennis Bournique
January 27, 2010 @ 3:29 pm
7 View Comments