InterNiche Inc, a San Jose, California-based embedded networking products firm, has launched a new web browser designed for deeply embedded applications. Called NicheView, the browser takes up only 30kb of program space. By comparison, Spyglass Inc’s Device Mosaic 3.2 requires 850kb. It is aimed at applications such as personal digital assistants, set top boxes and consumer electronics devices needing web connectivity.
NicheView, says the company, is less specifically tailored to a particular set of I/O devices (keyboards, pointing devices, color and bit-mapped displays) than conventional browsers, and has a generic interface for input events such as keystrokes and clicks, and output streams which pass text blocks, images and other content to device drivers. It was designed as a subset of HTML 4.0, but also includes all the features of the proposed Compact HTML standard, according to InterNiche’s president and CEO Larry Larder. It also supports multiple fonts, plug-ins, and a subset of JavaScript.
The company says it’s applied for a patent to protect its technology – particularly the method of parsing the incoming addresses and associated HTML strings, which gives the product its small footprint. The browser can be used with any TCP/IP stack, including the company’s own, offered separately. There is also a development environment which implements an LCD-like display in a Windows 05/98 or NT window. No pricing was given. It’s available within a month.
