NetFront

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A website as seen on Netfront 3.1 on a Nokia Ngage QD.

NetFront is a microbrowser for embedded devices. Mainly deployed on mobile phones, NetFront is available for multiple platforms and has been deployed in digital TVs, set-top boxes (STB), PDAs, web phones, game consoles, e-mail terminals, automobile telematics systems and other device types.

NetFront supports a variety of compact architectures while offering low power consumption, easy customization and a broad range of plug-ins.

Developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, NetFront was designed to function as an embedded browser. Born from the necessity to render HTML on low-power handsets, NetFront evolved from the embedded device up, rather than being shrunk from the desktop down.

This browser converts tables in a Web page into a vertical display, eliminating the need to scroll horizontally. The user can zoom in and out on Web pages from 25% to 100%, and can select or scroll anywhere on a page with the stylus on Pocket PC devices. The software can open up to five windows and the user can tab to any one of them.

[edit] Compact Netfront

Compact NetFront Plus is a Netfront version designed for the next-generation of mobile wireless services, including international i-mode phones.

Compact NetFront Plus supports Compact HTML, which is popular in Japan; WML (Wireless Markup Language), a markup language based on XML which specifies the content and user interface for WAP-enabled devices used by overseas services; and XHTML Basic, a subset of XHTML, which is expected to become the new global standard.

The software is also provided with the middleware and operating systems essential to a wireless Internet environment, such as a TCP/IP protocol stack, AVE-TCP, which supports IPv6 and the WAP Wireless Profile, a JV-Lite 2 Wireless Edition Java environment for cellular phones, and a AVE-SSL secure communications protocol and encryption module.

The latest version of Netfront supports the following new features: