Blazer (web browser)
Blazer was a web browser available for Palm handhelds running Palm OS 3.1 or higher.
The original version of Blazer was developed by
Version history
Blazer 1
Blazer 1 was released in November 2000, and differentiated itself from other Palm OS web browsers at the time by its fast performance, progressive rendering, and support of WAP and i-Mode in addition to HTML. It utilized a proxy server which provided transcoding and image conversion optimized for small, underpowered handheld devices. Blazer 1 was available for free download.
Blazer 2
Blazer 2 was released in early 2002. Blazer 2 added the ability to use
As of September 22, 2005, all copies of Blazer 1 and 2 were rendered inoperable as the proxy server for these browsers was taken offline by Palm.
Blazer 3
Blazer 3 was a significant upgrade in the series.
Blazer 4
Next came Palm Blazer 4.0/4.1. It was bundled with the
Soon after, Blazer 4.3 browser became available on the
Blazer 4.5 was released in May 2006, along with the
Streaming video
Video is streamed via the Kinoma Video Player. It supports many formats, including Windows Media.
At this time, Blazer does not support Adobe Flash Player - meaning you cannot view popular videos on sites such as ESPN or YouTube. This issue has never been addressed by Palm. A relatively small number of phones have the ability to use Flash.
The new Centro has demonstrated the ability to play YouTube videos on its browser using a high speed internet connection.[2] This is demonstrated on the mobile version of YouTube which does not use Flash Technology. Previous Palm phones with the current version of Blazer can also play these videos. This is the same version of YouTube accessed by the application of the same name on the Apple iPhone.
Kinoma released an upgrade to the Video Player,[3] which can be purchased for many Palm phones, that has support for Flash Video, but is not part of the Blazer web browser itself. The videos must be searched for via the Kinoma media guide. This guide acts as a browser for many popular video sites, like YouTube and Google Video. Many Palm users could get a discount on this upgrade.[4]
References
- ^ "Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS". theverge.com. 5 June 2012.
- ^ "MyTreo.net". mytreo.net. Archived from the original on 2007-10-11. Retrieved 2007-09-28.
- ^ "Kinoma - Blog - Kinoma Notes". kinoma.com. 12 July 2012. Archived from the original on 12 July 2012.
- ^ "Kinoma - Blog - Kinoma Notes". kinoma.com. 7 July 2012. Archived from the original on 7 July 2012.