dale lane

Third of the random ideas for Over The Air hacks – a browser sync for Windows Mobile.

The aim was to let you transfer your browser history from desktop to a Windows Mobile PDA, so when you leave your desk, you can pick up where you left off in whatever you were doing online.

I’ve written the hack as a Firefox extension, and it currently has two modes:

• Always on
  Every web page you view in Firefox gets opened on the mobile browser in the background without you noticing. When you disconnect your mobile from the computer, you not only have the most recent page all ready for you in your mobile browser, but you also have a mirror of the Firefox history – so clicking ‘Back’ on your mobile browser will take you back to the previous page you were viewing with desktop Firefox.
• Single sync
  Take the current page you are viewing in Firefox, and open it on your mobile browser

The toggle to start/stop the ‘always on’ mode, and the switch to perform a single sync are both provided as toolbar buttons.

Install the Firefox extension here

Note that the extension currently uses RAPI Start to communicate with the mobile browser. You need to provide the path to the RAPI start executable in the Firefox extension options. This is a temporary hack – when I get a chance I’ll write my own RAPI support and include it in the Firefox extension. Done! 🙂

Update: People tell me that my webhost apparently wont serve .xpi files. While I figure out why, I’ve renamed the file to end in .zip which it will host. Download it, rename it to end in .xpi, then open it with Firefox. Sorry!

Tags: browser, firefox, mobile, mozilla, overtheair, windows mobile, windowsmobile

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under code, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.