Blazer is a web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 available for Palm

Palm (PDA)

Palm handhelds were Personal Digital Assistants which ran the Palm OS. Palm devices have evolved from handhelds to smartphones which run Palm OS, WebOS, and Windows Mobile...

 handhelds running Palm OS

Palm OS

Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...

 3.1 or higher with 8MB of free memory available.

The original version of Blazer was developed by Bluelark Systems and was released in November 2000. Bluelark Systems was acquired by Handspring

Handspring (company)

Handspring was a maker of Palm OS-based Visor- and Treo-branded personal digital assistants. It was run by Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, the original inventors of the Palm Pilot and founders of Palm Computing, after they became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking...

 a month later, in December 2000. Version 1.0 supported HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, WAP

Wireless Application Protocol

Wireless Application Protocol is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network.A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that uses the protocol.Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer...

, and the markup language used in i-Mode

I-mode

NTT DoCoMo's i-mode is a mobile internet service popular in Japan. Unlike Wireless Application Protocol, i-mode encompasses a wider variety of internet standards, including web access, e-mail and the packet-switched network that delivers the data...

.

Blazer 1

Blazer 1 was released in November 2000, and differentiated itself from other PalmOS 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 proxy servers, SSL, 16 bit color, and an improved user interface. Blazer 2 was available both as product bundled with the Treo 180, and as a paid download.

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. Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...

 dumped the original code for Blazer and started fresh with the NetFront

NetFront

NetFront Browser is a mobile browser for embedded devices, developed by Access Co. Ltd. of Japan, and was designed to function as an embedded browser....

 Browser Engine (most notably used in the Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 Clie

CLIÉ

The Sony CLIÉ was a series of personal digital assistants running the Palm Operating System developed and marketed by Sony from 2000 to 2005. The devices introduced many new features to the PDA market, such as a jog-wheel interface, high-resolution displays, and Sony technologies like Memory Stick...

) as the core of the Blazer browser. It is bundled with Treo 600.

Blazer 4

Next came Palm Blazer 4.0/4.1. It is currently bundled with the Tungsten E2, the Tungsten T5, and the Treo

Treo

The Palm Treo is a line of smartphones originally developed by Handspring, which was bought by Palm, Inc. They are now manufactured and maintained by Palm, Inc. Treos have a number of integrated features such as the ability to check the calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from a...

 650 and 680. New Features included faster loading, an improved UI

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

, VPN with an extra plugin, the saving of image and HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 files to a memory card or the device, homepages, bookmarks, and the ability to start on your last viewed page. Blazer 4 also features support for web standards including HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 4.01, XHTML

XHTML

XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

 1.0, WML

WML

WML may stand for:* What's My Line?, a game show* White matter lesion, a lesion of the white matter* Wireless Markup Language, markup used for mobile phones with Wireless Application Protocol* Website Meta Language, Unix software for HTML generation...

 1.3, SSL 3.0, cHTML, JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 1.5, CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

 1.0 and 2.0 (partial), GIF

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

 (both still and animated, along with transparency), JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, PNG, BMP and Cookies

HTTP cookie

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...

. The use of some advanced features may cause the browser to crash if it is not in Wide Page Mode.

Soon after, Blazer 4.3 browser came available on the Treo 650

Treo 650

The Palm Treo 650 is a Palm OS based smartphone that was officially announced on October 24, 2004 as the successor to Palm's Treo 600. It began shipping in November 2004, but has since been discontinued...

, TX

TX (handheld)

The Palm TX was a personal digital assistant which was produced by Palm, Inc. It was announced and released as part of Palm's October 2005 product cycle, and was in production until March 2009....

 and LifeDrive

LifeDrive

The LifeDrive was a Palm OS-based handheld personal digital assistant device that was produced by PalmOne, a former incarnation of Palm, Inc. The device was PalmOne's first and only foray into the "Mobile Manager" device category...

. The most significant addition to 4.3 is the fast mode option, which removes images and/or disables cascading style sheets

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

.

Blazer 4.5 was released in May 2006, along with the Treo

Treo

The Palm Treo is a line of smartphones originally developed by Handspring, which was bought by Palm, Inc. They are now manufactured and maintained by Palm, Inc. Treos have a number of integrated features such as the ability to check the calendar while talking on the phone, dial directly from a...

 700p as part of the device's application suite. It offers faster page rendering, and support for streaming video (using a built-in version of Kinoma Player). It is also provided with the Treo 755p

Treo 755p

The Treo 755p is a smartphone developed by Palm, Inc. It was released on May 15, 2007 as the first CDMA Treo without an aerial antenna. This Treo has a form factor similar to that of the GSM Treo 680, and is equipped with the full Palm OS. It has been described as a Treo 700p in a Treo 680's body...

 along with a mobile optimized version of Google Maps.

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. This is demonstrated on the mobile version of YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 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

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

Kinoma has released an upgrade to the Video Player, 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

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 and Google Video

Google Video

Google Videos is a video search engine, and formerly a free video sharing website, from Google Inc. Before removing user-uploaded content, the service allowed selected videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provided the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube...

. Many Palm users can get a discount on this upgrade.