ACCESS announced that it would launch a new browser known as NetFront BE. This browser is derived from Blink, the layout engine for the Chromium Project. It supports HTML5, giving it better capability in environments where devices may have different operating systems, but still must be able to communicate in spite of those differences.

Tokyo-based ACCESS CO., develops several products for what it calls the ‘beyond-PC’ market: smartphones, Internet appliances, embedded systems and television sets. Its browser solutions are based on the Chromium Project, an open source browser project started by Google (News – Alert).

NetFront browsers have several features that make them better-suited for the many different devices that use them. On smartphones with relatively smaller screens, these browsers provide a more intelligent screen sizing, instead of clipping off the part that does not fit on the screen. This same technology helps it render vertically or horizontally intensive pages to fit on the device’s display without needing horizontal scrolling.

ACCESS’s philosophy is not just about open source, but also being platform-agnostic. This makes its solutions a great fit for HTML5. One of the major philosophies behind the language is its native support for media that previously came from plugins. By providing this support, there is no longer any need for third party software installations that tend to consume memory and even crash. Since HTML by its nature can render on Linux, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android (News – Alert) and all platforms that adhere to the HTML specification, video and audio support can be provided on nearly any device.

The launch of NetFront BE is a critical development in a technological world that has seen the device and OS market become very fragmented. Bridging the gap between these devices takes a platform-independent environment like HTML5. With future predictions of M2M, IoT, auto collision avoidance systems dominating the landscape, devices that cannot communicate with each other are not only behind the curve, but could be potentially unsafe to rely on.