Database Info

REVIEW: New, 3.2.00 version of TomeRaider3

TomeRaider is a well-known book/dictionary/reference work reader having a lot of useful application areas, most important of them being reading Wikipedia on your PDA. As I definitely wanted to add a complete, comparative review of TomeRaider to my series of dictionary / reference roundups (links in the article below), I spent quite a lot of time evaluating it.
Note that in this article I both compare the brand new (3.2.00) version to the previous (3.1.30) one and to the dictionary / reference alternates. Yeah, killing two birds with one stone
Also note that I directly compare TomeRaider3, as far as its dictionary engine is concerned, in the Definitive Roundup of All Pocket PC Dictionaries Part I – WordNet-based English Dictionaries. You will also want to check out the comparison chart in there to see how it compares to the alternates as a dictionary engine.
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Availability, compatibility
It’s available here, compatible with all Pocket PC platforms (yes, even MIPS/SH3 Pocket PC’s – I’ve even tested it on my MIPS Casio E-125 and was very happy with what I saw) and costs $38.00. The upgrade is free for all 3.x users – previous registration numbers will work.
What’s new compared to the previous, 3.1.30 version?
There have been major changes in mostly the GUI and how the screen dragging mode works.
The new version no longer has the icons at the bottom and the taskbar at the top – it defaults to full screen mode. This also means the Action button (or, the center switch of the Jog dial, if present) no longer switches between the normal and full screen mode, but between the index (subject) and the article view. (Also see the “Navigation” section for more information on how the hardware controls work.)
Now, all the necessary functionality is available via the additional icons on the vertical scrollbar and the context menu (there was no context menu in the previous version, except for a single “Copy” item after selecting some text; the same stands for the old vertical scrollbar, which was a plain one without additional icons / functionality). For example, in this screenshot showing in-text searching, the previous/next icons are also placed on the vertical scrollbar, along with the previous/next article icons (the latter are always displayed. That is, you don’t end up having to tap-and-hold and, then, click the needed menu item).
In cases, the new GUI is highly advantageous. For example, in the old version (as opposed to the new one – see below for more info), if you explicitly enable the Page dragging mode in Options, you won’t be able to click links and, if you really want to do that, you need to click the Opt icon again, then, Preferences and, then, disable the “Page dragging” checkbox and click OK. This is four clicks as opposed to one click in the new version (the “T” (“Text Select Mode”) icon, which is always displayed on the scrollbar).
Also, as has already been pointed out, another great advantage of the new version is the ability to click links in page dragging mode too. This has long been waited for.
Incidentally, the new version is much smaller (613k as opposed to 1800k) than the previous. Part of this can be easily explained by the missing skins and icons (the new version contains no fancy icons / skins), part of it by missing functionality (for example, the removed history list).
What are the newly-introduced problems and bugs?
There is an unfortunate bug in the new version. While the old version had absolutely no problems with rendering text, the new does (see how the word “Soviet” is rendered). This isn’t a VGA problem: it is equally a problem on QVGA devices as can also be seen in this screenshot. Also, you can’t fix it by changing the character size and/or switching screen orientation either and is also present on all operating systems (yeah, checked them all - even Pocket PC 2000! That is, on the WM2003SE Pocket Loox 720 , the WM5 Dell Axim x51v (A12), the WM5 hx4700 (2.01), the WM5 HTC Wizard, the Pocket PC 2002 iPAQ 3660 and the Pocket PC 2000 Casio E-125).
This problem is clearly related to the application’s using a non-native scrollbar (remember the beta1 version of Opera Mobile? It had exactly the same problem with its non-native text input area). Earlier versions used native Windows scrollbar controls (widgets); this doesn’t. This may be the reason the end of the last words are often invisible (and they can’t be scrolled, even if you enable the horizontal scrollbar in Preferences).
Finally, I seriously miss the backward / forward history. It seems it has been completely removed from the new version.
Note that the application is still (as with older versions) unable to copy any text to the clipboard on WM5 devices. When you select some text (if you switch off the default Screen drag mode with the T icon), you will end up being unable to copy it to the clipboard – there is just no “Copy” context menu item. It’s only on pre-WM5 devices that you can copy text to the clipboard.
What is still missing?
Unfortunately, there is still missing any advanced index searching (“Subject Lookup” – in older versions, “Quick Find”) capabilities. Everything it offers is plain character matching. It doesn’t even offer in-string (substring) searching (some dictionaries like those of ReferenceToGo refer to this as ‘Smart word list’), which is common in many (also) Pocket PC-based dictionaries. For example, Revolutionary Software Front’s reference/dictionary applications (Lextionary, Lexipedia) etc. are far better in this respect.
The lack of fuzzy search and typo / spelling mistake correction capabilities is a pain in the back too. In this respect, for example Lexipedia (please see ROUNDUP: Read / browse WikiPedia on your Pocket PC for more information), Lextionary or ReferenceToGo’s Dictionary and Encyclopedia Personal Reader (DEPR) are far superior to TomeRaider3.
Also, it still (?) lacks the ability able to open and handle multiple databases at the same time. This is especially important with dictionaries and reference works where you may want to search for a given word in several dictionaries or lexicons at the same time. See for example the example of Paragon’s SlovoEd 2005 and DEPR in the Definitive Roundup of All Pocket PC Dictionaries.
Navigation
Speaking of hardware buttons, it’s worth mentioning how the jog dial (when present) and the D-pad can be used to navigate pages.
On Pocket PC’s equipped with jog dials, it scrolls link-by-link in articles.
Under pre-WM5 operating systems, D-pad scrolls page-by-page. Under WM5, on the other hand, it scrolls link-by-link. You can, however, override this by explicitly overriding the Registry as is explained in the full tutorial & roundup “Windows Mobile 5: How do I modify the default scrolling behaviour of Web browsers?”. This is certainly good news.
In the index, both the jog dial and the D-pad scrolls entry-by-entry.
As far as devices (for example, the HTC Wizard or the Universal) with plain volume sliders (as opposed to jog dials) are concerned, unfortunately, the otherwise excellent SmartSKey (see this article for more information) doesn’t work in articles (which is certainly bad news), only in the index, where it scrolls page-by-page (tested on both the HTC Universal and Wizard). In this respect, the previous and the new version behaves in the same way.
The left/right D-pad buttons move to the previous/next article.
How does it compare to the alternates?
As far as dictionaries are concerned (if we plan to use it as a dictionary), it has both its weaknesses (really restricted searching capabilities, no studying support, no copy to clipboard under WM5, unable to use more than one databases at once, no system-level means of quick word lookup etc.) and strengths (a lot of freeware dictionary databases already available, including a WordNet 2.0-based one etc). I’d say many of the alternate dictionary engines (using the same database) are better (for example, the free MDict); therefore, I would NOT go for TomeRaider3 as a primary dictionary engine. Give MDict, or, as far as WordNet is concerned, Lexisgoo and/or WordBook a try instead first.
As far as reference works are concerned, the situation is completely different. Most of the Pocket PC-based references have a really bad front-end: for example, the PocketDirectory reference works (IMHO) have a definitely worse (for example, it uses pixel doubling on VGA devices) front-end than TomeRaider3. The same stands for Lexipedia, the other, remarkable Wikipedia port – except for the excellent fuzzy search capabilities, it’s much worse (mostly because of the complete lack of HTML support.)
Unlike all of the alternate reference works, it has excellent filtering / categorizing capabilities. It may prove useful in some (pretty restricted) cases – for example, in IMDb categorization. If you want the Internet Movie Database on your Pocket PC, TomeRaider3 is the way to go - you'll love it.
Verdict for upgraders only
I’m not sure you will want to upgrade to the new version. Particularly the “end of the rows is invisible” problem and the lack of history are clear steps backwards, while bugs like the missing copy to clipboard under WM5 are still not fixed. Let’s wait for a bugfix release, which fixes at least the rendering problems – that is, for the time being, it’s better to stick with version 3.1.30.

Article slightly updated.

REVIEW: Free tabbed Internet Explorer plug-in Maximus 1.0

The built-in Internet Explorer in the Windows Mobile operating system has always lacked multi-tabbed operation. There have been several third-party solutions to the problem, the latest being the free Maximus. Read on to find out how it fares against other Internet Explorer add-ons!
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Availability, compatibility
Unfortunately, the developer’s homepage doesn’t have a dedicated page on the application – only the statement “Open multiple tabbed pages inn a single browser! A fully functional web browser similar to Internet Explorer which allows you to open an unlimited amount of web pages at one time.”.
The direct download link is this HERE. Unzip the file and either transfer Maximus.ARM.CAB to your Pocket PC and click it there or start Maximus.exe on your desktop.
Installation
Upon install, if you, instead of directly transferring Maximus.ARM.CAB to your Pocket PC and clicking it there (the recommended way of installing the application), start Maximus.exe to install, make sure you untick “UnityRuntime” in the installer (as can be seen in here) because:
it would install the original version of CF2, which is NOT recommended any more. Make sure you get CF2 SP1 instead. It’s the latest version of CF2 and is much better than the one shipped with Maximus. See this article for more info on downloading.
what’s more, the package contains the WM5-only CF2 CAB file and, therefore, can’t be installed on WM2003(SE) devices.
After installation, the app must be started by just tapping the new Maximus icon (the app is, technically, not a simple PIE plug-in but an add-on which must be separately started, just like ftxPBrowser or Webby).
Pros
Using it doesn’t result in a considerable speed hit when loading new pages, as opposed to some other Compact Framework-based products like Webby. I’ve done some benchmarks with my traditional Web transfer benchmark page. While it took Maximus 30 seconds to fully load the page, the "barebone" PIE spent 24...27s in default (and 17..22 s in One Column) mode on my A12 AKU2.3 Dell Axim x51v. (Note that AKU 2 introduced a big loading speed increase; this is why the plain PIE loading speed is much better than in this pre-AKU2 A06 test). That is, the speed difference is about 15%, which is negligible
It’s free and if you really don’t have anything else but must have tabbed browsing support, you may want to use it. (But, then, the free version of Webby, Opera Mini, Minimo or, if you have a Pocket PC with an operating system prior to WM5, ftxPBrowser may prove much more useful.)
Cons
It really doesn’t add anything to the underlying PIE, except for new tabs, and even hides the original menus (more on this later)
It doesn’t support WM5 softkeys
it doesn’t add any new page / link / image context menu options. For example, the lack of link context menu options means, as it’ll open a link in the current frame, you can’t easily open a new frame for a new link
It hides the original IE menus. This means you won’t be able to access even basic functionality from inside Maximus. It’s impossible to change view mode (it defaults to the “Default” view mode, which isn’t very useful with many pages where the “One column” mode would be preferable); you can’t turn off/on loading pictures, you can’t hide the address bar, the text size (zoom percentage) etc.
It doesn’t have access to the persistent URL history, unlike ALL other alternates – it only lists URL’s entered in the last session
While the context menus have the Full Screen option, it doesn’t work
No access to favorites (a BIG problem!)
To get a picture of how simple its menus are, here are some screenshots: 1 2 3.
Error dialogs / messages don’t contain any text; an example can be seen here
Verdict
Definitely not recommended. Even the free version of Webby is far better if you really want to stick with Compact FW 2-based solutions (I wouldn’t). Currently, I don’t think you should even think about installing it. Hopefully a subsequent version will offer far more functionality.
Recommended links
Do check out my other Web browser reviews in the Web Browsers category in the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog.

Web browsing news: new version of Opera Mobile and NetFront out with major upgrades

Anyone having read my well-known Windows Mobile Web Browser Bible know NetFront and Opera Mobile are leading Web browsers on Windows Mobile. Betas / Technical Previews of forthcoming versions (3.4 for NetFront and 8.65 for Opera Mobile) have been constantly released; the last ones, of both browsers, recently. In this article, I elaborate on these brand new versions.
NetFront 3.4 Technical Previews 007
NetFront, while not really having gained new features (except for support for Flash), has been enhanced: now, the current, free (!) Technical Preview isn’t less usable than the commercial version (except for some, for most of the users, not THAT important, really advanced plug-ins like the Java Virtual Machine). This means you can have a fully-fledged Web browser without having to shell out any money – as is exactly the case with the new Opera Mobile, to be discussed below – till 08/31/2007 (it only expires then).
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Getting and installing
Download the CAB file HERE (the main TP page is HERE).
Pros
No longer requires a lengthy initial setup (involving even a soft reset) phase at the first start or when you switch to proportional fonts
You’re no longer restricted to 10 bookmarks (favorites) in the TP version
It no longer restricts the number of the tabs to be opened to two either
The TP version too supports Flash as can be seen in for example HERE (showing Bomberman). It’s even capable of playing YouTube videos as can be seen in HERE. Unfortunately, its YouTube playback is WAY slower (that is, pretty useless) than that of Opera Mobile or, for that matter, the latest TCPMP Flash plug-in (of which I’ll soon publish an article), therefore, should be avoided. If you DO want to enable it, go to Menu / Tools / Browser Settings / External Tools / Plug-in and enable the given checkbox as can be seen in HERE.
Cons
Unfortunately, when you open a link in a new tab, the current settings (for example, rendering / one-column / image display mode) aren’t inherited, as opposed to ALL the other (decent) multitab-enabled browsers on both the desktop Windows and Windows Mobile. Sure, you can quickly apply pre-defined profiles at Menu / View Profile, but it’ll take a LOT of time to re-render the pages. Inheriting view settings would have been the best way to go.
The 5-tab restriction is still here (you can’t open more than five tabs at a time)
The Flash plug-in is as bad (CPU usage-wise) as was in version 3.3 (you will want to keep it deactivated in order to avoid your handheld to really slow down)
No MS Smartphone (WM6 Standard)-compliance: while the CAB installer can be installed on a WM5+ Smartphone, the main GUI isn’t displayed when you start the browser. (tested on the HTC Vox/s710 in both orientations)
Not compliant with WM operating systems prior to WM5
You must still manually switch to proportional fonts in Menu / Tools / Browser Settings / General / Font / Use proportional font (don’t forget to do this!)
Opera Mobile 8.65 beta 2
In my opinion, the best Windows Mobile Web browser, particularly on the Smartphone, is Opera Mobile. The new beta has recently been released and is available HERE for free (!), unrestricted (!) download. The major update is it no longer having driver memory problems (see my previous reviews of these problems) and is, therefore, a must install. To my knowledge, there aren’t other new features.
The trial expires on 10/01/2007 – that is, you can surf the Net for free until then. I, however, recommend going and buying a license – Opera certainly deserves the support, not only because Opera Mobile, but also their top-notch desktop Opera browser and Opera Mini.
The Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) version of Opera Mobile is a REAL must – way better than anything else. I’ll publish a big upgrade of the Windows Mobile Web Browser Bible, concerning Web browsing on the Smartphone, in the near future.

in netfront i can't find any progressbar or similar indicator for the current status of a loading page. is there something like that or doesn't netfront provide this feature?
edit: i will try netfront for some days. compared to opera mobile 8.65beta it seems that netfront offers an more acceptable browsing experience without changing a page's layout to one column on my qvga device(page overview and virtual canvas).
but opera mobile's one column view looks better than netfront's.

REVIEW: a new iPhone-alike Web browser, Touch Browser

Web browsing is one of the major application areas of portable devices – no wonder the iPhone is also Web-centric with its excellent Safari browser.
The “accelerated” scrolling mode of Safari is widely copied in the Windows Mobile world. The latest title to support this kind of screen dragging mode is Touch Browser by Makayama available for purchase and, now, trial download HERE (manual HERE).
It’s an external wrapper to Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM), just like Webby and unlike traditional IEM plug-ins like Spb Pocket Plus, PIEPlus and MultiIE. This also means it has some of the inherent problems common to all these solutions; more on this later.
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"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
OK, enough talk, let’s get straight to the facts: frankly, as of version 1.0.2, I’m not at all satisfied with this app. Currently, there are far better alternatives. Why? Let’s take a detailed look. (Note that this list is pretty much terse. If you don’t understand it, make sure you read my other Web browser reviews and Bibles; in them, I’ve thoroughly elaborated on all the issues I’ve referred to in this review.)
The keyboard is either vowels on top or numbers – there’s no QWERTY layout, unlike on the iPhone or with, say, Spb Full Screen Keyboard. This itself makes URL input very hard – iPhone’s QWERTY inputting is just far better and, if you’re (as most people) used to QWERTY, faster. Screenshots showing this: Landscape 1 2, Portrait 1 2. System-level auto-completion works in URL input mode (see THIS), but there’s no address completion (based on the history / the favorites) the like in Opera Mini 4.1 or all versions of Opera Mobile. Also note that it’s impossible to enter symbols like ~, ? and & - this is a MAJOR problem too! All you can do is assigning a hardware button to <Input Panel> and use it to quickly bring up the keyboard and enter anything on it, unrestricted.
It’s in no way possible to access the standard menu. Fortunately, it’s possible to access favorites via the context menu and the usual PIE / IEM context menu items, including for example Save Image for images (which doesn’t work?!), are all accessible. The lack of menu access results in, say, the inability to switch between low and hi-res modes on VGA Pocket PC’s on the fly. What is worse, it’s not possible to access the three (One Column / Fit to Screen / Desktop) different rendering modes in View, should you want to switch between them on-the-fly. Yeah, sure, ZB does have an entire button for one-column view, so, the problem is mitigated to some degree. Nevertheless, the default mode seems to be the desktop (!!!) view, which is, in most cases, completely useless and to-be-avoided. That is, you’ll end up having to switch to the one-column view, which, with some kinds of content (for example, charts) results in a huge decrease in readability (in general, the “Fit to screen” mode, which isn’t supported by Touch Browser, is the best of the three modes).
Speaking of the (W)VGA hi-res mode switch introduced in WM5 AKU 3.5, independent of its state, documents will ALWAYS be rendered in low-res. This is not what you may want to prefer if you have a hi-res device and want to take advantage of the resolution to fit as much data into the screen as possible.
The Settings menu has been hastily designed for Portrait devices and needs scrolling in Landscape – (this is, of course, a minor issue, compared to the major problems of the app)
No tabs or other enhancements; the only enhancement is the one-column mode, which doesn’t add much to WM2003SE+ devices (it was in WM2003SE that One Column mode was introduced). Compare this to the tab support of Spb Pocket Plus
No way to switch to text copy/paste mode – VERY bad!
No hotkey support at all – all you have is the D-pad (and, of course, the on-screen menu) for shortcuts
Dynamic scrolling is just far less spectacular and far slower than with Spb– mostly because of the slow CF-based engine
The D-pad can’t be used for scrolling and the Action button to select links – it’s strictly for bringing up / hiding the menu (up/down), navigating to the previous/next page (left/right) and showing the actual position of the viewport in the page (Action). The latter (displaying the actual position with scrollbar-alikes) doesn’t let for scrollbar-based scrolling and is far-far inferior to, say, Opera Mini 4’s or NetFront’s minimap / page overview solution. That is, there’s absolutely NO way of scrolling the page without using the touchscreen, only via the buttons. This is a REAL disadvantage compared to ALL other browsers or PIE plug-ins, where you can not only use the D-pad for scrolling, but you can also configure how scrolling should be done (link / line / page-based scrolling) or, in cases, can even use other hardware buttons for scrolling. Touch Browser doesn’t allow for the latter (that is, assigning scroll or page down functionality to hardware buttons as is explained in the Button Enhancer Bible.) It isn’t compliant with SmartSKey either, configured to page scrolling using the volume slider – unlike with most other Web browsers (or plug-ins).
Sometimes it just crashes – for example, when just entering http://www..com or the random URL given in the system input panel tip above. The latter can only be helped with the phone buttons. Also, upon exiting the app with the X icon, it always throws exceptions (like THIS and THIS). This certainly shows it needs some HEAVY, additional debugging.
Absolutely no feedback on the state of loading pages – unlike with the underlying IEM.
Verdict
While I pretty much liked Makayama’s past Windows Mobile-related software titles, all I can say is you’d better stay away from this title for the time being – that is, before it undergoes a real facelift and enhancement. It’s just worse than the alternatives. If you do need iPhone-like accelerated (!) scrolling, go for any of the newer browsers: Opera Mobile 9.x, NetFront 3.5 or, if you plan to stick with IEM, Spb Pocket Plus 4. If all you want to have is screen-based dragging (without the nice “acceleration”), then, other, even older browsers will do: NetFront 3.3/3.4, Opera Mobile 8.6x, Thunderhawk, Opera Mini (all versions) or the two traditional IEM plug-ins: PIEPlus and MultiIE. Technically, these browsers are ALL far superior – far more reliable, far more feature-packed, easier-to-use (buttons, fast scrolling, minimap etc.) and, with some of them (Opera Mini, for example) even free.
Also, this browser (as with Webby) certainly shows Compact Framework is just unsuitable for writing fast-scrolling apps. Use native C++ for implementing applications that rely on quick (!) graphics.
Knowing the Makayama folks are pretty adept and knowledgeable people, I really hope they do improve this browser and that, once, Touch Browser will become a decent alternative to screen-dragging solutions. For the time being, I don’t recommend it, however.
Acknowledgements
Thanks for the Makayama folks for providing me with a test version. This was about a day before the trial version has been released. Should I have known beforehand they were going to release a trial, I definitely wouldn’t have requested a test (read: registered) version, though – after all, I hate biting the feeding hand. Exactly this is why I’m asking ALL software developers to ALWAYS release trial versions of their titles. Then, I would have a far easier time writing bad reviews of titles I’ve received a test version (practically, a freebie) of.

What to come?
Now that I’m getting prepared for my W3C speech at Saturday, I plan to quickly update my YouTube playback & browsing-related stuff, particularly now that
1, CorePlayer 1.2.3 has just been released - with enhanced YouTube support;
2, a new and, according to the dev, somewhat faster compile of the YouTube TCPMP plug-in has been released
3, finally, firmware version v21 for the Nokia N95 has been released, adding Flash Lite 3 and, consequently, native YouTube support in Nokia Web. So far, I’ve found it excellent with its full features like stereo (!) audio playback, full screen mode etc – it’s certainly worth updating my Windows Mobile articles too to see how they compare to the native Flash Lite 3-based solution of Nokia.
Other reviews
JAMM’s review - definitely worth a read

Nice review, I think i'll stick with Opera Mobile...
On the youtube front I'd suggest this as an alternative. It uses TCPMP Codecs, but is so much faster and more efficient...

Thanks, Menneisyys ... for another excellent review. Personally, I use PIEPlus 2.2, and am pretty satisfied with what it has to offer, outside of the fact that the History Menu feature is extremely buggy.
I recently installed a test upgrade of SPB PocketPlus, from 3.x to 4.0.2, and find that it's implementation of IE features is not going to make me uninstall PIEPlus anytime soon ... Too bad, as I don't see any new development from ReenSoft at all, and fear they have abandoned their software efforts. PIEPlus 2.2 is really pretty good, but it is not perfect. I would have loved to see them DO something with it in the past two years.
Oh well ... the wait goes on (and on and on and on )
-pvs

.... or
http://www.skyfire.com/

UPDATE (04/23/2008): version 1.1 has just been released with the following fixes / enhancements:
- Qwerty keyboard option
- Button to turn TouchFlo on/off
- Improved animation algorithm (smoother)
- Sound on/off
- Saves custom home page
- Options page screen lag fixed
- (compared to pre-1.0.2 versions,) Added hyphen (-) on the keyboard
I keep you posted of the future versions. When most / all of my grieves are fixed, I post an entirely revised review.

Yet another review & comparison update: Web browser Teashark

As with UCWEB (see my new review HERE), it was more than one and a half year ago that I’ve reviewed the (then) current version of the Java-based Web browser, Teashark. In order to be as up to date as possible, I deemed it necessary to properly test the current version in order to see whether it’s any good and how it compares to the alternative browsers.
To make a long story short, I heavily recommend this browser if you have a non-touchscreen phone (for example, a Windows Mobile Standard smartphone or a Symbian phone) and, for some reason, you don’t want to use Opera Mini (or especially need the goodies Teashark has, while Opera doesn't: italic support and the sophisticated copy-from-webpages come into mind). Many of the shortcomings of the old version have been fixed; most importantly, the bad rendering engine. The new one is Webkit-based, which certainly shows: while one of the alternatives, UCWEB, completely fails at rendering most real-world Web pages retaining their original layout, Teashark very rarely fails to do the same. Two examples:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
(DPReview forums – correctly rendered)
(the W3C page: here, you always need to press left/right to align the differently indented original text. This works in exactly the same way as in Opera Mini.)
If you have a touchscreen-based phone or PDA, on the other hand, you most probably will want to ignore this title: it makes absolutely no use of the touchscreen. As, otherwise, the browser is very nice, I really hope this issue is fixed before long so that Windows Mobile or Symbian S60 5th ed users will be able to use their touchscreens.
Unfortunately, as with UCWEB, it doesn’t have a BlackBerry-compliant version. (The JAR file can be installed and runs, but it can’t be used as it still presents a three-softkey-based menu, which is pretty much far away from the one menubutton-based approach of BlackBerry. This also means none of the menu items can be accessed – all you see when you press the hardware menu button on the BB is “Close”.)
Teashark has several goodies the other browsers really should implement:
- Excellent and very easy copy/paste support – much cleaner than that of UCWEB
- Support for italic characters (it also supports bold but not underline)
- It even supports “previous” in “find in page”
- Pretty well thought-out thumbnail-based quick switching between in-memory (and recently visited) pages
Compared to Opera Mini, it has some major problems, though:
- No touchscreen support at all – a MAJOR drawback!
- Much fewer Web pages can be kept in-memory
- Somewhat worse Web standards compliance (still much better than that of UCWEB, though.) Note that you will encounter for example dropdown list selection problems (with, for example, THIS demopage - give it a try if you have an old Jeodek [on Windows Mobile]! You’ll see you won’t be able to select any item) with old Esmertec Jeodek versions (for example, the one coming with the HTC Vox / s710 smartphone). You WILL want to upgrade to a newer Jbed version; for example, I haven’t encountered similar problems with the latest Jbed version, 20090217.5.1R2 available for download HERE (direct link to download) – or, if you want a version with multiple midlet execution support, 20081203.2.1 linked from the same post (direct link to download).
Comparison chart
You'll want to very thoroughly scrutinize the chart - as with most my articles, a lot more information is contained in it than in the article. It's HERE. Note that the chart has info on all the other Java-based browsers too – and a lot of never-before published tips and tricks on, for example, getting a signed version of Opera Mini.

Made the thread temporarily sticky, mostly because of the useful contents of the chart really worth checking out.

Something worth considering when it comes to Teashark (and, to somewhat lesser degree, UCWEB) as opposed to BOLT and, most importantly, Opera Mini (the two latter browsers have a well-known company behind them with [as long as BOLT is considered, I refer to its predecessor, Thunderhawk] long years of working without any reports on their “listening to” the HTTP traffic). After all, don’t forget that all these four browsers (except for UCWEB’s non-Java versions) use a central server doing the reformatting & compression work for the requested pages and, therefore, eavesdropping, at least in theory, might be possible. Let me cross-post GldRush98’s post (original at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1522658&postcount=5 ).
Cross-posting this from a post I made on the Opera Mini forums, since this community is more likely to understand my issues with this browser...
There is something fishy with Teashark.
THINK ABOUT IT.
1) They appeared out of no where with a Java app.
2) There is NO linkable parent company on their site. Can't look up domain registration, can't find out ANY other information AT ALL about them and who they are.
3) They have absolutely NO way to relate back to the community. They have a "blog" run on a wordpress backend. That right there should throw up some red flags. Why would a "company" or WHATEVER they are that is developing a Java browser (with no ads in it mind you), use Wordpress as a blog backend? That just makes no sense to me
4) How exactly does this company make their money? Something tells me you don't want to know if you've been using their browser. They have no advertisements on their site or in the browser. They have to be making money somewhere, because they wouldn't have these proxy servers serving up loads of bandwidth for free. Where is their money coming from? A parent company? Who?
5) Their whole website is fishy. Aside from complete lack of information, why do all links on their site link you to port 8080 on their server? Why aren't they running over standard port 80? Something is odd about that alone.
6) The vendor tag in the app is labeled as "Vendor". Ummmm... what?
Their website traces back to: "IP 69.72.142.98 is from United States(US) in region North America"
That is about the only traceable information I can figure out.
It creeps me out that this mysterious company pops up out of no where and throws this "browser" app out there, with absolutely no effort to disseminate who they are. What is even creepier is that people have downloaded this app and are using it with ZERO knowledge of who this company is or who is behind them!