Database Info

REVIEW: another brand new Web Browser, UCWEB

I’ve long been wanting to review the brand new UCWEB browser which, while definitely not as good as Opera Mobile or IEM enhanced with either PIEPlus or MultiIE, can be a good, multi-tabbed, bandwidth-saving alternative to commercial browsers as soon as its bugs are ironed out and page loading speed increased.
{
"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"
}
(a QVGA Pocket PC screenshot; a WM6 VGA screenshot)
Availability, installing
You’ll need to use the generic WM CAB version. For Pocket PC’s, use the second link HERE (as of the time of writing, THIS is the direct CAB download link – it may change in the future!). This is all linked from HERE, should you want to know where it’s from.
Note that there’s also a first link in the page (Wince boot programs (Recommend)). I couldn’t find out why the UCWEB people recommend it – I’ve found it completely useless. That is, don’t bother downloading / installing it.
After installing, just click the brand new UCWEB icon in Start / Programs and you can start using it. To enter a IRL to go to, just go to Menu / Open / Enter Address.
Note that there is a MIDlet version of the browser too. Its Chinese download page is HERE. I haven’t tested this version as native Pocket PC browsers are inevitably better than their MIDlet counterparts. Not even Opera Mini 4, the best Java-based mini-browser out there (OM4 for short; see review HERE) comes close to the native Opera Mobile or IEM + PIEPlus / MultiIE combo, feature-wise. (The ease of Web browsing, standards compliance, price, bandwidth usage and speed are completely unrelated questions. In them, Opera Mini just rocks – no wonder the latest beta version of OM4 has quickly become my favourite and most commonly used Web browser.)
Also note that I could only find a Pocket PC-specific non-MIDlet, Windows Mobile-compatible version of the browser. There doesn’t seem to be a MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) version of it – the above CAB file is Pocket PC-only as can also be seen in HERE
Cons
Interestingly, it has problems sending comments to the PPCMag blog (some Chinese error message is displayed). Nevertheless, the comments arrive.
WM5+ softkeys are previous/next only; no real menu access via softkeys
Really-really unreliable traffic: sometimes it just doesn’t load anything (screenshot of the errror message HERE)
It’s still definitely slower than OM4
No visible tabs: to switch between pages, you need to use either the backward/forward buttons (WM5+ softkeys or the 7/9 phonepad / keyboard buttons) or go to Menu / Window / Windows list (three screen taps - quite a lot!)
It’s very unstable: it has crashed on me several times (particularly when tap-and-holding the screen)
It seems disabling Small Screen Rendering in Menu / Settings / System / Small Screen Render results in NOT being able to access the Web any more (it continuously keeps saying it’s in the “Initialize network connection” state and, after a timeout, it displays an error message) – not even if you toggle the checkbox back to enabled state. I’ve confirmed this on two of my Pocket PC’s. That is, NEVER uncheck this checkbox! This is certainly bad news, as the browser defaults to one column mode, which might not be the best solution for all users / pages, particularly not on with (W)VGA devices.
Couldn’t find a Smartphone version
Pros
Bandwidth saving
Unlimited number of windows open (as opposed to, say, NetFront, with its 5-tabs-at-most, really restrictive approach)
Configurable User-Agent
Configurable image quality (OM4 also supports this – with two quality / size settings)
Page transition effects, just like in Opera Mini (fortunately, it can be configured or even switched off entirely; screenshots: 1 2 3)
Widely (both size and style) configurable fonts
Support for true full screen
Hardware keypad support for page scrolling
Pretty good favorites support, including access to IEM favorites (unlike with OM4) and even sorting (the latter is painfully missing from even OM4). Screenshots: 1 2
Verdict
A day, this browser may become a serious alternative to current Windows Mobile browsers. Today, however, it is barely usable, even if you take its price into account. (The also free Opera Mini 4 delivers MUCH snappier web browsing and is a much more reliable browser.)
You may still want to give it a try but, again, don’t expect anything. Given that both the browser and the central server it uses is very unreliable and slow, however, you won’t want to rely on it as your only web browser.
Recommended articles
Windows Mobile / Pocket PC Web Browsing Bible
Windows Mobile / Smartphone Web Browsing Bible

Menneisyys said:
I’ve long been wanting to review the brand new UCWEB browser which, while definitely not as good as Opera Mobile or IEM enhanced with either PIEPlus or MultiIE, can be a good, multi-tabbed, bandwidth-saving alternative to commercial browsers as soon as its bugs are ironed out and page loading speed increased.
(a QVGA Pocket PC screenshot; a WM6 VGA screenshot)
Availability, installing
You’ll need to use the generic WM CAB version. For Pocket PC’s, use the second link HERE (as of the time of writing, THIS is the direct CAB download link – it may change in the future!). This is all linked from HERE, should you want to know where it’s from.
Note that there’s also a first link in the page (Wince boot programs (Recommend)). I couldn’t find out why the UCWEB people recommend it – I’ve found it completely useless. That is, don’t bother downloading / installing it.
After installing, just click the brand new UCWEB icon in Start / Programs and you can start using it. To enter a IRL to go to, just go to Menu / Open / Enter Address.
Note that there is a MIDlet version of the browser too. Its Chinese download page is HERE. I haven’t tested this version as native Pocket PC browsers are inevitably better than their MIDlet counterparts. Not even Opera Mini 4, the best Java-based mini-browser out there (OM4 for short; see review HERE) comes close to the native Opera Mobile or IEM + PIEPlus / MultiIE combo, feature-wise. (The ease of Web browsing, standards compliance, price, bandwidth usage and speed are completely unrelated questions. In them, Opera Mini just rocks – no wonder the latest beta version of OM4 has quickly become my favourite and most commonly used Web browser.)
Also note that I could only find a Pocket PC-specific non-MIDlet, Windows Mobile-compatible version of the browser. There doesn’t seem to be a MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) version of it – the above CAB file is Pocket PC-only as can also be seen in HERE
Cons
Interestingly, it has problems sending comments to the PPCMag blog (some Chinese error message is displayed). Nevertheless, the comments arrive.
WM5+ softkeys are previous/next only; no real menu access via softkeys
Really-really unreliable traffic: sometimes it just doesn’t load anything (screenshot of the errror message HERE)
It’s still definitely slower than OM4
No visible tabs: to switch between pages, you need to use either the backward/forward buttons (WM5+ softkeys or the 7/9 phonepad / keyboard buttons) or go to Menu / Window / Windows list (three screen taps - quite a lot!)
It’s very unstable: it has crashed on me several times (particularly when tap-and-holding the screen)
It seems disabling Small Screen Rendering in Menu / Settings / System / Small Screen Render results in NOT being able to access the Web any more (it continuously keeps saying it’s in the “Initialize network connection” state and, after a timeout, it displays an error message) – not even if you toggle the checkbox back to enabled state. I’ve confirmed this on two of my Pocket PC’s. That is, NEVER uncheck this checkbox! This is certainly bad news, as the browser defaults to one column mode, which might not be the best solution for all users / pages, particularly not on with (W)VGA devices.
Couldn’t find a Smartphone version
Pros
Bandwidth saving
Unlimited number of windows open (as opposed to, say, NetFront, with its 5-tabs-at-most, really restrictive approach)
Configurable User-Agent
Configurable image quality (OM4 also supports this – with two quality / size settings)
Page transition effects, just like in Opera Mini (fortunately, it can be configured or even switched off entirely; screenshots: 1 2 3)
Widely (both size and style) configurable fonts
Support for true full screen
Hardware keypad support for page scrolling
Pretty good favorites support, including access to IEM favorites (unlike with OM4) and even sorting (the latter is painfully missing from even OM4). Screenshots: 1 2
Verdict
A day, this browser may become a serious alternative to current Windows Mobile browsers. Today, however, it is barely usable, even if you take its price into account. (The also free Opera Mini 4 delivers MUCH snappier web browsing and is a much more reliable browser.)
You may still want to give it a try but, again, don’t expect anything. Given that both the browser and the central server it uses is very unreliable and slow, however, you won’t want to rely on it as your only web browser.
Recommended articles
Windows Mobile / Pocket PC Web Browsing Bible
Windows Mobile / Smartphone Web Browsing Bible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Two years in the making but I believe the follow up review is due with this one. The new UCWEB is akin to mini but better in my opinion. Tabbed browsing, low system resources, fast page loads... its pretty sweet.
I would like to read another of your informative reviews to be more specific...

moSess said:
Two years in the making but I believe the follow up review is due with this one. The new UCWEB is akin to mini but better in my opinion. Tabbed browsing, low system resources, fast page loads... its pretty sweet.
I would like to read another of your informative reviews to be more specific...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I'll surely review it soon - now, I'm posting a follow-up on my BOLT review now that the new version is out.

Thank you for the reply. I will most definitely be looking forward to it. Your insight is always interesting.

moSess said:
Two years in the making but I believe the follow up review is due with this one. The new UCWEB is akin to mini but better in my opinion. Tabbed browsing, low system resources, fast page loads... its pretty sweet.
I would like to read another of your informative reviews to be more specific...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried it out after reading this. Seems about as fast as opera mini and with a better interface but with bad page rendering. Especially with frames.

oic0 said:
Tried it out after reading this. Seems about as fast as opera mini and with a better interface but with bad page rendering. Especially with frames.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, in some respects (for example, tabbing, download managers, user-agent settings or copy capabilities), it's way ahead of Opera Mini. Too bad its rendering engine is way inferior.
I'll publish the review in an hour.

OK, review ready: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3567996

Just get Opera, so that you wont have to worry about "Better" Web Browsers.

Well, I am going to read the review now. As far as rendering goes, the browser has the ability to use zoom as well, which gives full web pages and hence, no rendering. I am sure Menneisyys has picked up on that.

I feel like I tried UCWEB a month after I got my Tilt, which would be last April. Thanks for the review I'll look into it after I finish testing Bolt
edit: haha just realized how old the review was, durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

redbandana said:
I feel like I tried UCWEB a month after I got my Tilt, which would be last April. Thanks for the review I'll look into it after I finish testing Bolt
edit: haha just realized how old the review was, durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup,it is - but my new one is up-to-date - follow the link above

help
how to use download video clips did anybody tried

Use another browser like Opera

Web Browsing News as of 10/18/2007: new Opera Mobile, Picsel, Spb Pocket Plus

A lot has happened in the last month on the Web browser scene. Let’s go over the news!
1. Opera Mobile 8.65 Final released!
Since this March, there have been two beta versions of Opera Mobile, without doubt the BEST, fastest and most standards compliant Web browser for the Windows Mobile platform. Now, almost half a year after the release of the first Beta, the final version has, finally, been released, of which I was also a (closed) betatester, working closely together with the developers and decision makers of Opera.
Compared to the 8.65 betas, which I thoroughly elaborated on in the Web Browsing Bible (and, therefore, in here, I don’t elaborate on these new features – make sure you read my roundup above), there are only few changes. There, on the other hand, have been several bugfixes; for example, the really annoying DEFBROWSER bug I’ve, independent of some other people doing the same, discovered and reported HERE).
Design decisions
Single column layout removed. This is a design decision I don’t really agree with. Particularly if you have a VGA device, you MAY find the lack of the single column mode annoying, particularly with sites / pages that, otherwise, would work much better with a well-working One Column mode. An example: a Wikipedia article in PIE’s One Column mode on a VGA device in Landscape mode (Largest charsize, High Resolution enabled) (the same with Fit to screen – as can be seen, it’s pretty much useless) and the same in Opera Mobile (Minimum font size: 8; Zoom: 100%). As can clearly be seen, One Column modes will ALWAYS be able to present more information. You can, of course, use zoom facilities so that the horizontal screen estate is fully filled in but, then, the character size will also grow and, what is worse, the images will also become pixelizated. (Also see THIS thread for more info / discussion.)
Desktop view, which has been made the default (!) viewing mode, has been made much friendlier. Now, it’s using a bit smaller characters than before. Should you still find them too big, switch to the default (fit to screen) viewing mode because setting Menu / Tools / Settings / Minimum font size to even 8 doesn’t seem to do the trick. Thanks to the, most of the time, excellently working new wrapping functionality, makes it possible to live without having to scroll around. This is shown in the following (VGA Landscape) screenshot with the View menu shown:
{
"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"
}
Now, the cache is stored on the same drive as the executable program itself. While this is what many people have been asked for (particularly with devices only having 64 Mbytes of Flash ROM, meaning only 10-11 Mbytes of it available to the users – for example, the HTC Oxygen / s310 Smartphone is one of them –, you will definitely like this.
Note that, however, this approach might have negative consequences. As has been explained in my Web Browsing Bible, storing the browser cache on a slow-to-create-files-on storage card (most non-high-end cards are like this) may result in the slowdown of the page loading. If this is a concern to you (because you visit pages that contain a LOT of different images, which are all cached), make sure you manually (!) relocate the cache to somewhere else – or, for that matter, completely disable it in Menu / Tools / Settings / History / Cache Size as can be seen in HERE. To relocate it back to the main storage (or even a RAMdisk, if its being completely deleted each reset and the decrease of RAM memory isn’t a problem either because, for example, you use a 128M RAM model), just follow my previous Opera cache relocation tutorial.
Problems I’ve discovered and/or fixed in the meantime
On MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) phones, when you have really low RAM memory (you’re running out of it), problems may occur with keyboard shortcuts. Namely, no matter what hardware shortcut button you press, the same functionality (in general, Reload and / or Back) will be executed. This can lead to confusion – at first, it caused me a lot of headache too until I’ve understood how this all works.
All in all, if your hardware dialpad buttons don’t do what they’re supposed to do, you may want to shut down (some) other apps and / or Opera Mobile tabs. This will free up some RAM, which will result in the buttons working again.
There’s still no hardware application button support (you can only tie button shortcuts to dialpad / keyboard buttons), but now that I’ve published a FULL tutorial and explanation of all decent Windows Mobile button enhancers, including how you can configure your hardware buttons to simulate the pressing of numeric (dialpad) buttons, this isn’t that big an issue. Just make sure you read the Button Enhancer Bible and do what’s there.
There had been a problem with non-English operating systems because of the wired-in (English) directory names with the initial release. This, along with manually fixing it, has been fixed in the meantime; that is, current builds no longer have this problem.
Verdict
Opera Mobile is and, as it seems, definitely remaining the best browser for both Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones. While there still are some glitches (the worst of them, the lack for hardware app buttons, having been fixed by me), these problems are nothing compared to the generic sluggishness and/or Web standards incompatibility with (most of) the other browsers. Make sure you get at least the trial version.
2. New (1.0.5) Picsel version released!
There is (see THIS) also a new version of the Picsel Web browser. To get it, download the CAB file here (mirror HERE). You only need to download the CAB file; you do NOT need to install the previous Picsel version first, no matter what is stated HERE
As opposed to some XDA-Dev folks, I haven’t found much improvement. For example, the CSS compliance is still very bad (the result of the Acid2 test is HERE; that of the CSS1 test is HERE). The Ajax compliance isn’t a tad better either (tested with THIS and THIS test suite).
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype

3. New Spb Pocket Plus
Spb Pocket Plus has always been one of the best Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Pro / Classic) system enhancers. The brand new, just released 4.0 version boasts, in addition to a lot of new functionalities, a, compared to the much less significant changes during the 2.x-3.x version jump, considerable
(screenshot showing the four tabs, all populated, and the drop-down list (now, only having one element) of the invisible tabs in the upper right corner. For comparison: a screenshot of the context menu of the old, 3.x-series version HERE, also showing there haven’t been any new buttons / any tabs in it.)
It has received the following niceties:
screen dragging mode; note that the autoscroll can be a bit of a pain in the back; it’s sometimes the best to disable it
tabs (with a pretty welcome context menu – very few other products have the same, as can also be seen in the “Tab context menu (if any)” row of the chart of the Web Browsing Bible)
adding the ability to switch off / on keyboard dragging in the context menu
a separate quick access button, next to the “Action” button of the address bar; note that “Search” here makes a quick Google search with the text you enter in the address field.
The settings screen has remained similarly simple – as you can see, there isn’t much to choose from. The same stands for Menu / Spb Pocket Plus, which didn’t change either as can be seen in HERE. As far as saving Web pages is concerned, you can still only save them as simple HTML files – no MHT or full HTML page saving is possible. Incidentally, as can also be seen in the last screenshot, the new SPP version has a system-level (not only available when saving pages, but from every app that would, otherwise, use the system-level, default, very dumb file dialog) file dialog box like that of Mad Programmer, whose FileDialogChanger I’ve often recommended. HERE’s a screenshot of the Setup program where you can en or disable it. (note that, as opposed to Mad Programmer’s FileDialogChanger, you can’t define exceptions – there’re no configuration capabilities of the new “File Open/Save Dialog”).
Compare this to the immense setting / menu options of PIEPlus or even MultiIE and you understand why I still recommend either of these for the serious Internet Explorer Mobile user, as opposed to Spb Pocket Plus. Not that SPP would be THAT bad any more.
It also has some bugs, but, knowing how great the Spb folks at bugfixing are, I’m pretty sure they’ll be fixed VERY soon:
clicking the cross in the upper right corner (to close the IE window) doesn’t work if there are more than one tabs open. You MUST manually bring up the Start menu and switch (in cases, re-run so that the execution is switched to it) to the program you want to. Of course, if you use a third-party task switcher (for example, the highly recommended Magic Button, PHM’s Alt-Tab or almost all the hardware app button enhancers reviewed HERE)
the smooth scrolling mode isn’t really doing what it’s supposed to: in Landscape mode, it’s, in general, scrolling more than it should or even scrolls multiple pages. Some people have also reported other problems with it; see for example THIS.
4. New version of jb5
In the MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible, I’ve elaborated on the brand new web browser jb5, which, back then, only had a Smartphone version. Late August, a brand new, 5.0.79 version has been released for both the Smartphone and, now, the WM5+ Pocket PC’s. While it’s still having problems and I still consider it much inferior to Opera Mobile / Mini, if you need the special features (for example, in-page text search, which, on the Windows Mobile platform, is only supported by the currently unavailable NetFront and the memory hog & on several handheld models super-slow Minimo) jb5 offers, you might want to check it out. I’ll let you know as soon as it receives a really useful and recommended version.
5. Web Viewer for WM5
There is a brand new multitab IEM plug-in, “Web Viewer for WM5”, HERE.
Unfortunately, this title still has a lot of problems and, consequently, I don’t recommend it. As with jb5, I’ll announce when a useful, bug-free version is released. I also recommend the comments HERE.
6. Other stuff
In some of my earlier articles, I’ve already elaborated on two not really recommended newcomers: TeaShark and UCWEB. IMHO, it’s, currently, pretty useless to bother about these browsers. I’ll let you know when a considerably better version is released.

Menneisyys said:
All in all, there isn’t much improvement. You may still want to give it a try if you are a big fan of the GUI. I, myself, would still stick to either Opera Mini or Mobile. Don’t necessarily believe the hype
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it doesn't have any of the cool updated stuff found at the following link?
http://www.picsel.com/flash/uploads/index.html
May not be the best web browser ever, but the pdf and Office viewing is superb. I mean really, was adobe kidding with that awful LE edition?
NS

NotShorty said:
So it doesn't have any of the cool updated stuff found at the following link?
http://www.picsel.com/flash/uploads/index.html
May not be the best web browser ever, but the pdf and Office viewing is superb. I mean really, was adobe kidding with that awful LE edition?
NS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've only compared the Web browsing fcuntionality.

When using Picsel on my phone and the rotate option, it rotates the browser window 90 counter-clockwise. Does anyone know how to change this to 90 clockwise? I ask because I use a P4000/Titan and it rotates the image away from the keyboard.
I've tried some of the registry entries, such as rotatedirection, but they didn't do anything.... or I put the wrong values

REVIEW: Great, free Web browser Opera Mini 4 beta 3 is out – a MUST!

Opera Mini, particularly when used under a decent MIDlet manager, has always been one of the best choices for the Web browsing on any current handset. The new beta version of the forthcoming, 4-series Opera Mini, exactly two months after the last beta (see THIS) has just been released, and boasts a lot of goodies.
Getting it is done the same as before: navigate to HERE with either a mobile browser (or a WAP-capable desktop one, if you're ready to transfer the JAR file to your handset in a way explained in the MIDlet Bible), click the link in the middle of the page and it'll be automatically downloaded and deployed. After that, you can start it in the same way as other MIDlets (or, with Symbian, other programs).
1. Most important bugfixes: cookies, fonts
First and foremost, the cookie problems have all been fixed. These, in the previous, version 2 beta, caused a lot of problems under the, otherwise, excellent and most recommended Windows Mobile Esmertec Jbed MIDlet manager, along with a lot of non-Windows Mobile platforms. These problems are all gone – I’ve never encountered any cookie problem with any sites I use under the most common Windows Mobile MIDlet managers (IBM J9, TAO, Esmertec Jbed). The same (no cookie problems at all) stands for the Symbian-based Nokia N95, Nokia’s current “consumer” flagship model.
Second, some of the font problems have also been fixed. For example, beta2 was unable to render bold typeface with “extra large” characters and, in general, there was abolutely no support for different character sizes in, for example, headers. These problems have all been fixed. For example, as far as the bold + largest font size combination is concerned, see THIS screenshot (showing bold works with the largest chars). When it comes to different font sizes (headers etc), with my standard charsize test page, the tests resulted in excellent results (the following three screenshots have all been taken on a QVGA WM2003 HP iPAQ h2210 running the current (6.1.1) version of IBM J9; as can be seen, there’s no font smoothing with the smallest fonts under J9, just like Jblend, and unlike all the other KVM’s): 1 2 3.
Unfortunately, there’s still no italic support. I don’t know why the Opera Mini folks don’t implement the support for these.
2. High-quality picture support added
So far, it wasn’t possible to see the images inside a Web page in their original glory (unless you downloaded them, that is). Now, with the introduction of the “High” quality image mode, images will be fetched and presented at their original size and quality. This is certainly very good news. Some real-world examples of this and its consequences:
QVGA screenshot (IBM J9 6.1.1 running under WM2003) of a 640*480 pic in non-one column mode (original HERE)
VGA screenshot of a graphics-based chart I’ve posted to HERE: HQ (High Quality) mode; MQ mode and LQ mode. Pretty much different, eh? You’ll want to stick to the HQ mode when you really want to read for example image-based charts in my articles.
3. Opera Link support added
This is one of the best and most innovative new features in OM4b3. So far, even the desktop Opera (let alone the mobile versions!) has been pretty much neglected in this regard; now, this has changed. Please read THIS article for a generic overview of all these questions, along with most of the favorite synchronizer solutions released so far.
I’ve found this pretty intuitive and easy-to-use. You only click the “Synchronize Opera…” link on the startpage, fill in your Opera username / password (or, alternatively, quickly sign up for the service – it can be done right from the Opera Mini GUI!) and click / press Login (left softkey). After this, OM4 announces it has successfully synchronized your bookmarks as can be seen in the following screenshot:
{
"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"
}
Also, there’s a decent tutorial HERE explaining all these steps on both the desktop and Opera Mini.
Note that, as opposed to the desktop Opera browsers, it’s only links created in any (!) Opera Mini clients (they’ll show up under the “Opera Mini” folder in desktop browsers) that are loaded / synchronized in a way so that they become available locally, without Opera Mini’s having to connect to the central link service and do. Favorites under “More bookmarks” (favorites added in the desktop Opera will be behind this) will always be accessed online. If you find this too slow (I do), make sure you re-create the given links in the main folder of your Opera Mini. One of the easiest way is mass drag-and-dropping (with keeping Ctrl down if you don’t want to move, just copy them) the favorites in the desktop Opera (Bookmarks / Manage Bookmarks…) into the Opera Mini folder there. After a (forced) synchronization (Manage / Synchronize) , the changes will be seen in Opera Mini too and they will be available locally, not on the Web (and not in the “More bookmarks” folder, which, in addition to the lengthy download, also means a screen tap or navigating there).
I had no problems with my synchronization tests between my two desktop Opera browsers (you’ll need the latest, just-released 9.5 version of Opera for this!) and several Opera Mini clients running under both Windows Mobile (tested under several different MIDlet managers: Esmertec, TAO, IBM) and Symbian.
I’m absolutely sure you’ll LOVE this feature. And, of course, consider switching to Opera on the desktop too, in order to make the synchronization flawless and the easiest. Of course, you can access the online favorite repository with a non-Opera desktop browser too, but only in HTML mode, which also means mass-operations like quickly migrating a lot of favorites into Opera Mini (by just moving / copying them between folders) will be impossible. You’ll need a native, local client (that is, the desktop Opera and its Manage Bookmarks… dialog) to do this.
4. RSS Feeds
Feeds, which have also been added in this version, are pretty easy to control / use, albeit are a bit simple; for example, there’re no auto-download or notification capabilities. Its being integrated to the browser has a VERY nice consequence: whenever you’re on a Web page with an RSS feed, you will promptly be notified of RSS feeds being available. In addition, the RSS feed of these pages is pretty easy – again, thanks to the RSS feed integration to Opera Mini.
Subscribing to feeds is pretty simple in the new Opera Mini 4. When a page contains compatible feed(s), on the page, the type of the feed will be displayed. This is a link, which you can follow. Then, you’re shown the contents of the feed. Here, if you click “Subscribe” (again, a link the top of the page), it will be added to the pool of subscribed feeds. This screen can be easily accessed via the “Feeds” link on the start page (or, by presing * and, then, 0 - a new shortcut). As feeds need to be manually refreshed, you will need to click Refresh to see the changes . After it has downloaded the results, their number will be displayed (in parentheses).
Note that with pages having more than one (compatible) feed (for example, XDA-Developers), after clicking the “Feeds” link at the top, you’re shown the list of the feeds as can be seen in HERE. You can, then, select the one you’d like to see and maybe subscribe to.

5. Additional tips - Tables with inner tables
With tables containing inner tables like the one HERE and HERE - as opposed to charts without inner tables like the one HERE), OM4b3 will, at first, provide a map view without any horizontal scrolling. An example screenshot is HERE, as opposed to the way it renders tables without inner ones (see THIS for an example of the latter). With the latter type of tables, it’s not possible to zoom out to minimap view.
6. Some problems you need to be aware of
6.1 No “Fullscreen mode” shown in Options on Windows Mobile
Under all the major (Esmertec’s products, IBM J9, TAO; note that I do NOT recommend Aplix’ Jblend for Web browsing because of the very strict security model continuously prompting the users for authorization) Windows Mobile MIDlet managers, the “Fullscreen mode” is completely missing in the Settings menu (IBM J9 screenshot). This is visible on the Nokia N95 (screenshot HERE) – even using exactly the same high-quality version of OM. The latter means it’s in runtime that OM decides whether to display this checkbox or not. It seems upon realizing it’s running under Windows Mobile (as opposed to the Symbian case), it just hides the checkbox.
Note that this isn’t that big an issue. If you don’t have hardware numeric keys, Ctl + * and Ctl + * works in all the three on the SIP. With hardware keys, it’s even easier: for example, with the built-in keyboard of the Universal, a simple Fn + 8 will make it work. Also see the MIDlet Bible for more info on these questions.
6.2 Gmail problems on Windows Mobile
As is also reported HERE, under Windows Mobile, if you add the main Gmail homepage (NOT Inbox – that is, after logging in!) as a favorite, upon subsequent browsing attempts, the page won’t be shown as can be seen in this TAO Intent .1036 and this Jbed 2.2 screenshot.
Strangely, it does work under Symbian (tested on Nokia N95).
A quick and always-working hack is NOT putting the Gmail homepage directly in Favorites, but your Inbox (after you've logged in). Then, if you need to switch to another account, you can just sign out (link in the top right corner); then, the log-in (main) page will be displayed OK.
6.3 Still no non-Western fonts in smallest charsize
In order to keep the size of the JAR file down, the developers of Opera Mini have chosen NOT to include any non-Western character in their custom, (in most MIDlet manager) edge-smoothed Small font set. Only a rectangle will be displayed upon encountering characters like this. This is pretty much similar to how Thunderhawk, the famous (IMHO, Opera Mini is far more recommended), albeit, for long not updated Windows Mobile Web browser did: it also uses a custom fontset and it also refuses to render anything non-Western.
This means you MUST use at least the Medium font size on your handset (because it uses the native charset of the device and not that of Opera Mini), should you want to read pages using the non-Western alphabet. This is a problem on Symbian devices (tested on the Nokia N95) because of the HUGE charsize of even the “Medium” fonts. Just compare THIS (small) and THIS (medium) screenshots. The latter indeed uses HUGE fonts, and the additional smoothing (not available under Windows Mobile) doesn’t really help this.
Windows Mobile devices fare far better in this respect (example screenshot HERE of a QVGA MS Smartphone running OM4b3 under Jbed. BTW, as can also be seen, no “Full screen” checkbox is visible here, either.)
6.4 Other user-reported problems (I haven’t encountered them)
Some people reported (see THIS) Mobile view (fit-to-screen; renamed from “Fit to width”) doesn’t work as good as under the OM 3.x series. In my practice, I prefer reading pages in non-Mobile view (because, as with Nokia’s browser on S60 3rd devices, Opera Mini does a GREAT job of showing the actual text without the need for horizontal scrolling); therefore, I can’t really comment on this bug.
Opera Mini 4 beta sometimes uses wrong form in webpage
7. Recommended links
The MIDlet Bible (Cross-posts: PPCT, AximSite, XDA-Developers - 1, XDA-Developers - 2, XDA-Developers - 3, FirstLoox, BrightHand, HowardForums, SPT, MoDaCo, PocketGamer.org, PocketGaming.de)
Beta 2 review
MS Smartphone Web Browsing Bible
Pocket PC Web Browsing Bible

It's a "must" for a feature phone...it's a "meh" for a WM PDA phone.

Croak said:
It's a "must" for a feature phone...it's a "meh" for a WM PDA phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, let's agree to differ

Pretty good
I've never thought much of it before but this is actually okay. It's good to see the whole web page. I think it loads some pages faster than IE.
I can drag scroll (sort-of). Text entry a bit of a pain with the menus etc.
Thanks for letting us know.

Just installed it on my 8525 (it told me I had a HTC 8500 and that it had no java...LOL!) and it works fine. I need to learn some details, but pretty cool in my limited playing with it.

JETninja said:
Just installed it on my 8525 (it told me I had a HTC 8500 and that it had no java...LOL!) and it works fine. I need to learn some details, but pretty cool in my limited playing with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LMAO! Mine did the exact same thing. I just goot figure out some of the functions though, but so far so good.

clearly beats picsel browser and ie. actually, the automatic zoom and auto-align of the text make it much more comfortable to read long pages. and its about ten times faster than (at least my) ie and two than picsel.
also, i always hated the degenerated view of the content while scrolling in picsel. opera has managed that very well.

adjusting font boldness
I am using Opera Mini beta 3 with Esmertec on the Athena which has a large screen and the font is very thin and can be hard to read.
The settings allow font size but not thickness changes. Does anyone know if there is a way (via registry) to alter the font thickness? I know you can on Tao but have not figured out if you can for Esmertec.
Thanks,

apap said:
I am using Opera Mini beta 3 with Esmertec on the Athena which has a large screen and the font is very thin and can be hard to read.
The settings allow font size but not thickness changes. Does anyone know if there is a way (via registry) to alter the font thickness? I know you can on Tao but have not figured out if you can for Esmertec.
Thanks,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To my knowledge, impossible, except for TAO.
However, as the largest fonts now also support Bold, you can safely use it without losing a lot of additional info (coming from the lack of Bold).

FULL ROUNDUP:Browsing the Web on Windows Mobile just like on iPhone,incl. IEM6 review

After purchasing an iPhone 3G, I immediately fell in love with Safari, its Web browser. Granted, it's somewhat less capable as the best, comparable Windows Mobile (WinMo for short) titles (no Flash, no page saving, no copy/paste, no Opera Link, no explicit text size settings, no caching etc.) and, from time to time, it crashes even with the last, 2.2 firmware version, but it's still much better usable and much faster than anything on Windows Mobile.
Needless to say, seeing the immense success and popularity of iPhone's Safari, Windows Mobile software developers followed suit and, for quite some time now, have been trying to simulate the interface and easy controllability of Safari. Sure, they can't circumvent the problems caused by the hardware (namely, the resistive touchscreen, which, in cases, require a lot of pressure, unlike on the capacitive iPhone); nevertheless, the Windows Mobile developers have indeed managed to come up with some really decent alternatives.
In this roundup, I mostly explain how current Windows Mobile Web browsers are able to provide the same user experience as Safari on the iPhone (again, apart from the much inferior hardware, touchscreen-wise). There have been several shots of providing the same; see for example THIS and, most importantly, THIS article. The latter one, unfortunately, severely lacks in that it only compares Internet Explorer Mobile and Opera Mobile 9.5 - read: no SkyFire, no Iris, no NetFront, no Opera Mini. In addition, the date of the article also shows that it doesn't test the latest Explorer Mobile 6 and the latest, further enhanced builds of Opera Mobile.
Being focused on Safari-like finger-only controllability, I've also reduced the stuff that is more technical: for example, Web compliance testing, strict benchmarking and documenting even the most hidden features. Please consult my previous all-in-one article (my W3C speech) for more info and further links on all these.
I've only tested browsers capable of finger-based scrolling. This is why I've completely disregarded older, non finger-based scrolling-capable plug-ins and that I used Spb Pocket Plus with the older (but still exclusively used) Internet Explorer in order to add this kind of functionality.
Note that I provide a lot of info never before published; for example, a decent (!) comparison of the latest buzz, Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (IEM6) to the previous version, running on real(!) devices - and not just emulators. As you will see, the current IEM6 version is simply not worth bothering with - it's definitely slower and, configurability-wise (see the lack of One Column mode or the lack of the, on (W)VGA devices, highly useful Use High Resolution switch), far less capable than the previous IEM. It's just not worth flashing your device with a ROM containing IEM6 - for example, Tomal 8.5 for the HTC Universal and MoDaCo's Touch HD ROM's - currently, there [still] aren't easily-installable CAB distributions of IEM6, you need to hunt down an XDA-Devs or MoDaCo-cooked ROM coming with it; currently, it's the only way to get the browser onto your phone.
Also note that, now with high-resolution screens being increasingly used in devices like the Diamond and Diamond Pro (VGA) and the X1 and the HD (WVGA), I've found it sufficient to run the tests on VGA devices, and only some on QVGA ones (mostly for testing QVGA-only versions). Therefore, most of the screenshots and the additional hacks (for example, the VGA Jbed one) I provide are for VGA devices.
Note that I paid special attention to elaborating on how the reviewed Web browsers are able to use large(r) fonts so that you'll be able to use them while, for example, commuting to/from work. (Actually, it was, at first, because of this that I started testing browsers in this regard. I generally love riding the bike in the gym. I want to remain thin and biking is the best way to do this. It, however, can become very tedious, particularly if you ride three hours without any pause so that you can always keep your pulse over 120. Watching a movie from one of my 15" UXGA ThinkPads is one way of killing the time during this; another is browsing the Web on my PDA's and smartphones. This, however, requires you to use comparatively large characters as you're constantly moving and keep the device in your hand.) In this regard, the VGA screenshots I present and the approach I take (let's find out whether the browser is able to render the test pages with sufficiently large characters) can be perfectly applied to QVGA devices. After all, it's only when rendering text with small character sizes ("requiring a magnifying glass") that there's significant difference between low-res (QVGA) and hi-res (VGA or WVGA) screens; with large character sizes used, the difference pretty much diminishes. (Apart from the characters' being much prettier and less blocky / pixelizated, of course.)
Mozilla's Mozilla / Firefox port still has no Windows Mobile version. Finally, note that while Makayama's Touch Browser does support iPhone-like scrolling, I just don't see any point in actually paying for it. In the tests of the latest, 1.16 version on my HP iPAQ 210, it proved to be vastly inferior to the IEM + Spb Pocket Plus 4 combo. The latter scrolls pages orders of magnitude faster and nicer. There is just no comparison between the speed of the two browsers. Speed issues aside, the current, 1.16 version still isn't much better than the initial version I've reviewed HERE (albeit some of my biggest, interface-related, complains have indeed been fixed; for example, a QWERTY keyboard has been added.)

1.1 Opera Mobile 9.5
Let's start with Opera Mobile, which is, especially with its latest version (so far, only released for the Samsung Omnia, but already ripped by the XDA-Developers folks and released as an easily-installable CAB file), offers everything a decent Safari-alike should - and more. With Opera Mobile, the only difference in browsing the Web will only be your having to actually hold down the touchscreen for it to work.
Currently, there several versions of Opera Mobile. Of them, I’ve reviewed the (currently) official and, compared to the Omnia version, old (Oct. 2008) version 9.51b2 available for download HERE and the much more recommended, latest, unofficial Samsung Omnia version available HERE (direct links to download HERE and HERE. Note that there’s a combined VGA + QVGA + Flash Lite 3.1 version HERE; it has all the three CAB’s in one RAR file). The latter is the way to go if you have a QVGA Pocket PC or want to see embedded, Flash Lite 3.1-compliant videos (currently, YouTube, Google Video, blip.tv and PornoTube - nothing else; please see THIS for more info). If you, on the other hand, have a VGA model, you absolutely don't want built-in support for the above-mentioned video services or don't need the freedom of the zooming the new version offers (most of the time, you'll find the old, official version in this regard just OK), you may want to stick to the official version.
Note that there’re a lot of (slightly) older “unofficial” Opera Mobile builds. Some are, in some respects, better than the Omni release reviewed in this roundup; for example, some support being installed to a memory card, while the Omni version doesn’t. I haven’t included these older builds in the article to keep its size down.
Speaking of “unofficial” “rips”, also the question of legality should be mentioned. While, strictly, it’s not really legal to rip a browser off a ROM (and installing it on a device), as Opera, currently, doesn’t offer any kind of a downloadable and purchasable, stable and final version of Opera Mobile, I think that, for the time being, you can freely install these XDA-Devs rips on your phone. However, when a commercial (and superior) version of Opera Mobile is released, you will want to upgrade to it. Not only because you it’s everyone’s interest to support the, currently, best multiplatform browser developer that produces browsers that are really pleasant to work with on both desktop PC’s and mobile phones / PDA’s so that they can continue improving their products, but also because the final version will surely have Opera Link.
Support for Opera Link, unfortunately, is severely missing from the currently available 9.x Opera Mobile builds. I’ve played a bit with overwriting \Application Data\Opera9\opera6.adr with the desktop Opera’s \Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\opera6.adr, but in vain: it didn’t work. (The reason for this may have been my bookmark file containing some 3000 bookmarks.) I’ll go on with hacking the file to see whether there’s an easy way of doing so. If I succeed, it’ll mean you’ll be able to easily replicate your desktop Opera favorites on your WinMo phone (and vice versa), which will, to some extent, fix the lack of Opera Link.
1.1.1 Problems on VGA devices
Note that the CAB above is strictly meant for QVGA devices; if you want to install Opera Mobile on VGA devices, you'll need THIS file instead. It fixes all the issues of the original version: provides a VGA skin (directly available HERE, should you want to deploy it on the original, QVGA version), which, in addition to providing large icons, also doubles the size of the on-screen zoom arrow and, finally, increases the zoom magnification to 200%.
You may want to know what the latter means (even if you no longer need it - the VGA CAB comes with the hack applied) - after all, Opera Mobile has excellent (!) configuration and tweaking capabilities worth knowing of (some of them are listed HERE - and, of course, my chart.) With the QVGA version, automatic (the one with double-taps) zoom-in seems to calculate the right zoom level based on QVGA horizontal sizes; that is, the zoomed-in state will contain at most half the size of the actual, zoomed-in contents as can be seen in the following screenshots:
{
"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"
}
The same screenshot taken showing the exact same screenshot on a QVGA model (also showing the newly-introduced, albeit, for quick positioning, useless minimap in the upper left corner):
This means you, unless you do the hack I'll describe soon, almost always want to prefer using manual zoom to correctly zoom into the text. To avoid having to do this, just enter "opera:config" in the address bar:

Then, select Adaptive Zoom (it's on the top) and scroll down to Maximum zoom. Change 100 to 200:
After this, automatic (!) zooming will work just fine.
Important: this version (both the QVGA one with the additional tweaks explained above and the VGA one) uses pixel doubling with images (and videos). This, to my knowledge, can't be fixed. Nevertheless, it, otherwise, works just fine on VGA models.
1.2 SkyFire
The second, particularly for QVGA users, most recommended browser is SkyFire, which works in exactly the same way as the pretty much useless, incapable and, since then, cancelled DeepFish did: everything is done on the central server(s) of the developer. The server only transfers (QVGA-resolution) images to the client. In this regard, it's less data use- and CPU-efficient, than Opera Mini, the other (current and recommended) solution using the central server approach. Yes, it constantly uses your data connection and CPU; which means both (at times, dramatically) decreased battery life and increased data usage. Keep this in mind if you plan to use it over a non-unlimited cellular connection. Furthermore, if you have a VGA device, you may want to look for something else if you can't put up with the low-resolution, pixel doubled text and graphics.
It has a lot of goodies. For example, it has one of the best zoom-in algorithms: it has never failed to zoom into text. With all (!) of the other browsers, there have been problems doing this with some sites or forums - even the latest, b15233 version of Opera failed at this sometimes, necessitating some kind of a manual zoom-in, let alone the others.
Furthermore, it supports playing Flash, Java applets, Ajax and everything else Firefox / Mozilla on the desktop Windows supports. This means it's capable of playing back YouTube etc. videos - and not only them, but virtually everything: as it uses the "real" Flash behind the scenes, it has no problems playing back Flash 9 contents either - that is, the video services Flash Lite 3.1, used together with Opera Mobile b15233, is incompatible with.
Note that it does have some disadvantages at playing back YouTube (Google etc.) Video compared to the Flash Lite 3.1 + Opera Mobile b15233 combo. Granted, it's far better in that
1, it uses far less CPU at rendering videos than Opera Mobile: about 40-50% on my 624 MHz HP iPAQ 210, while Opera Mobile is around 90%.
2, initially loading a page containing several compatible videos doesn't result in a major performance hit. Just try to load a TouchArcade page containing more than two or three videos in Opera Mobile and you'll see what I mean. Opera spends minutes loading it; SkyFire, on the other hand, only spends some seconds. Quite big a difference! (Note that the same stands for the Opera Mobile & Flash Lite vs. iPhone Safari relationship – the latter loads pages having a lot of directly embedded YouTube videos - like TouchArcade – in some seconds only. Yes, at times, not having true Flash Lite, “only” YouTube support pays off.)
3, video playback works just great on slow Pocket PC's; for example, ones based on 195 MHz TI OMAP CPU's like the HTC Wizard. The Opera Mobile + Flash Lite 3.1 is plain incapable of playing back any videos on this kind of a CPU without major stuttering and pauses.
However, particularly in not supported countries, the speed of the video playback will be much lower - between 4-5 fps (frame per second) and there will be times there won’t be any sound at all (and, if there is, it’ll be of worse quality than with direct, non-streaming playback like that of Flash Lite). While, on faster WinMo devices, Flash Lite 3.1 has no problems in playing them back at full speed - that is, 25-30 fps.
Fortunately, now SkyFire is accessible from all around the world – in the first few year of service, you could only register to it from the US and Canada.
1.3 Opera Mini 4.2.13337
Opera Mini, along with all Jbed versions (the MIDlet manager - that is, the execution environment - I recommend the most to be used with Opera Mini), offers a lot of goodies; for example, finger-based scrolling. It surely isn't as nice as Safari or Opera Mobile (there're no "rubberband", that is, inertia effects); however, the traditional strengths of Opera Mini (for example, the very low data traffic essential if you're on a limited cellular data subscription and Opera Link, which, unfortunately, is still not supported in the latest Opera Mobile versions) can easily make this browser the browser of choice.
For VGA users, I especially recommend the VGA-hacked Jbed 5.1 version; please see THIS for more info. For QVGA users, you can safely stick with older versions of Jbed.
Opera Mini behaved pretty nice in my tests - it zoomed into text very well and reflown the columns intelligently. No problems in here - much as it's "only" a Java MIDlet, it's still a very decent browser, particularly if you want to make use of its excellent (!) Opera Link and multitab capabilities.
Finally, note that, after my W3C speech, I've published a full tutorial on making Opera Mini your default system browser.
1.4 Iris 1.0.16 (1.1.0 b3)
This browser was another nice surprise - no wonder for example the MSMobiles folks liked it very much. While it's still lacking a bit here and there (the most important of them being the lack of keeping the previously zoomed-to screen contents horizontally aligned when finger-scrolling vertically), it can already be rightfully compared to the other browsers available on Windows Mobile. I, however, would still stick with Opera Mobile, SkyFire or Opera Mini (depending on your needs) instead - they're (still) superior.

1.5 Pre-6 Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) with Spb Pocket Plus 4.0.2
Unfotunately, the "old" (but still the only built-in IEM version shipped with even the latest devices) Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) is far inferior to anything else, even with the really decent, 4-series Spb Pocket Plus plug-in to allow for multitabbing and iPhone-like scrolling.
The biggest problem with this browser, along with the heavily outdated HTML / scripting engine, is the inability to dynamically zoom in/out to/from the page: to switch between reading some text (with sufficiently large and readable characters) in the zoomed-in state and the page overview. All the other browsers are capable of this via single or double taps on the selected (textual) area. (Yes, even Opera Mini - it's just that you can't use the same screentap(s) to switch back to zoomed-out, page overview mode but have to use the hardware Action button [if available] or a menu command to do so.)
Add the poor testpage rendering results to this (many times, you will need to switch to One Column mode very often to be able to make use of the entire screen estate), the comparatively slow page loading speed and you'll see why I don't recommend this browser at all.
1.6 Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (IEM6)
Unfortunately, the current version of IEM6 has turned out to be a real disaster. While it supports goodies like dynamic zooming (with screen taps) and built-in, rubberband-like finger scrolling, it is very slow (actually, much-much slower than even the previous, pre-6 IEM version(s)), its zoom-in capabilities are really bad (doesn't take advantage of the entire screen and, in addition, it uses really small characters, which can't be fixed) and, what is more, you can't even use the One Column mode to make it render properly.
All in all, stay away. This browser is pretty bad and, currently, not worth installing (which, currently, involves flashing an entire XDA-Devs or MoDaCo “cooked” ROM). Hope Microsoft does fix these issues before releasing a "real" version for OEM's to be included in their ROM's. Again, note that the current version of IEM6 most probably doesn’t represent the final version Microsoft releases some time. I’m absolutely sure they’ll for example include for example the “Use High Resolution” checkbox, which will make it possible to make it render large(r) fonts. That is, my “trashing” the current IEM6 doesn’t mean the final, official version will be this bad at all. The current version is definitely an early alpha.
1.7 NetFront (NF) 3.5.009 b729
NF has recently received screen dragging support. Unfortunately, it can barely be used as, as soon as you start to drag the screen, in most cases, the context menu is displayed. The situation is way worse than with other browsers also having a context menu (Opera Mobile etc.).
It has other problems too: compared to the, in this regard, best browsers (Opera Mobile / Mini, SkyFire and, of course, the really fast iPhone Safari), it is slow to load pages. Even screen orientation or view mode changes require (lengthy) page reloads, unlike with most other browsers (except for Opera Mini and SkyFire, which also reloads pages if you dynamically change your screen orientation).
All in all, I cannot recommend NetFront at all. There is simply no point in preferring it to the three most recommended browsers: Opera Mobile, SkyFire and Opera Mini.
2. The feature / comparison chart
It's available HERE. Make sure you open it in a maximized (F11 in all the three major Web browsers under Windows) Web browser window. Also use zoom in/out (Ctrl+mouse wheel on all the browsers; if you don't have a wheel, Shift + and - in Opera; Ctrl + and Ctrl - in both Mozilla / Firefox and IE) to avoid having to scroll the chart horizontally.
Explanation (and additional comments) of the chart:
2.1 Real-world rendering tests
The first part of the chart elaborates on rendering some forum engines, also with some that caused iPhone Safari some problems. Note that I've tested (and published) the results in both orientations because, at times, you'll want to prefer browsing in Portrait mode simply because most phones are easier to hold that way, particularly while walking / doing some physical exercise - or, if you have a phone / PDA with a screen that has issues like that of the Dell Axim x50v / x51v. I used the letter "L" to denote landscape and "P" the portrait orientation.
A very important note: I’ve evaluated the browsers based on their ability to render text with large, well-readable-even-when-commuting-or-walking characters (or, with character sizes that are well readable on 2.8” VGA or 3” WVGA screens like those of the HTC Diamond, HTC Diamond Pro or the S-E X1), NOT based on the overall rendering quality of the engine. That is, I’ve only given “Poor” to browsers that could render textual content with small characters, regardless of the overall quality and standards compliance of the engine.
This is why IEM6, which is plain incapable of rendering text with acceptable-sized, in general, got very bad marks. Nevertheless, the IEM6 engine isn’t THAT bad – it’s pretty much on par with, say, NetFront. That is, based on the “Poor” and “Unacceptable” marks I’ve given IEM6 in most cases, don’t think it is THAT bad. It’s currently bad for reading in circumstances where you do need considerably larger characters. If you have a (W)VGA phone (like the HP iPAQ 210, hx4700, the HTC Touch HD or the Athena with the 5” screen) with a large (at least 3.8”) screen AND you aren’t moving, you may find IEM6’s rendering quality just fine. (It’s another question IEM6, being just an alpha version, severely fails in many other areas: speed, capabilities etc.)
The first link takes you to a pretty problematic site with code not compatible with the zoom-in engine of any of the Web browsers (except for Mozilla / Firefox, which has no problems with zooming them in) - which is a major problem on higher-resolution, but not very large screen like the UXGA 15" or WUXGA 15.6" screens of high-end ThinkPad models. I've paid special attention to checking out how the browsers render the number of the post (it's in the upper right corner of every individual entry). As you can see (of the three most recommended browsers), Opera Mobile is the best to retain this - at least in Landscape mode, using automatic (non-manual) zoom and large char. Unfortunately, only the first part of this number is visible in Opera Mini (and only in Landscape), unless you switch to the more restrictive (albeit a bit more bandwidth-friendly) Mobile View mode (either the “Mobile View” context menu or in Settings) – then, it’ll show these numbers without problems. SkyFire fares the worst in this regard: it not only hides the number of the post, but also (in Landscape, part of) the date.
Other than these, I haven't found other problems related to zooming-in in order to display large characters (where it was at all possible - for example, the maximal size I could get was still very tiny with IEM6 and it was only by switching to the very restrictive One Column mode that I could get readably large chars with Iris.)
(Incidentally, you can easily make these forum pages work in the desktop Opera by just removing all occurrences of <div class="art_t"> [and the accompanying </div>] from the source. Nevertheless, the Opera / Microsoft folks could really look into this problem to make the non-Mozilla/Firefox folks' life easier that long for the ability to freely zoom in.)
The second link takes you to the Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage. I've chosen this page to one of the standard test pages because iPhone Safari severely fails at rendering the contents of this, otherwise, when it comes to the HTML source, very simple page: it uses relatively small characters you may not be able to read (particularly not while moving). In this regard, all of the Windows Mobile browsers behaved orders of magnitude better - except for, again, IEM6, which behaved far worse than anything else.
The third link points to a Thinkpads.com thread, where one of the posts contain a very long thread. iPhone's Safari fails at rendering these kinds of HTML pages without any advanced markup. Needless to say, zooming in (with pinching the screen) doesn't help either - Safari isn't as sophisticated as Opera Mobile, where the latest build already supports reflowing the text at any (manual) zoom level - not just automatic ones. IEM6, as usual, sucks really bad; with Iris, you again have to switch to the One Column mode, but even then the charsize may still turn out to be too low. Speaking of the most recommended three browsers, Opera Mini and SkyFire had no problems with fully taking advantage of the available screen estate (note that, in SkyFire, you can hide the address bar as is also explained in the "Full screen" row). Opera Mobile, in Landscape mode and using Large characters, only used the two-third of the screen on the left (and left the rest unused); this is why I only gave it a "Fair". Again, only using dynamic, automatic zooming; I haven't tested the text reflowing capabilities of b15233, used together by manual zoom fine-tuning, with this particular case. You might want to give it a try to see whether, then, you can use the entire screen estate or not - I bet you will.

The fourth link shows how the DPReview main page is rendered by default. As can you see, you will most probably want to use manual fine-tuned zooming with Opera Mobile so that the text fully fills in the entire screen estate. Alternatively, if you use the latest, b15233 build with the VGA hacks I've explained (or, straight the VGA version), you won't have problems with the zoom - the screenshots here have been made with the official, earlier 9.51b2 and not the latest b15233.
The fifth link takes you to the DPReview forum. The recommended browsers have no problems rendering this, not even with large characters. Iris, again, needs to be switched to the restrictive Column Mode and IEM6 uses uselessly small characters.
2.2 Scrolling-related tests
In the first test, Scrolling speed, I've elaborated on how quickly you can scroll and how much time it takes to display the text you've just scrolled to. The best and fastest browser is, in this regard, Safari; Opera Mobile and NetFront aren't much worse, though.
The second one, "Real rubberband and inertia", elaborates on whether the tested browser is able to measure the speed of your finger when the latter leaves the screen, and if the speed is above a certain threshold, the screen will continue to ‘roll' in the last direction of your finger when it lost contact with the screen. This is one of the best features of iPhone's user interface, and, of course, Safari. As you can see, of the three most recommended titles, neither Opera Mini nor SkyFire support this. Hope this will be later implemented.
"Does it try to keep the same horizontal position while scrolling?" lists whether a slight horizontal displacement while you quickly scroll up or down results in the screen content dragged to the left / right, which, then, may result in having to re-position the text column you were previously reading. As can clearly be seen, the two Operas (and, of course, Safari) are the least sensitive to this kind of error.
"Minimap? Quick positioning possible on it?" shows whether there's any kind of a minimap on the screen and whether it can be directly used to quickly change your zoomed-in position. In this regard, Iris is by far the best. Note that it's only the QVGA version of Opera Mobile b15233 that supports minimap (but, unfortunately, no quick positioning); the VGA version doesn't have this any more. However, you can add this back with some manual hacking, should the need arise.
Other scrolling issues: here, I listed the problems you may face during scrolling the web pages. NetFront has the biggest problems of all with displaying the context menu almost as soon as you start dragging. This makes NetFront almost useless for this kind of usage.
Manual (free) zooming?: in addition to the well-known automatic zoom (which has been elaborated on in the first section), some browsers also support freely zooming into any area of the screen. You may already seen this on the iPhone, where the two-finger "pinching" of the screen does exactly this - in not only Safari, but also a lot of other apps as well. Of the other solutions, Opera Mobile b15233's is by far the best because it allows you to use any zoom level: it'll always make sure the text is correctly re-flown in the given level. Unfortunately, this kind of functionality is really missing from Safari. Yes, this is one of the areas where Opera Mobile is way better than its iPhone alternative.
2.3 Input
This group examines the various input capabilities of the browsers.
Finger-friendly drop-down lists: if you've ever used Safari, you may have already noticed it has very nice and finger-friendly drop-down selector lists:
Here, I explained (and shown) how finger-friendly Windows Mobile browsers are. Unfortunately, none of them excel; probably the best are the two Opera browsers, but they're still a far cry away from iPhone's Safari. Note that if you have a D-pad, you can use the up/down arrows to move the selection and the Action button to select the current one, which, to a certain degree, provides a solution to this problem. Too bad some WinMo phones (for example, the Touch HD) don't even have a D-pad…
How does it work together with third party full screen keyboards?: as the built-in on-screen keyboard in Windows Mobile is almost impossible to use (even after switching to Large size in Settings / Input / Large Keys) with fingers, you may want to take a look at alternative, considerably bigger (or even full-screen ones) on-screen keyboards to allow for finger-based, stylus-less input. I've, in this regard, tested Spb's Full Screen Keyboard. It turned out to be working wonderfully with all browsers, the only exception being Opera Mobile 9.51b2, which always switched back to the standard keyboard on my iPAQ 210. Fortunately, I haven't run into the same problem with version b15233 any more.
2.4 Misc
This category, as you may have guessed, lists all the miscellaneous tests I didn't want to put in other categories.
Copy / paste: iPhone's Safari is heavily lacking copy/paste capabilities. In this regard, most WinMo web browsers are clearly better. Unfortunately, two (SkyFire and Opera Mini) of the three most recommended apps fail at this: they don't support copy/paste at all. (With Opera Mini, of course, you can still save the current page and, then, find and copy the given text from a simple text viewer like Total Commander.) As usual, with the other browsers, I've explained how you can switch to the text selection mode, as the default "screen dragging" mode, in general, needs to be disabled first.
Other goodies: I've listed some additional features I didn't want to create a separate row for: finding text in the current document (Iris, Opera Mini & Mobile, NetFront), Opera Link support etc. Unfortunately, SkyFire doesn't support finding in page - the only goodie it supports is image saving (also available with all the other browsers). Note that I haven’t listed all features of Opera Mobile: in addition to what the chart contains, it also supports sending image/links via MMS, SMS and E-mail. It even has a download manager that can even pause/resume a download – as has also been explained in my two-year-old article on downloading with Windows Mobile Web browsers.
DPReview top left menus: DPReview.com has a menu in the top left area none of the WinMo browsers can invoke subcategores of - unlike Safari. (An exception is Opera Mobile if you navigate over the main menu items with the D-pad - then, they don't get selected; still, their submenus are displayed, where you can already select anything. This means Touch HD users will need to use the custom onscreen keyboard displaying a virtual D-pad to fix this problem - not the cleanest solution...)
Page saving: the two Operas, Iris, NetFront and PIE, thanks to Spb Pocket Plus, are capable of saving the current page into the local file system. Unfortunately, the pretty barebone (but, still, excellent) Safari doesn't - neither does IEM6 (not that I'd recommend it to anyone) or SkyFire.
CPU usage: I've also benchmarked the CPU (and, consequently, the battery) usage of the tested apps (except for that of iPhone, as I don't know of anything like Windows Mobile's acbTaskMan for the iPhone. I may need to write it myself? After all, Unix does support getting the CPU usage of a given process.) NetFront has turned out to be buggy if and only if it's in the background. SkyFire has a continuous CPU usage: 40% while not doing anything (on the 624 MHz iPAQ 210). This may be quite much a stumbling block for many requiring as good a battery life as possible.
Dynamic zoom, only zooming into a given column: here, I elaborated on whether the browser supports the dynamic two-tap zooming in/out pioneered by Safari. The three most recommended titles work just great in this respect. Unfortunately, IEM6 has nothing comparable.
Clicks vs zooming: here, I explained how easy it is to click / activate links. With some browsers (for example, Iris), it's a bit harder to do this on most Windows Mobile phones, unlike you're using the D-pad and the action button to do this. Sometimes, you need to re-tap the same link some three or four times in order to activate it. This isn't an issue on the iPhone, where links do get activated at once.
Makes use of VGA?: as you can see, SkyFire will always use the 320*240 (QVGA) resolution to converse bandwidth, reduce the load on their servers and speed up screen rendering. This, unfortunately, results in a not-that-spectacular rendering quality on VGA screens. Opera Mobile's current Omnia b15233 rip, having come from a QVGA device, is VGA-unaware and, therefore, displays images (and, via Flash Lite 3.1, compatible videos) pixel-doubled, resulting in low-resolution images.
Quick(!) navigation to beginning of page: in cases, it might be very important to be able to navigate to the beginning of the page without having to waste some 10-20-30 seconds to continuously scroll everything up like mad. In this case, I've explained whether the browsers have a way of quickly doing this. As most current WinMo browsers (except for PIE, IEM6 and the non-native Opera Mini) no longer have a verticalscrollbar, this, in cases, may turn out to be very tedious. Of course, you can still avoid having to scroll all the way up by just reloading the page.

…end of page: unfortunately, getting to the bottom of a page can be even more tricky if a browser doesn't have a draggable scrollbar or hardware button / key shortcuts as simple page reloading won't help in this case. This can be a real pain in the butt if you want to quickly visit discussion threads where the (new) posts you'd like to see are at the bottom of the page.
A quick note: while the iPhone Safari supports quickly going to the top of the page, there's no support of doing the opposite, unfortunately.
Multitab/page: here, I explained whether the browser supports opening more than one tabs (windows) and, if it does, whether you can force the current link to be opened in that tab. The latter is really missing from the iPhone Safari. The fact that Safari always reloads the previous page when you tap the Back icon makes things even worse. Fortunately, it's still the fastest browser to download and render pages, even when compared to Pocket PC's that have an 1.5 times faster CPU, but still...
As you can see, of the WM web browsers that do support mutitabs (unfortunately, SkyFire isn't one of them; nevertheless, it's also very fast to reload previous pages as it just sends over the image of the current viewport to the phone, not that of the entire page), Opera Mobile lets the user to select whether the link should be opened in a new tab. Note that, by default, Opera Mobile only allows for 3 tabs; this, fortunately, can really easily be raised. Opera Mini should be also mentioned: it automatically opens the link in a new tab and only after opening 30 links (new tabs) does it start closing the previous ones.
Making use of memory : especially on memory-restricted devices (for example, most Windows Mobile devices only having 64Mbytes of RAM and running WM5 or later) and with browsers supporting multitabs can the memory consumption be of high importance.
Fortunately, the best (and most recommended) browsers (the two Operas and SkyFire) all have pretty low memory requirements, even with (with the first two) tons of tabs (web pages) open. Not so with Safari: in addition to it always reloading pages when you press Back, if you load a page in another tab, the Web page on the old one will be reloaded except when the page you loaded in the new tab was a small one.
Stability: as you may have heard, Safari's stability isn't the best: it often crashes, particularly upon loading large pages (for example, the comments at the old [before the recent switch] iPhone Dev-Team Blog). Yes, this is indeed the case, even with the latest, 2.2 firmware. Fortunately, it remembers (and quickly and automatically reloads after restarting it) the last page you were on - or the one before, so, this issue isn't that bad.
In general, I've found the stability of all the tested WinMo browsers significantly better than that of the Safari. Another thumbs up for using Windows Mobile for Web browsing. (Now, I can only hope there were WinMo phones with capacitive touchscreens not requiring any kind of physical force when scrolling or doing stuff!)
Flash support?: as has also been explained in my earlier articles (particularly the one on the Flash Lite 3.1 hack and in my Flash bible), you need Flash or Flash Lite support to play back (most) Web videos, play games etc. Safari, again, is really bad at this: all it offers is playing back most YouTube videos but doesn't support Google Video (and the other, less relevant ones like blip.tv and PornoTube) at all. (Note that not even its YouTube support is as full as that of Flash Lite 3.1. For example, THIS video can't be played back in Safari. Furthermore, it doesn't play back stereo videos in stereo like THIS either, which is played back without problems by Flash Lite 3.1).
As you can clearly see, the current, hacked Flash Lite 3.1 is only compatible with the latest (b15233) Opera Mobile version (but not the official 9.51b2) - and not on all devices. (It worked OK on my HTC Wizard and HP iPAQ 210 but not my HTC Universal with Tomal 8.5.) SkyFire supports even the latest, desktop Flash (as it's running on the central server) and PIE only supports the old and pretty much useless, full Adobe 6/7 plug-ins (and the even more useless Flash Lite 2). NetFront, unfortunately, isn't a tad better either because of its sub-par Flash engine, which is even worse than the native Pocket PC Adobe 7 support.
Full screen?: finally, I elaborate on whether the browsers can use the entire (full) screen estate. Most of them can; the two exceptions being Iris (which will always display the bottom bar) and iPhone's Safari.</p>
3. Verdict – will I switch back to WinMo from iPhone Safari?
As has already been mentioned, the three most recommended Windows Mobile browsers (Opera Mobile, Mini and SkyFire), generally, are more featureful, stable (no crashes) and compatible (see for example the PPCT or the ThinkPads test cases) than iPhone Safari. The latter, however, is definitely faster at both loading and scrolling pages than any of these browsers (unless you want to do some special kind of scrolling; for example, going straight to the end of a page, which is very easy in Opera Mini.) If you can live with WinMo browsers loading your pages slower, you may want to prefer them to the iPhone.
This was strictly about the software part. As far as the hardware is concerned (and my switching back to WinMo to browse the Web), the advantage of the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone pretty much negates the software superiority of particularly Opera Mobile. It’s just far easier to scroll and control the iPhone Safari than any of the browsers on any(!) of my Pocket PC’s and Pocket PC phones. (I’ve, in this regard, tested the following Pocket PC’s with Opera Mobile 9.5: Dell Axim x51v, HTC Wizard and HP iPAQ hx4700 (all three with a high-quality, expensive [Brando] screen protector) and HP iPAQ 210 and the HTC Universal (both without a screen protector) so that I can have a picture of how each of these models, with varying force needed to make screen taps / drags registered, fare. (Yes, I did test at least Opera Mobile 9.5 on five different WinMo models and the rest of the browsers on at least one [mostly the iPAQ 210, except for IEM6, which, currently, is only available in flashable ROM images and not as freey installable CAB files] of them) It was painfully harder to scroll around a page on all(!) of them. While I have a screen protector on my iPhone 3G as well, even with it, it’s way easier to scroll around. In this regard, the Safari (that is, browsing the Web on the iPhone and not any of the current WinMo models) is simply unbeatable. (Note that I use the screen protectors that come with the Switcheasy Rebel cases; according to THIS thread, they’re Pure Reflects. They make screen taps just a little bit harder to register and make the surface a bit less slippery, meaning it’s a little bit harder to drag the screen with the screen protector on. Nevertheless, the touchscreen interface still remains orders of magnitude easier to use than any of resistive WinMo models I’ve ever tested or had.)
All in all, while I’d prefer using Opera Mobile on Windows Mobile because it’s more powerful and stable, the fact that scrolling around pages is way harder than on the iPhone, I’ll stick with the latter. I’m afraid I’ll only change my mind if and when Windows Mobile hardware manufacturers, at last, come up with real capacitive screens, as easy-to-use (even through screen protectors) than those of iPhones. Hope the Microsoft folks are listening…
If you "only" have a Windows Mobile device and, consequently, must select from the browsers available for the platform (and can't go for the iPhone instead), selecting the right one should be based on your personal preferences. In my opinion, Opera Mobile (particularly when backed up with Flash Lite 3.1) is the best. However, if you absolutely must have a browser that either supports Opera Link (Opera Mobile, currently, doesn’t) or have the lowest available data usage figures, go with Opera Mini. It’s not as spectacular as its big brother (there’s, for example, no copy/paste or “inertia” support) but still does what it’s meant to – and it’s free.
SkyFire is, on the other hand, a perfect choice if you have a QVGA device (or a VGA one, but the QVGA-resolution text / image rendering isn’t a problem), have an unlimited Internet subscription (its data usage is far higher than that of even Opera Mobile, let alone Opera Mini) and the much higher CPU usage (and, consequently, battery consumption) aren't an issue.

Very nice write up. Thanks a lot for all your hard work. This will make choosing a browser easier for many in the community.
I personally have used a combo of Opera Mobile and Mini and found that between the two I found most of my needs could be met.
Thanks again!

Thank you very much for these in-depth explanations.

UPDATE (01/05/2009 3:33 AM CET): I’ve cleaned up the article a little; for example, added a Verdict section. I've also very thoroughly explained the evaluation of the tested browsers largely reflects on how they're able to render text with large(r) characters, NOT the overall rendering fidelity / quality. After all, one of the main aims of this article is explaining which of these browsers can be used when you simply can't use small characters on a VGA screen because you're either moving, the screen physically is just too small (2.8...3") or you have bad eyesight. I’ve also added some explanation of why the current, “hacked” IEM6 version (hopefully) isn’t a representative of the final one Microsoft will release some day. (They have a lot of time bugfixing it and they too surely realize IEM6 is plain useless in many usage scenarios like the one requiring large(r) characters.)
There’s a frontpage of the article at WM Power User.

UPDATE (01/05/2009 4:26 AM CET) : MobilitySite frontpage

1. MSMobiles frontpage at http://msmobiles.com/news.php/7944.html
2. The MS folks have just published a (not very deep, but still worth checking out) roundup at http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile...urvey-of-web-browsers-for-windows-mobile.aspx

Bolt Browser
In the family of the server-optimized/rendered browser like Opera Mini or Skyfire, there is a promising newbie: the J2ME-based Bolt Browser by Bitstream. Here is a preview of that (private beta) browser.

gaelynx said:
In the family of the server-optimized/rendered browser like Opera Mini or Skyfire, there is a promising newbie: the J2ME-based Bolt Browser by Bitstream. Here is a preview of that (private beta) browser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Promising, but even scrolling is very slow (so far, tested on my Blackberry 8800). Mobile View also involves a lot of positioning at first, which is pretty annoying as, as has already been stated, scrolling itself is very slow.
Opera Mini is WAY faster (at scrolling around, including scrolling down)- at least on my BB. That is, it still needs a lot of work. For the time being, I'd prefer Opera Mini.

You have not mentioned UCWEB6 which is my browser of choice.

i currently have Opera. as soon as Fennec releases its public beta for there browser im switching (mozilla mobile)

And what about compatibility?
Nice job with this review.
However, I did come to your post looking for a choice for flash and frames and metaframes web pages, something that makes a lot of web-based services simply UNAVAILABLE in the current PDA browsers.
Something so "simple" as checking my terra web mail, is plain impossible either in the latest Opera or IE6 browsers. Not to mention many banking services.
Any suggestion on that particular limitation?
Regards.
Edit: Found some workaround in IE6 to set the browser to identify itself as a Desktop browser instead of PDA browser.
Also some frame rendering seems to work only every other time. Hyperlinks don't always show up or work properly.
And forget about finger browsing, of course. :-(

Wow, this is the kind of USABILITY-driven stuff I love!
Fantastic framing of the issue, description of the process, and clear identification of pros and cons. This thread rates a 10 out of 10 in terms of its focus on what is now driving touchscreen phones -- web browsing as though on a laptop.
This was strictly about the software part. As far as the hardware is concerned (and my switching back to WinMo to browse the Web), the advantage of the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone pretty much negates the software superiority of particularly Opera Mobile. It’s just far easier to scroll and control the iPhone Safari than any of the browsers on any(!) of my Pocket PC’s and Pocket PC phones.... While I have a screen protector on my iPhone 3G as well, even with it, it’s way easier to scroll around. In this regard, the Safari (that is, browsing the Web on the iPhone and not any of the current WinMo models) is simply unbeatable. ..The touchscreen interface still remains orders of magnitude easier to use than any of resistive WinMo models I’ve ever tested or had.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fantastic!

Tried Fennec, its really slow on my HTC Touch Diamond

quicksite said:
Fantastic framing of the issue, description of the process, and clear identification of pros and cons. This thread rates a 10 out of 10 in terms of its focus on what is now driving touchscreen phones -- web browsing as though on a laptop.
Fantastic!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks

kosmos5457 said:
Tried Fennec, its really slow on my HTC Touch Diamond
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DOn't bother with Fennec. Remember the first alphas of Minimo? They were equally bad and buggy. Wait for half a year for a usable version to come out; in the meantime, use Opera Mini, Mobile, SkyFire or Bolt. (I'll review the latter very soon.)

MWC: Web Browser News (BOLT, Opera, Fennec, Iris, Skyfire, Flash)

Just like last year (see my previous year's article HERE), I have REALLY a lot to report on Web browsing, the just-announced stuff and so on.
Opera
1. At MWC, the Opera folks announced their brand new service called Opera Turbo (official page HERE), allowing for massive data usage savings and speedup, particularly over a slow (for example, GPRS) connection.
This isn’t (still) available to end users as it’s mobile operators that need to install the server-side component on their servers to do the data compression. This is quite a bit different from Opera Mini’s solution, which goes through the servers deployed and maintained by the Opera folks themselves.
You may ask why the Opera staff doesn’t maintain the same serverpark to serve Opera Turbo clients. The question seems to be easy to answer: it’d cause in a lot of additional traffic for Opera. With Opera Mini, the majority of this can be directly saved as the Web pages returned to the Opera Mini client are preformatted and stripped of for example dynamic (scripting) and CSS (styling) components. The internal page layout language is also much simpler than the “real” HTML used in everyday Web pages, resulting in further data usage saving. With fully fledged (non-simplified) clients, all this would be gone, meaning two-three times more data usage between the client machine and the Opera servers. Now, a significant (if I remember correctly, about 60%) of Norway’s Web traffic is caused by the Opera Mini servers – you can have an idea what this would become when every, say, second mobile user switched to using Opera Turbo on his or her laptop. No wonder they don’t offer the service to everyone - unlike with their Opera Mini -, but ask the individual mobile operators to deploy them. That is, it’s pretty silly to accuse of Opera of not being very user-friendly by not offering the service without a third party (in this case, mobile operators).
BTW, on desktop Windows, the service will only be compatible with Opera’s own (desktop) browser, not Internet Explorer or Firefox. It’s high time you switched to Opera on your desktop, though – Opera Link, particularly if you also use Opera Mini on your handhelds / handsets, is very hard to beat. And, hopefully, the, in my opinion, biggest problem of the Opera browser, the lack of auto-completion will surely be fixed in the near future – I’ve asked the Opera folks to, finally, implement this (along with the italic support in Opera Mini) and they seem to listen to me.
2. Opera has just released a new version of their Opera Mobile 9.51b2 browser; now, together with Google Gears (see THIS for more info on what it’s about) support. It’s, as usual, available HERE (follow the “Windows Mobile 5/6 Pocket PC, version 9.51b2, Gears-enabled technical preview” link).
A quick note: if you don’t want to give up on the advantages of the current, latest version of Opera Mobile (that is, the Omnia build version) with all its goodies (text reflowing at every zoom level; easier zooming etc.), think twice before upgrading. Nevertheless, if you install it on the same Windows Mobile device, the two versions will happily co-exist and won’t interfere in each other’s operation. (They’re located in entirely different directories, have different icon links and temporary directories.)
Bolt
The famous developers (BitStream) of ThunderHawk, which used to be one of the most recommended browsers for Windows Mobile, particularly in the pre-WM2003SE days when it was pretty hard to switch the screen orientation to landscape (and no other browsers supporting rendering pages in this mode), now, at last, has a successor: BOLT.
While I did install it on my BlackBerry 8800 (my favourite Web browsing mobile device for quick lookups – for longer sessions, I prefer my iPhone 3G) when the first, closed beta arrived about a month ago, I found it best not to publish anything on it because, frankly, I found the scrolling speed plain slow compared to the pretty mature and very fast Opera Mini 4.2 on the same device and, now that I have a lot of work, I simply don’t want to publish reviews of half-baked products because these reviews get outdated very fast as, in general, software developers quickly fix the problems. (Note that it’s because of this that I haven’t really elaborated on the first, runnable Mozilla / Fennec build(s) for Windows Mobile either – I’ll wait until a version is released which is at least half as usable and stable as current Opera Mobile versions.)
I’ve thoroughly tested the new version announced and released at MWC and found it very good on all kinds of devices. I’ve tested it on the following ones:
QVGA – 320*240 – Landscape BlackBerry 8800,
VGA – 640 * 480 – HP iPAQ 210 with Jbed 3.1 (tested in both screen orientations) (Windows Mobile),
QVGA – 240*320 – Nokia N95 (Symbian S60).
Thanks for the excellent font set of BitStream, all the three
Some screenshots:
{
"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"
}
(Windows Mobile VGA with XXLarge characters – see Settings / Magnification)
(Nokia N95 with default settings)
Note that it has everything a decent browser should need: page scrolling by 2/4/6/8; on touchscreen-enabled devices without hardware (left / right) softkeys (the HP 210 is one of them), tapping the bottom-most area of the screen brings up the menu; find text in page.
It surely has some (not very annoying) problems; for example, rendering the PPCMag Experts in Portrait mode on a QVGA device – in this case, the N95 – sometimes lead to invisible end of rows. This needs to be continuously – after every single Page downs –corrected, which is definitely a more time-consuming process than under Opera Mini 4.2, which uses a better “fit to screen” algorithm.
Also note that, as the browser is strictly based on the (8-bit) ASCII font set, it cannot render any non-ASCII characters. That is, while it can display all the characters in all Western languages, it fails doing the same with non-Western ones – there will always be some characters missing. This can’t be fixed, unless, as is explained in my dedicated article on internationalization issues, the Web administrators explicitly look for the User-Agent of Bolt and convert all the pages returned to ASCII.
Speed-wise, the new browser excelled. It’s definitely worth giving a try.
Finally, it also supports videos and animation. It can even play back YouTube contents by invoking the system-level, native Web browser to download the (into a very low-quality .3gp file – unfortunately, you can’t make the transcoder produce a better-quality file, not even at the expense of higher data usage) transcoded YouTube content and, then, invoke the system-level multimedia player to play it back. On the BlackBerry 8800 (running OS 4.5), where I tested this, I needed to manually invoke the latter – doing the same from Browser didn’t work. That is, you’ll need to save the transcoded .3gp file into the file system, start Media manually and search for the just-saved clip.

Fennec
The long-awaited Mozilla/Firefox port, after having been only available for the Linux-based Nokia Internet Tablets, has arrived to Windows Mobile (dedicated blog post HERE).
No, it’s still not worth getting it if all you want is a decent, capable browser – it’s really slow and full of bugs. (Remember the first versions of Minimo? It’s THAT bad. Note that I’m not stating the private, unofficial Minimo has anything to do with the officially backed-up Fennec – except for the same initial codebase –, just the fact that Fennec, as of the current version, ins plain useless for real-world usage.) For the time being, go for Opera Mobile, Mini, Skyfire or Bolt, depending on your needs.
Iris
After my last review of Iris, several new versions have been released. They are stated to be much faster / more stable. However, the GUI inconsistencies I’ve pointed out in the above review are still here (also see the comments for example HERE); that is, currently, I still don’t recommend this version unlike you absolutely don’t want to use the alternative ones.
Also read THIS for more info.
Skyfire
A new version, 0.9, was released a week ago. Compared to the version reviewed in my last generic roundup, the list of improvements include (see THIS for more info) Facebook, Twitter, RSS support, improved text reflowing (not that I would have found the previous versions bad in this respect) and (at last) compatibility with WVGA (800*480) and WQVGA (400*240) screens.
Adobe news: Flash Lite 3.1 for developers; full Flash 10 promised
If you know my dedicated article ("TUTORIAL: everything you need to know about Flash Lite 3 and playing back Flash web videos"), you know that, so far, there haven’t been an official version of Flash Lite 3.1 available to download.
In the meantime, Adobe has made the developer version available (more info). No, do not rush to download it unless you’re a developer – it will NOT work in your flash (lite) plugin-capable browser like the latest Omnia build or Internet Explorer. Yes, I’ve tested this. Hope the end user plug-in version is soon released.
Adobe has also announced they will release full (!!) Flash support for Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and Android this year. This is certainly very good news for everyone but iPhone folks – after all, Symbian and Android have never had any “full” Flash support and the latest Windows Mobile one is a highly outdated and slow version 7.

Thanks a lot mate
You´re the man!
great reviews

UPDATE (22/02/2009 10:34AM CET): : let me also present you a shot of the Opera booth at ShowStoppers. I hope you recognize the webpage shown ;-)

What's your take on the security for Opera Mini and Bolt for BlackBerry? I know it's not a WM question, but I see you used Bolt on your 8800. Just wondering, I thought I saw somewhere that OM wasn't a secure browser, I like it but it's got me nervous to use it.

Something I noticed..
Why is Opera Mobile 9.5 jerky (non smooth scrolling, vsync problem on the top left of the screen in landscape) on the HTC HD/Diamond/Pro and smooth as slik on the Xpéria (wich is the same god damn hardware..) and the Omnia etc...?
Xperia : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW124IUAPIs

Hmm it's a bit late for a response I guess, but here goes.
I played with Opera Turbo for a bit at MWC and wasn't too impressed. Most of the sites didn't load correctly. Ofcourse, this was perhaps a beta version and things may need improving.
Also I'm not clear on exactly the compression method used, but if it is just standard HTTP compression (sadly enough still not used by most webservers on the block) it's nothing new, I know several carriers who already implement this service on their side and there are several services available that offer this in non-transparent proxy form (apposed to the carriers doing this in transparant form).
However there are many possible improvements to be made over 'normal' HTTP compression, and I assume Opera is at least using some of the things I can come up with straight from the top of my head. Still, I'd be nice to know in more detail how this works - is it revolutionary, or just something old in a new jacket?
Looking forward to actually using this on my device, see how it works (hopefully better than the on the demo devices at the Opera stand at MWC)

MAK11 said:
Something I noticed..
Why is Opera Mobile 9.5 jerky (non smooth scrolling, vsync problem on the top left of the screen in landscape) on the HTC HD/Diamond/Pro and smooth as slik on the Xpéria (wich is the same god damn hardware..) and the Omnia etc...?
Xperia : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW124IUAPIs
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I’ve just published a much more detailed comparison of BOLT and Opera Mini; see http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3507951#post3507951