Related
:lol: Always wanted Netscape/Mozilla/FireFox/MiniMO on your WinCEPocketPC! :lol:
Mozilla Org released minimo which will be the best browser ever
Tabbed Browsing
Works on Internet Banking site etc etc
Goodbye Opera and PIE
8)
Heres the Link: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/
Regards
Skillie
somebody found America?
It's still *very* early stages. OK, so it renders better than anything else, but the rest of the interface is nasty. It's also hideously slow to respond on both 400Mhz XDA2 and 600Mhz iPaq. And the keyboard doesn't work in landscape mode. TBH a custom soft keyboard would be better.
Wait til 0.7 before you expect any sort of useable version (Current version is 0.013!)
There is a little-known browser called Thunderhawk which renders brilliantly to a 320x240 screen in landscape by scaling everything down. But it's a bit sluggish, and they seem to pass *all* traffic through their own server to perform preprocessing (and thus you need to pay a subscription.) I think Minimo has the potential to blow all of them out of the water if it can be faster than Opera and as impressive in its output as Thunderhawk.
Wait, WM5 only?
*tries it on his 2003SE device anyway*
If you're looking for a tabbed browser try ftxPBrowser. Same engine as PIE, so compatible with most sites. Also it uses the same favorites, cookies & cache. History seems not to be working though. & it's only 75K:!:
Regards, M
Many people don't like the IE rendering engine, or the IE way of rendering (e.g. Opera) which is why they seek alternatives.
Further, the reason it's "only 75k" is because it's not a browser. Whoever wrote it - and PIE - didn't actually write a browser themselves, they just instructed IE to render the page into the area they specified. The tabs just switch between visible IE areas. In short, if you uninstall IE then it won't work. It's like taking a Fiat Cinqecento and putting a Peugeot 407 body on it, then saying it's a whole new car which is very light but looks just as good as something else. If you take the Fiat out, it doesn't go any more.
(Coders out there - I know this is technically very loose, but I'm trying to put this simply for someone who doesn't understand the relevance of MiniMo)
Excuse me for being so dumb... I know what Minimo is about, tried it & opera (mini too) & thunderhawk as well.
Problem is though that PIE is still the most compatible:!:
I use firefox on my PC & probably will be using minimo when it's working properly. But at the moment minimo is almost useless from the user point of view.
Yes you got me P on this.
Minimo is also currently around 10Mb.... bit large methinks. (and bloody slow)
My take on this
Minimo is slow
Opera is fiddly and the download thing is a HUGE prob plus takes up too much space
PIE seems to work fine.
What exactly is up with PIE ? I mean on a desktop Mozilla rules but on a handheld ???
Huge problem with PIE for many people is that it's a M$ product. Personal I don't mind.
Serious problem is that it doesn't render, one column does help a little & there's the lack of tabs. For this last I use ftxPBrowser. Problem with that one is the lack of history & most important downloads are very problematic if not impossible.
Which make me use ftxPBrowser & Opera mini (no https :-( ) for browsing & PIE for downloads.
Now it's waiting for a good rendering, downloading & secured browser.
Cheers, M
Strange thing I know about people disloking MS progs, I know people do not like them, the thing is why are they using devices with MS op system on them when they could be using a Symbian unit.
It's a real problem, huh?
Palm and symbian have some really nice software to run on their devices, I'm especially a fan of the UIQ stuff that SE slaps on top of Symbian. The don't, however, seem to have quite got the knack of cobbling together really good hardware to run it all on.
Of course, the kids who make the really cool hardware seem content to slap Windows Mobile on there and be done with it.
So, in conclusion: come on HTC, go source a proper OS for your handhelds. Maybe have a word with Apple?
Back on-topic: it seems to run on WM2003SE, but not very nicely. It's all juddery and incomplete and frankly kind of rubbish. More evidence, if it was ever needed, that Magician-type devices are not meant for web browsing.
i use one of the beta versions on 2003
it's ok but slow
and it DONT SUPPORT COPY PASTE!!!
which is a biatch
ATEOTD no Firefox/Mozilla is worth using at such early test versions. It's worth keeping an eye on if you're that geeky - but Firefox (back when it was Phoenix then Firebird) wasn't really useable until version 0.7. Consider that minimo is at 0.07 or something - it has a long way to go before it's competing with IE/Opera. I won't put PIE in that list, because it's just not a browser. And Thunderhawk is simply incomparible in its function. I would like to see a browser which renders as well as Thunderhawk but more quickly and without needing to interface with a central server, though.
Minimo's greatest feature so far is that it does actually support JavaScript and AJAX systems like Google Maps, which no other browser can do. But to get the speed out of Thunderhawk, you would probably need to render to a static image. And that negates animated GIFs and any JavaScript that manipulates on-screen elements.
The latest in the onslaught of WM browsers:
http://www.makayama.com/touchbrowser.html
Claims to allow fluid, Iphone-like browsing (shocker). The bigger question though is what kind of content can it handle? Has anyone tried it? There doesn't seem to be a trial version unfortunately.
Why do some pages display incorrect?
TouchBrowser uses the Pocket Internet Explorer to render HTML pages. It's a new user interface on top of an existing browser. TouchBrowser renders pages exactly the same as Pocket Internet Explorer. Pages that Pocket Internet Explorer can't handle correctly (like websites with Flash, or with complex layouts) are also rendered incorrectly by Touchbrowser. If you're looking for a browser that can handle these websites correctly, Touchbrowser is not the thing you're looking for, but we advice Opera or a similar browser based on a more modern rendering engine.
it's based on PIE
Blah, that sucks.
Dumb that they don't offer some form of trial. Plus, you go to Handango and they offer a trial, but when you open it up, it's nothing more than their YouTube video demo.
Dumb. Paying $15 to see if something is good or bad is not smart.
1. now there is a trial
2. i'll soon publish a full review of it
If you want iPhone style browsing get Opera 9.5: it has practically the same buttons/layout, and can render "the real internet"
i agree. especially with TouchFLO
Guys, read http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2135515
what someone should do is make deepfish functional, find someway to integrate it into internet explorer or at least find a way to make PIE render pages like deepfish
Torch Mobile has released a new version of their Webkit based browser for Windows mobile.
The Iris browser:
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/7556.html
What are you thoughts of this so far? It's still beta I believe.
I like it. It has a added bonus, all sites made for Iphone now loads the iphone page instead of the normal mobile or standard site.
It's also faster then opera and pocket IE, and it supports keyboard shortcuts (more then you can say about Opera) if you have a keyboard that is.
Im a little confused, why would you want to load the ipony version? Surley they are scaled down to the much lower res of the ipony?
Does it support tap zoom-in/out and scrolling like Opera? What about flash where its on a normal website? And Java?
Monty Burns said:
Im a little confused, why would you want to load the ipony version? Surley they are scaled down to the much lower res of the ipony?
Does it support tap zoom-in/out and scrolling like Opera? What about flash where its on a normal website? And Java?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you act like having more options is a bad thing.
crazy talk said:
you act like having more options is a bad thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its not bad, its just pointless if it renders lower res and doesn't support the normal finger gestures (of which I honestly don't know, does it?).
I like this browser. A lot. I wish they'd work out some of the bugs though. On SP, you can enable the virtual mouse cursor (which is great!) but the hotkeys you can assign, for instance to zoom in and out don't work which is a pain.
jeonatl3 said:
I like this browser. A lot. I wish they'd work out some of the bugs though. On SP, you can enable the virtual mouse cursor (which is great!) but the hotkeys you can assign, for instance to zoom in and out don't work which is a pain.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you tell us if it supports finger browsing/swiping/gestures please?
I couldn't tell you as I only have a Smartphone! sorry.
It swipes and zooms like opera. It's a bit like the 6.5 version of PIE. It has a very nice graphical history. You can import PIE favorites, and it reads PIE cookies, which is very nice. It's on the slow side, though.
Thanks Ted, so Opera is still really the daddy then.
The iphone sites are often better then the "normal" mobile versions, for instance Iphone facebook is better then "mobile" facebook, also services like dropbox only has mobile pages for ihpone. Sure you can use the "desktop" version but that just make ajax/javascript heavy pages crash your browser.
Opera also dont work AT ALL on certain pages, all i get is a error, the same page with portable IE or IRIS works perfectly.
Also i dont like the proxy rendering browsers like opera mini or skyfire, I dont want to log on to passworded sites useing that - God knows who can snoop your personal info that way.
Sure, iris still need more work done in terms of usability (esp. on touchscreens) but still renders pages way faster then opera, webkit is realy a good renderer for portable units.
Hey guys some of you may remember way back earlier in the year a company called torch mobile launched a preview of their webkit browser called iris, it was a bit crap very buggy no real zoom etc etc most people wrote it off straight away.
Well now they have launched a proper beta and it has to be said its very impressive it has now got page overview zoom, mouse cursor, ability to import bookmarks and lots ofvother really quite kewl features.
It is a little slow to render pages, when compared to opera and is a memory hog but must say im quite liking it. not sure if flash works perhaps the experts in here may get it too work.
Anyhows just google torch mobile and you should be able to find the link to get it.
let me know what you guys think.
stevej26uk said:
let me know what you guys think.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I spent the last couple of weeks comparing more or less all the available PPC browsers (IRIS, Opera 9.5 in different flavours, Opera mini, Opera mini with java addons, Netfront 3.5, Jataayu, Minimo, Skyfire and also IE addons such as PIE+, MultiIE, Webby etc.
I tested these on the road as well as at home, on WiFi as well as GPRS.
In the end I chucked them all except IRIS.
It basically has all I need (find in page, tabs, zoom, etc.) and runs very well on my Elf. It doesn't (yet) do inline videos like Skyfire does, but Skyfire is pretty useless otherwise.
Skyfire in many ways reminds me of a Java midlet like Opera Mini with pre-chewed pages. The advantage is that it doesn't cache pages on the PPC (just like Opera Mini). But it scores really low on usability and customisation
IRIS is similar in many ways to Netfront, but is open source and (so far) freeware. I also prefer the way IRIS zooms and has an option to present pages in one colums as defauls (rather than having to hit reflow in Netfront). NF visual bookmarks are pretty but rather useless. IRIS has a similar function for History, where it's much more useful. OTOH NF has loads of functions (including on-the-fly Japanese-to-English translation...) which may or may not be useful to you. And it's better at rendering non-Roman character content, such as Arabic or Hebrew pages than IRIS.
From PIE I only miss the possibility to search for bookmarks by typing the first letter of the bookmark title...
What I´d like to see in IRIS is more support for content, but the architecture with plugins will certainly take care of that. And extended copy and paste to page contents as well as in the address bar, as is currently the case.
Otherwise IRIS is my default browser and will stay that way.
Bernard
bfarkin said:
Well, I spent the last couple of weeks comparing more or less all the available PPC browsers (IRIS, Opera 9.5 in different flavours, Opera mini, Opera mini with java addons, Netfront 3.5, Jataayu, Minimo, Skyfire and also IE addons such as PIE+, MultiIE, Webby etc.
I tested these on the road as well as at home, on WiFi as well as GPRS.
In the end I chucked them all except IRIS.
It basically has all I need (find in page, tabs, zoom, etc.) and runs very well on my Elf. It doesn't (yet) do inline videos like Skyfire does, but Skyfire is pretty useless otherwise.
Skyfire in many ways reminds me of a Java midlet like Opera Mini with pre-chewed pages. The advantage is that it doesn't cache pages on the PPC (just like Opera Mini). But it scores really low on usability and customisation
IRIS is similar in many ways to Netfront, but is open source and (so far) freeware. I also prefer the way IRIS zooms and has an option to present pages in one colums as defauls (rather than having to hit reflow in Netfront). NF visual bookmarks are pretty but rather useless. IRIS has a similar function for History, where it's much more useful. OTOH NF has loads of functions (including on-the-fly Japanese-to-English translation...) which may or may not be useful to you. And it's better at rendering non-Roman character content, such as Arabic or Hebrew pages than IRIS.
From PIE I only miss the possibility to search for bookmarks by typing the first letter of the bookmark title...
What I´d like to see in IRIS is more support for content, but the architecture with plugins will certainly take care of that. And extended copy and paste to page contents as well as in the address bar, as is currently the case.
Otherwise IRIS is my default browser and will stay that way.
Bernard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the detailed comparison, I'll definitely link to it in my next story on Iris
I've had Iris installed since a very early public beta. I really wanted to like it. I love the browser on the iPhone. But Iris is still a memory hog, slow to render, and still crashes here and there.
Also, the overall design/layout if very amateurish. Some of the places they put options just don't make sense. Up until the latest beta, there wasn't even a way to go back to your home page.
Their favorite handling is just plan stupid. I want to scroll up and down to find the webpage I want to go to. What happens? I constantly ACCIDENTALLY move the favorite around instead of scrolling the list (which works sometimes but not consistently). Every version has gotten a little better, but it's nowhere close to a commercially viable product. PocketIE as old as it is renders most pages faster.
As a note, I view Mobile webpages when available and rarely go to desktop intended websites.
-Mc
Menneisyys said:
thanks for the detailed comparison, I'll definitely link to it in my next story on Iris
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome, and I apologise for the typos - I did type in IRIS on my Elf virtual keyboard...
Bernard
McHale said:
I've had Iris installed since a very early public beta. I really wanted to like it. I love the browser on the iPhone. But Iris is still a memory hog, slow to render, and still crashes here and there.
Also, the overall design/layout if very amateurish. Some of the places they put options just don't make sense. Up until the latest beta, there wasn't even a way to go back to your home page.
Their favorite handling is just plan stupid. I want to scroll up and down to find the webpage I want to go to. What happens? I constantly ACCIDENTALLY move the favorite around instead of scrolling the list (which works sometimes but not consistently). Every version has gotten a little better, but it's nowhere close to a commercially viable product. PocketIE as old as it is renders most pages faster.
As a note, I view Mobile webpages when available and rarely go to desktop intended websites.
-Mc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting.... I'm very pleased with the performance on the Elf, but I did move the cache to my SD card. I do find that it has improved since I did that. But maybe I'm just imagining things.
I agree about the bookmsrks and the somewhat haphazard menu item placement...
In order to avoid moving bookmarks around I do use the d-pad, but that is not really satisfactory. I also tend to use the URL auto fill-in. I wish you could do the same on the bookmark page, like in PIE.
Bernard
And I just found out that Skyfire does indeed cache pages on the device as well....
B.
I wasn't really impressed with the original couple betas of skyfire and would usually uninstall shortly after install, but now I'm using it more than Opera Mini which I was a big fan of. This page helped me give skyfire another chance:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-browser-showdown-iphone-3g-vs-opera-mobile-and-skyfire
Check out the performance stats!
Just wish they would incorporate tabs...
Oh yah, my biggest gripe: LET ME IMPORT MY IE FAVORITES!!!
-Mc
p.s. I'm still hoping that Iris gets to be almost as good as Mobile Safari.
McHale said:
Check out the performance stats!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, that *is* impressive!
And yes, I also feel handicapped without tabs....
Bernard
So I have noticed that Google recently updated the mobile youtube version of their site and it is fully html5 capable like an app inside the browser...
the question is why does the html5 mobile version of gmail does not load up in the IE9 on Windows Phone Mango...when its fully capable of handling HTML5 ???
going to the mobile version simply loads up the generic mobile UI version of the site....any help ???
backlashsid said:
the question is why does the html5 mobile version of gmail does not load up in the IE9 on Windows Phone Mango...when its fully capable of handling HTML5 ???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's no where near "fully capable"..
Go here on your WP7 browser for proof: http://html5test.com
See how IE9 stacks up compared to other phone browsers (the results are poor): http://html5test.com/results-mobile.html.
It is possible that HTML5 Gmail site is using a feature that is not supported. It's also possible that like touch.facebook, they simply haven't enabled support for IE9 yet as they haven't tested it properly yet.
HTML5Test is not a good "benchmark". It verify only if the browser has been marked to support, not the way it has been supported
Aphasaic2002 said:
It's no where near "fully capable"..
Go here on your WP7 browser for proof: http://html5test.com
See how IE9 stacks up compared to other phone browsers (the results are poor): http://html5test.com/results-mobile.html.
It is possible that HTML5 Gmail site is using a feature that is not supported. It's also possible that like touch.facebook, they simply haven't enabled support for IE9 yet as they haven't tested it properly yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well touch.facebook.com works perfectly fine and so does m.youtube.com which features a new HTML5 UI and support...its only Gmail and Google+ I am talking about.
dada051 said:
HTML5Test is not a good "benchmark". It verify only if the browser has been marked to support, not the way it has been supported
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
agreed !!!!!!
Some websites that target WebKit, do not take advantage of the HTML5 / CSS that non webkit browsers do support, just because it is not WebKit, even if the browser supports another implementation of the style.
Normally, the issues are with experimental features.
In May of 2010, Microsoft was actually considering spoofing this, so sites targeting WebKit will render properly, despite the fact website developers did not do a good job at being cross browser compliant.
Here's a good link that explains it: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft...prefix-for-ie-mobile-for-windows-phone-7/6173
The problem is that webkit uses experimental css, but much is actually supported by IE. But, there is no corresponding -ie css specified.
This article gives some basic info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/thebeebs/ar...-for-all-browsers-or-just-your-favourite.aspx
Here is an example of the css that targets specific browsers, but then also uses the general. It comes from here: http://felipe.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/a-proposal-to-drop-browser-vendor-prefixes/
Code:
#elem {
-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 10px gray;
-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 10px gray;
-o-box-shadow: 0 0 10px gray;
-ms-box-shadow: 0 0 10px gray;
box-shadow: 0 0 10px gray;
}
Personally, I don't see a reason for IE to not handle -webkit prefixes.
If -webkit-box-shadow is specifed, but no -ms-box-shadow is specified, then treat the -webkit-box-shadow as -ms-box-shadow.
It is also possible that the server is not even supplying it, if the css supplied by the server is specific to the browser. Although most css, is just a file on theserver, it can be dynamically generated by the server or have fiel dynamically selected by the server. And the browser information that is sent to the server can be used to determine this.
There are toolkits out there for site development that basically makes your site only render properly on webkit browsers. Serious web developers should avoid these, since it creates more work to acually make a site that will render on all major browsers.
Again, the problems occur because of usage of experimental css and css that is not sent to non webkit browsers.
Excellent explanation @JVH3.
Mind you, it would also be nice if Microsoft had provided any way to change the user-agent string of the browser, beyond the "Desktop"/"Mobile" setting. It is a sad thing, but on the modern web having a user-agent switcher is being increasingly important.
Also, and possibly more relevant to the question, Google is absolutely atrocious about using non-standards-compliant HTML/CSS. Seriously, try sticking any of their sites into the W3C validator, and most will come up as totally broken. Instead of making a single cross-browser-compatible site, they code to specific quirks of Chrome first, Safari and other WebKit browsers second, Firefox third, and IE9 or Opera last or never. The official reason they do this is to minimize the amount of network bandwidth they use by taking advantage of various shorthand techniques that most browsers have, and not including browser-checks in the code they send (which increase the file size and therefore bandwidth). Unofficially, it feels an awful lot like a push to get people to use Chrome...
nice responses....makes sense...the only worry is when Google or other sites fix it as in making it cross platform and the same with every browser...be in html5 or webkit