[General Topics] Menneisyys:
I have a lot of GREAT news for you all!

Opera Mobile 8.65 beta out!

First, the first public beta of without doubt the best Windows Mobile Web browser, Opera Mobile, has just been released and is available for download here. It offers a LOT of welcome additions and bugfixes; for example, support for Macromedia (Adobe) Flash, SmartSKey / Jog-dial-based page scrolling, direct image saving, link copying to the clipboard etc. More on these features later (when I move on to discussing my forthcoming Windows Mobile Web Browsing Bible).

I’ve been testing it for some three weeks as an official beta tester and can only say it’s a very sound and very nice application. Well worth the price tag.

Note that the final version will be released on Monday.

Minimo 0.2 out!

Second, after almost three months of not receiving any nightly updates to Minimo, the alternative free (!) browser (and the author’s seemingly putting the entire project on ice), version 0.2 has just been released – out of a sudden. (No one would have thought there would be a new version of the browser after the January announcement! This is also very good news.)

In some respects, the new version is far superior to the old; for example

page loading speed has been increased by about 25%

the ability to load pages with any number of resources and not choking at pages with as few as even 15-20 linked resources

vastly enhanced compatibility with most? all? WM5 / WM6 Windows Mobile models. For example, the 0.1x series was pretty useless on the HTC Universal because it was far from being responsive (a MAJOR bug with earlier Minimo versions). The new version works on my Universal just great.

However, it has some major problems too:

the RAM usage is very-very bad – upon loading, Minimo allocates itself some 13.5 Mbytes of RAM (as opposed to the about 5-6 Mbyte of the last 0.1x series version)!

it no longer has a WM2003(SE)-compatible version (read: it’s only compatible with WM5 / WM6).

subtle bugs like the system-level inability for pasting haven’t been fixed

there are no radically new features like image / page saving, direct link copying to the clipboard or link target saving.

All in all, if you have a WM5 device and you have more than 20Mbytes of free RAM all the time, go get it. Otherwise, wait for a bugfix release or stick with an alternative browser / the previous version.

First Deepfish beta out!

Third, Microsoft Research has released the first public beta of Deepfish, a brand new, revolutionary Thunderhawk-like Web browser, closely mimicking the new Nokia S60 OSS browser (on which I’ve elaborated for example here) and the latest (3.4) version of NetFront. You can also sign up for the beta HERE; note that you’ll only get on a betatester list to be granted rights only later when Microsoft Research actually gets able to provide the thousands of would-be betatesters the necessary proxy server throughput capabilities.

As you can also seen in the screenshot above, this browser renders pages REALLY nicely. Too bad it (still) lacks almost everything needed for decent browsing: cookies, Flash, SSL, JavaScript / AJAX and is, therefore, can’t be used for anything serious. Still, it’s really worth checking out. The excellent folks at Microsoft Research really know what they do :)

Brand new version of Windows Mobile Web Browsing Bible to be published in 1-2 days!

Finally, another great piece of news for the entire Windows Mobile community. You may know I’m the author of the well-known (it has been frontpaged by Pocket PC Thoughts and made sticky by MobilitySite; the AximSite, BrightHand and the FirstLoox copy is also worth checking out for more reader feedback) Windows Mobile Web Browsing Bible. As it’s dated at 08/2005, it’s heavily outdated. This is why I’ve completely updated it, particularly now that, being an official Opera betatester, I can deliver you first-hand, real reports on the latest Opera Mobile version.

It has not only been updated to cover the latest versions of all browsers running on the latest operating system versions (WM5 and, yes, WM6!) but also greatly enhanced with a lot of new tests and comparisons.

For now, “only” the heart of the new Web Browsing Bible, the comparison / feature chart is available. It, however, already has ALL the information – in a highly compact, easy-to-compare-to-the-alternatives format. And, yes, some 350 screenshots, almost all taken on a WM6 VGA HTC Universal (don’t forget to click the links to see them if interested)!

As with all my feature charts (and roundups), I’ve paid special attention to provide you with mini-tutorials when discussing a particular question. For example, when I elaborate on the “One column” mode (see the “One (single) column view?” row in the chart), with, say, Minimo, I also show how you can actually switch to this mode by showing a screenshot of the menu item taking you there. This means the chart contains hundreds of small, but, in cases, very useful quick tips & mini-tutorials you won’t find anywhere else. All in a very compact form: just imagine how much I would have ended up having to type upon trying to convey the SAME deal of information in a non-tabular form – yeah, dozens if not hundreds of kilobytes.

In this weekend, I’ll publish a full article explaining what the chart is all about; still, the chart is worth taking a look at even now. I had tried to be as verbose and clear as possible when explaining the different test cases. I’ve also paid special effort to linking in my previous, related articles on the different tests I’ve conducted. For example, when I provide a link along with the Internationalization support group, it means you may want to follow the link to find out what the tests in this group are all about.

If you thoroughly scrutinize the chart, you’ll see that, as long as you don’t need special features like real Java (NOT JavaScript!) or hardware button support, Opera Mobile should be the first browser you check out – it is the most standards compliant, in many respects the fastest, takes the least memory (when it comes to loading huge pages or creating new tabs) and, now, also supports Flash.