[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Standards compliance groups: in the five groups here, I examine the following four areas (and a miscellaneous area with some "not suitable for bigger groups" tests):

JavaScript, scripting, Java (Part I) : in here, I've run several tests to find out the compatibility of all the browsers with some well-known pages having very strong and complicated scripting. As can clearly be seen, Opera Mobile and Minimo have by far the best JavaScript and AJAX support. PIE has always had a very bad JavaScript support and, even as of WM6, non-existing AJAX support. (Frankly, I don't understand why Microsoft states PIE in WM5 AKU3 / WM6 is AJAX-compliant, when it just isn't. Its JavaScript compliance isn't a tad better than in older versions either.) NetFront had mediocre JavaScript support in 3.3 and good in 3.4; as far as its AJAX compliance is concerned, 3.4 was indeed a BIG step ahead (albeit it's still worse than that of Minimo or Opera Mobile).

Finally, it's in here that I also elaborate on the Java applet compliance of the Web browsers. Unfortunately, Minimo and the two Operas have absolutely no Java support. This isn't that big a problem, however, because very few sites do actively use Java applets - it's mostly Flash that everything is based on (see Flash compatibility later).

Thunderhawk and NetFront both have their custom Java support, which can't be swapped to something else. With PIE, however, you have some choices when choosing a JVM: CrEme and the no longer sold / supported JEODE, which, back in 2001-2003, was shipped on iPAQ CD's. Of the two, I'd prefer CrEme because of the vastly superior speed and generally better compliance. The reader is kindly referred to my other, related articles (just look for "CrEme" in my articles) for more information on CrEme.

HTML Frames: these test concentrate on the frame support of the Web browsers. You may have already heard of PIE's only supporting few parallel or embedded frames and absolutely not supporting so-called "Iframes". In here, I elaborate on all these issues. If you know a bit about HTML and would you find out how I've did the tests, don't forget to check out the HTML test pages I've created for these tests: I've linked in them all. They're pretty instructive.

As can clearly be seen, Opera Mobile has the best frame support when it comes to the maximal number of parallel / embedded frames. Its only problem is the lack of "go to a frame" functionality (to maximize a given frame to the entire screen), which, otherwise, would be REALLY important, particularly when you really wouldn't need the contents of the other frames. The Opera folks will want to address this issue. PIE, on the other hand, is at the other end of the spectrum: its frame support is the worst of all, frame number-wise.

Finally, some really good news for PIE freaks: in WM6, Iframes support has finally been added. It's not really flawless (see my comments and the screenshot), but, at least, it's already there.

Internationalization support (Part IV): please see this article for a complete description of what this all means.

Finally, the fifth subgroup, Misc, dives into a lot of disjunctive compatibility areas: file uploading, Flash, YouTube etc. Please do read the linked-in articles for more info if interested - here, I won't waste any time on telling the same stuff again. As can clearly be seen, Opera Mobile is the best of all in this group, particularly YouTube video-wise.

Speed, dynamic RAM memory usage benchmarks group: on Windows Mobile devices with, typically, heavily restricted CPU and memory resources, it’s very important Web browsers don’t tax neither the CPU nor the memory much. That is, they load the requested Web page as quickly as possible and try to radically reduce their memory consumption. As there are really radically differences between the different browsers, a Web browsing-related roundup MUST elaborate on these quantitive results.

Overall rendering speed: PPCMag test loading speed: in this test, I’ve measured how much time it did take to completely download and render the linked test page. Note that I’ve repeated the tests in different rendering modes to see what their effect on the overall rendering speed is. In general, I’ve made the tests on two current devices: the WM5 VGA 624 MHz Dell Axim x51v (running the A12 ROM) and the WM6 520 MHz VGA HTC Universal. In every case, I’ve noted which of the two I’ve measured a result on (the x51v is slightly faster, which is also reflected in the results).

Overall memory usage: program itself with a blank page (important particularly for HP iPAQ rx1950 / Palm Treo 700w users with ~11Mbytes of free RAM at most). Note that the PIE plug-ins show additional RAM usage, in addition to the "base" PIE RAM usage. : in this test, I’ve measured the memory usage of the applications without displaying any Web page (as displaying pages may dramatically increase the memory usage.) Note that, as with the next benchmarks, I’ve done separate QVGA and VGA tests; I used the HTC Wizard running WM5 as the QVGA test device. The reason for this is pretty simple: on VGA devices, Web browsers have the tendency of taking up more memory. As can be seen, Opera Mini and PIE are the most memory-friendly, followed by Thunderhawk and, then, Opera Mobile. Then follow the other browsers: NetFront and, finally, Minimo.

Note that, with PIE plug-ins (except for the hybrid Webby), I’ve measured the additional memory usage. That is, don’t think Spb Pocket Plus / PIEPlus only require 56k / 90k RAM memory; that is, that they greatly reduce memory load. It’s the additional memory usage, added to memory usage the “base” PIE.

An opened, new tab: unfortunately, not only the Web browsers themselves take up memory, but also the individual windows you open in them. This is especially true of PIE plug-ins, which, in effect, need to load a brand new instance of PIE into memory. This is why they, in general, consume at least an order of magnitude more memory (per window) than non-plugin-based, multiwindow-capable solutions (NetFront, Minimo, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini).

PPCMag test memory consumption: totally independent of the above-mentioned cases (how much memory the program itself / an additional tab take) is the memory taken up by the in-memory representation by actual Web pages you visit. This, in general, in cases, may be even an order of magnitude larger than the original size of the page – for example, (in this respect) worse browsers (most importantly, PIE) may take 7-8 Mbytes of the meager RAM to load a 600 kbyte Web page with some icons in there.

In this test, I’ve measured the memory consumption of all the tested browsers upon loading the above-introduced, 590 kbyte-big PPCMag test page. As can clearly be seen , there may be even two orders of magnitude differences in the results: while Opera Mini takes very little memory, PIE (the, in this respect, worst-behaving browser) takes between 7.5 and 9Mbytes.