[General Topics] Menneisyys:
ftxPBrowser: this PIE plug-in (or, more precisely, a shell), in pre-WM5 times, used to be highly recommended. As it’s mostly incompatible with WM5+, it’s not recommended any more.

Webby, another shell (not a real plug-in), is .NET Compact Framework-based and is, therefore, a bit on the slow side. However, it’s become better and better over time and offers for example extensions like Mozilla for for example ad filtering. It doesn’t let for accessing some of the features of the underlying IEM; for example, it has no One Column mode.

The brand-new Touch Browser, which tries to mimic Safari on iPhone, is pretty similar to Webby in that it’s another CF-based shell. The initial versions were pretty bad; hopefully, future versions will, hopefully, improve on the situation.

Finally, Spb Pocket Plus 4 should be mentioned (see screenshot on the same slide, showing its tabs). While before version 4 it was definitely worse (it didn’t even offer on-screen, easily clickable tabs) than PIEPlus or MultiIE (the two major alternatives), this is no longer the case: version 4.0 has fixed this, along with other goodies like accelerated screen dragging just like on the iPhone.

Now that we’ve seen the major browsers (and plug-ins) for the three operating systems, let’s quickly elaborate on what problems running them under Windows Mobile may result in.

The most important of them, particularly under pre-WM5 operating systems (particularly under WM2003SE), is the driver memory usage, which rendered NetFront and Opera Mobile unable to start under certain circumstances – unless you reset the entire handheld.

Let’s go on with discussing the different client-side techniques helping in reformatting (“reflowing”) a page to (horizontally) fit in a low-resolution screen. If we don’t do this, the low (horizontal) screen resolution (240 by default - 320 when used in Landscape -; some low-end MS Smartphones and pre-v3 Symbian S60 Smartphones had even worse-resolution (176*208 / 220) screens) results in having to scroll horizontally. This is why there are several “One column” client-side implementations. (There’re also middle-tier implementations like Skweezer; more on them later). On Windows Mobile, these special modes are supported by all browsers except Thunderhawk. On Symbian S60’s Nokia Web, in most cases, they are unnecessary as the browser is smart enough to be able to correctly re-flow text – as is the case in Opera Mini in non-one column mode. These two browsers are truly excellent in intelligently reflowing text.

In IEM, there’re (with WM2003SE+ devices) three rendering modes: the truly one-column “One column”, the “Fit to screen” (later renamed to “Default”), in addition to “Desktop view”. The three screenshots on this slide show an example BrightHand forum page in the Desktop / Fit to Screen (Default) / One Column order (from left to right).

Note that One column isn’t necessarily better than Fit to screen. There are cases when the latter delivers better results than the One column mode; for example, when you render simple charts (tables) not wider than 3-4 columns (or 6-8 columns in High-Resolution mode, if your handheld is a high-resolution one). Then, One column will display all the cells vertically, making the original layout completely messed up, while the Fit to screen mode will try to render them horizontally. However, in general, Fit to screen delivers results not needing horizontal scrolling in much fewer cases than Nokia Web or Opera Mini 4+ in non-mobile view mode, particularly on low-resolution (for example, QVGA) screens.

As, as has already been pointed out, pre-WM2003SE PIE’s, where there’s no One Column and the only “Fit to Screen” (Default) mode can’t correctly render the contents of the page without horizontal scrolling, you’ll need to use one of the following alternatives:

External Web compression / reformatting / one-columnizing services (Skweezer, Google Mobile etc.). They, unfortunately, get rid most of JavaScript code, making a lot of JavaScript-based functionality like changing pages in some forum engines inaccessible.

PIEPlus because of the explicit Pocket View mode, which fixes this problem

Use an alternate browser like Opera Mobile (WM2003) or Thunderhawk (compatible with even PPC2k / 2k2), which handle these cases much better

Wait for Touch Browser’s (which does have a built-in One Column mode) becoming much better