[General Topics] Menneisyys:
As yet, I haven’t had the chance to give SkyFire, the latest Web browser a thorough try. Fortunately, I’ve recently got an account and could, at last, test it.

SkyFire is a client/server Web browser for both Windows Mobile platforms: touchscreen-enabled Pocket PC’s (in WM6+ parlance, Windows Mobile Classic and Pro devices) and touchscreen-less MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile Standard). It utilizes image-based transfer, just like the (cancelled) DeepFish and some non-Windows Mobile-based solutions like PocketSurfer 2.

Please note that this is NOT an in-depth review but a comparison to the other browsers out there. It’s immensely more useful for both end users (so that you can decide whether it’s at all worth getting an account or just wait for later versions) and the developers themselves. This also means you’ll want to read my past Web browsing-related articles to understand everything in this article as, at times, I’ll switch to „geek speech”. Start with my W3C presentation and follow the links back to, say, the Web Browsing Bibles. Also, search for „SkyFire” on my blog to find my earlier SkyFire-based posts – I’ve linked to several forum threads discussing the browser. In addition, In addition, I also recommend BrightHand's generic overview of the app - it offers a gentle introduction to SkyFire's capabilities, while, as has already been stated, my article is strictly a comparative, technical "geek speech" review targeted at more experienced Web users.

Note that the tests have been run on the latest 0.6.0.4503 version.

A screenshot of the main menu; the Settings menu (as you can see, there aren’t much to set) is shown HERE.

Pros

-	It uses the Firefox 2.x engine, which is clearly better than Internet Explorer, even as of version 8. That is, it’s just much more standards-compliant than IE-based client/server mobile browsers like PocketSurfer 2

-	It works flawlessly over any kind of Internet connection; not just U.S. mobile phone operators (unlike what the SkyFire folks state – and the popular belief). The latter is only needed for registering for the first time. Fortunately, after moving to another country and even swapping your SIM card / switching to another device (from a, say, CDMA(2000) to a GSM/WCDMA one) , you can go on using your account: for re-activation on another phone, you won’t need to have an active U.S. phone number any more.

-	web standard compliance-wise, pretty good, including even Ajax

-	high-quality and high-compliance Flash and Java support (strictly in client/server model; sound emulation may not work on some models)

-	URL history (as with most other browsers, though)

-	Acceptable forward caching of approximately the following page (better than DeepFish used to be or that of PocketSurfer 2)

-	The SmartFit mode works pretty OK and intelligently; I haven’t ever run into a situation when it didn’t failed to eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling. In this regard, it should be compared to Opera Mini 4+’s equally advanced text reformatting / reflowing algorithm in non-mobile view, (on non-high-res devices) zoomed in mode.

-	In zoomed in mode, the cursor keys can be used for touchscreen-less link selection (and for scrolling in the four directions); in zoomed out mode, you can use it for scrolling the zoom-in window. That is, you don’t necessarily need to use your Pocket PC in two-hand mode – as is, of course, the case with the MS Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) client.

-	Compared to DeepFish: immensely better and faster. The only advantage of DeepFish was the support for hi-res on hi-res devices.

Cons:

-	huge CPU usage when maximized (58% on a 624 MHz Xscale PXA270) independent of page contents (that is, it'll happen even with no Flash / animation taking place). When minimized, no CPU usage.

-	no support for multiple tabs (documents), unlike in most comparable browsers. This means you’ll need to always reload a page, should you want to return to it and can’t just switch quickly (back) to other/older pages.

-	no hi-res (for example, VGA) support – not only as far as the low-res contents is concerned, but also when rendering input fields; then, its coordinates will be effectively halved on a high-resolution screen. Fortunately, this doesn’t cause much problems with most pages.

-	zoomed-out state provides pretty bad resolution / intelligibility (example HERE; incidentally, it also shows a message window showing a „connection lost” dialog)

-	if you switch to another program and, then, back (with, say, an overridden app button), there are chances only half the screen will be used. A HTC Universal screenshot is HERE

-	much as there’re (non-standard) scrollbars on the right / bottom edge of the screen (example HERE), they can’t be used to quickly position in the docs (the same problem as with Touch Browser)

-	no page / link / image saving - of, for that matter, any kind of link / image context menus

-	not any kind of copy/paste (however, you can copy / paste from/to text input fields, including the address field)

-	can only click / activate links in zoomed-in state – in page view mode, you can’t do this. In this respect, most other browsers with zoom are better; particularly because, here, you also need to wait for the zoomed-in state to be loaded

-	while „scroll down”, „scroll up” etc. button events are processed (unlike in some other browsers like Touch Browser), they are strictly mapped to the same functionality as that of the D-pad. This means you can’t quickly scroll up/down a page – you can only use the touchscreen to do that (also see the lack of quick positioning a page)

-	no direct access to IEM favorites (favorites are online only)

-	no niceties like accelerated scrolling (unlike with NetFront 3.5 or Touch Browser)

-	while it does support some shortcut buttons (for example, 6 for SmartFit, 5 for Refresh, 2 for Enter address etc.), these shortcuts are in no way as useful as those of Opera Mini. Again, there are no ways of page scrolling, which would be highly useful.

-	No goodies like User-Agent overriding or disabling images / Flash animation / Java applets.