7 posts tagged “browser”

One of the main reasons I got the new DSi was to see how the Web Browser compared to Browsers in other mobile devices. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed at how well the Browser on the DSi works.

The Browser is a version of Opera for the DSi that works very nicely with the touch screen. There has previously been versions of Opera available for DS and DS Lite on cartridge form, but the difference here is on the DSi it's a Free Download/install from the DS Game Store, where previously in cartridge form it cost about $20. This is what the address bar entry looks like on the DSi.

Notice the convenient entries for quickly entering 'www.', '.com', '.net', '.org', '.co', and '.jp' each can be entered easily with the touch of the stylus or finger. Also text input can be easily switched between Hiragana, Katakana, english, and other alphabet sets.

By default the Top screen displays a Zoomed out view of the webpage, and the Bottom screen displays a Zoomed in view of the webpage. This can be easily swapped on the fly by pressing the 'Up-Down' icon, and there is a nice animated transition affect when the screens swap.

There is an RSS Feed Reader built into the Browser, when an RSS Feed is selected it displays the Feed Titles from the feed in a  Fullscreen list with an arrow next to them, click on the Arrow next to a Title and the Entry Body slides out from the arrow. The RSS Feeds can be saved as a Bookmark for quick access later on.

In the Browser you can search for words on the webpage you're viewing. A fairly standard feature, but important none-the-less.

The Browser doesn't have any Flash support (not even Flash Lite), but I wasn't surpised by this considering the limited resources of the DSi both in storage space (without an SD Card inserted) and RAM. But it also can't play MP3s or audio files linked on a webpage either.

All actions on the DSi are performed with Single tap, having no Double Tap action provides good consistancy and I think makes things easier for the user. So while there is no double tap action, I was surprised to find that Long Press is a recognized action, and when long pressing then sliding the Stylus or your finger across the words text on the page can be highlighted! I found this very impressive, considering no other Browser that I know of has the capability to highlight text on a mobile device; this includes the iPhone Browser, Android Browser, S60 Browser, windoze mobile Browser, Netfront Browser, and the other versions of Mobile Opera; none of them have support for hilighting text on a webpage! After I discovered that text could be highlighted, I looked for a Copy/Paste option but found none. I was thinking, what is the purpose of highlighting text if it can't be copied? Until I noticed that the Search icon lit up when text was highlighted..

After pressing the Search icon I was asked if I'd prefer to use Google or Yahoo to search with. I selected Google, making it the default Search engine, clicked Search and was immediately brought to the Google results for the search! This is an amazingly quick and easy way to search for text you see on a page, the usability of this feature is excellent!

To Summarize here's a list of the Pros and Cons about the Browser.
Pros:
- One of the most important things in a Browser is that it's Easy to navigate, and the DSi Browser accomplishes this with easy to scroll up/down/left/right and around the page you're viewing using the Touchscreen.
- Navigating in the Browser works best with the Stylus, but it can also be used with your finger.
- When Scrolling Up/Down/Left/Right both the distance the Stylus moves and the Speed that it moves is used, this makes scrolling down a long page easier because quickly touching and flicking the Stylus will cause the Browser to scroll down quicker than repetitively pressing on the screen and dragging the length of it.
- Shortcuts for quick entry of URLs (ie. 'www.', '.com', '.net', '.jp', etc.)
- Built-in Search using Google or Yahoo.
- Support for reading RSS Feeds.
- Ability to Highlight Text, then easily Search for the highlighted text with Google or Yahoo.

Cons:
- I don't think this is such a big problem, but several people that tried the Browser wanted to control the Zoom level (ie. Zoom into our Out from the page.) The Browser on DSi has no support for controlling the Zoom level, but with that said I found most of the time the Zoomed in view to be readable and the Zoomed out view easy to tell where on the page I was.
- No Flash support.
- No support for playing MP3s or other audio audio from the Browser.
- While loading a large page the performance of scrolling is affected, but it is still pretty easy to scroll around.
- It's fairly easy to cause Memory Full messages when loading a large webpage, when that happens the page stops loading and what text and images were rendered is viewable. During the time that a page is loading scrolling around the page still works pretty well. I don't know how much RAM is available on the DSi, but my guess is it's less than most S60 mobiles/iPhone/Android devices that I'm comparing the browsing experience to. Thus the Memory Full message isn't unexpected.

Overall:
 The Browser on DSi provides a Comparable experience to the iPhone/iPod Touch Web Browser, eventhough the DSi has a Resistive Touch screen, and the iPhone/iPod Touch as a Capacitive touch screen. I'd say the DSi provides a fairly high benchmark for ease-of-use in a resistive touch device. While certainly having Google and Yahoo quickly accessible from within the Browser is not something new (iPhone/iPod Touch Browser, Android Browser, and Opera Mini have already had Search built-in for some time), the ability to highlight text is something that no other Browser (that I know of) on a Mobile device have support for. Based on my experiences with the Browser, it's no laptop replacement, but it is a welcome new application on the DSi and will come in handy for quickly looking up information or browsing websites when on the go.

Video from some of the development team that worked on Google Chrome.

The creator of KHTML, Lars Knoll, has been promoted to VP of engineering at Trolltech.

  A little background story about KHTML and Webkit, KHTML was first started as the HTML rendering engine in the Konqueror web browser for KDE's Desktop environment. When Apple started porting KHTML to Mac for use in their Safari Browser the changes that Apple made to KHTML were Open Sourced as Webkit. Shortly after this Nokia was looking to utilize the benefits of Open Source in a browser for the S60 platform. After careful consideration Nokia announced that they would also be using Webkit in it's new S60 Web Browser.

  Prior to S60 3rd edition Nokia had developed a proprietary browser for S60, but with the many complexities of web standards and the fast advancements in web technologies it became increasingly difficult to maintain the proprietary browser. At the same time Open Source browsers were thriving on the web with the success of Mozilla's browser suite projects and KDE's browser technologies improving in terms of complying with web standards. Nokia sponsored the Mozilla Minimo project in order to encourage porting and minimizing Mozilla to run on embedded mobile devices. Both Minimo and Webkit were closely looked at for use in the next S60 Browser, the winner of the 2 was Webkit due to it's less demanding usage of RAM and CPU. S60 third edition was the first time for the Webkit based browser to be available on S60 devices, but just in case of any legacy webpages that were not standards compatible the older proprietary S60 browser was also included on all S60 3rd edition devices.

 However with S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1 the Webkit based S60 Browser became the default and only browser on the devices that run S60 Feature Pack 1. Last year Apple introduced the iPhone and iPod Touch that also have a Safari Browser that is based on Webkit. Google has also announced that their Android software will have a Webkit based browser. Along with these big players there have been other ports of Webkit to run on various OS ranging from the GNU/Linux Maemo project to windows mobile.

With the huge success of Webkit I would like to congratulate Lars Knoll, he deserves this promotion to VP of engineering at Trolltech.

On an interesting side note, if the Trolltech acquisition by Nokia is approved by the shareholders then he and I will both be working for the same company. I would be proud to work with such a talented engineer. =)

KHTML creator promoted to VP

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS27...

Oslo, Norway-based Trolltech announced the promotion of KHTML creator Lars Knoll to VP of Engineering. Knoll's KHTML work was instrumental in the development of the Webkit open source browser engine that is fast gaining momentum in the mobile phone market. (Click for larger view of Lars Knoll)Knoll will head up the global development organization for Trolltech, a company specializing in cross-platform development tools and increasingly, embedded Linux software stacks for phones and other mobile devices. Leading development teams in Norway, Germany, and Australia, Knolls responsibilities will include helping to define product road maps, maintaining oversight of Trolltech's commercial product development, and overseeing contributions to open source projects. An expert in Linux web browsers and user interfaces, Knoll was Trolltech's lead developer and a major contributor to open-source projects like Webkit and the KDE (K Desktop Environment). Knoll is also leading a Trolltech team that is building WebKit into Qt, Trolltech's desktop application development framework, and into Qtopia, the embedded version of Qt. Trolltech had previously announced that the Qt integration would be made available with the Qt 4.4 release in early 2008.Knoll joined Trolltech seven years ago when he was recruited by Matthias Ettrich, KDE creator and Trolltech's Qt development manager, says Trolltech. Since then, Knoll has contributed to projects including the Sharp Zaurus, and has worked on streamlining cross-platform application development. Knoll has a Ph.D. in physics from the Max Plank Institute in Heidelberg, and he also studied at Isreal's Weizman Institute of Science. Knoll is best known, however for his lead role with the KHTML rendering engine, which took nearly three man years to write. Originally part of the KDE project's Konqueror browser, KHTML is now found in 75 software products, says the company. It was the basis for Webkit, which in turn was the foundation for the Apple Sa...

Great blog post describing the difficulties for users accessing mobile websites and some suggestions to help developers make a better mobile site!

This is Mobility - Total Mobile Access - Excellent Example of Difficulties

http://www.thisis...

I went to the Pizza Hut site to see if the new store just around the corner from my house opened up and was greeted with a little flash animation informing me of “Total Mobile Access!!” for pizzahut.com. “How cool is that!!” I say to myself (I often speak to myself when using the web). I simply m...

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A company called Pleyo has released a browser called Origyn that is based on Webkit. Origyn sourcecode is available for afew different mobile platforms, including Maemo, the platform that N800 runs.

Pleyo Releases Origyn

http://www.sand-labs.org/owb

Origyn is a web browser designed for CE devices such as mobile phones, portable media players, Set Top Boxes and TV decoders, and any other consumer electronic product (GPS, home-gateways, Web-radios, PVR, DVD recorders, wireless devices etc.)

Opera has filed an antitrust complaint against microsoft with the EU. Come on microsoft get with the times, support Web standards better in your browser!

Opera files antitrust complaint with the EU

http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en...

The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer.

Windows Mobile users may finally be getting a better web browser, seeing as the WebKit Browser has recently been ported to Windows Mobile. WebKit is currently used in Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch browser and S60's Browser.

Video of the WebKit Browser running on Windows Mobile