Comments on: Browsing gets better

By: Offbeatmammal

Offbeatmammal — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:06:02 +0000

Great write-up Menneisyys, thanks for the additional info.

Looking forward to Opera Mobile 9.5

Either way though the options for Windows Mobile are getting better all the time!

By: Menneisyys

Menneisyys — Sat, 31 May 2008 15:04:20 +0000

Yup, the technology used by SkyFire just can’t compete with client-only and/or non-image transfer-based technologies in some respects. See my thorough elaboration on ALL these questions at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/cms/node/6203

(I’ve also cross-posted it to the MobilitySite forums but can’t find the URL now.)

By: doogald

doogald — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:53:33 +0000

So far I find that Opera Mini is loads better than the Skyfire beta. At least on my Q9m, Skyfire takes forever to load, and when you zoom in the text stays fuzzy for a few seconds – very frustrating – while Opear Mini zooms in clearly from the start. Lastly, I cannot run anything else when I run Skyfire. For example, if I start Skyfire, get to a page asking for a user name and password, if I try to start Ilium Software’s eWallet to look up the password, by the time I go back to Skyfire I see that it was ended by WM and I have to go through the process all over again. Opera Mini seems far more svelte from a memory point of view.

I found several sites that just did not load well in Opera Mobile that Opera Mini loads just fine.

By: Guillermo

Guillermo — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:45:37 +0000

Forget Windows Mobile… it’s market share is very low outside the US

Also, the iPhone is a fashion statement and restricted to people with money to waste.

“real-world” mobile OSs out there are Symbian, Linux (more than you think!) and good old Palm OS.

The new Palm Centro sold 1M units in a few months and it’s a huge success in Europe. The browser from Access sucks badly, in my experience Opera Mini runs circles around it.

By: Menneisyys

Menneisyys — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:18:53 +0000

Also, make sure you check out my related articles for more info; most importantly, the W3C presentation and the SkyFire review.

By: Zealot

Zealot — Sat, 31 May 2008 07:47:38 +0000

I trade off using Opera Mobile and PIE on my Motorola Q.

I like the way that Opera renders most sites and find that it deals with links better than PIE, however there are some sites (for some reason, mainly at blogger.com) that it has a lot of trouble with.

PIE renders all sites decently, nothing tremendously well, but has a lot of trouble with links and non-standard text (especially italics).

In terms of entering text Opera wins hands down since PIE opens a separate Edit page when you click on a field, which always has text size and entry trouble for me. Opera opens a small entry field on the original page, which works much better in my case.

As for the tabbed browsing available in Opera but not in PIE, I have yet to see any practical use for the feature on a small mobile screen. If I need to have multiple pages open, especially when there is no practical way to flip from one to the other easily, I just wait to get on my laptop.

I have also tried DeepFish and find that for graphically oriented sites it works great, but less so when you need to read larger amounts text. As the main things I surf for on my mobile are things to read, Deep Fish is a non-starter for me.

So is there a clear winner? Not yet, in my opinion, but I am still looking.