Pocket Browsers

[Andy Whiteford]

Okay, I'm looking for some insight from the community on which Browsers / plug ins people use for Internet on their Pocket PCs. I'm trying to leverage a bit more out of my h4150 using my Wifi but have never been overly satisfied with Internet on my device.
I have looked at PIEPlus 1.2 in the past which has a great fitting mode to eliminate horizontal scrolling but is otherwise quite limited.
I have also just tried Netfront 3.1 which does almost all of what I am looking for however is very slow and seems to hang between requests for a good 10/15 seconds. I have this installed to SD card which may be causing an issue but can't be certain. Does anyone else have any experience of this? The Smart fit option in this app is excellent.
I haven't tried MultiIE yet although I do like the fact that it will pre-populate http://www and .com / .co.uk etc. which is a good help however it does not support any smart fitting which is one option I would like given I am running WM2003.

I know this has been covered in the past but I would like input now with the latest releases and the lack of any article that comprehensively covers all aspects of the competing solutions.
My main desires are a smart fit option, able to open pop up windows and is fast in operation. Pre-population of http://www etc is a bonus.

[Darius Wey]

I still prefer NetFront 3.1. I've never come across this "lag" issue you've been experiencing though - so what the problems you're having are a little odd...

I'm still waiting for NetFront 3.2 to be rolled out on the Pocket PC - but the rollout is taking a *long* time... :roll:

[buzzard]

If you visit any secure websites, Netfront works best and coupled with Tweaks2k2 IE6.0 trick, it's even better. I have Netfront on my SD card as well and I agree that it's slower than I'd like it to be. I've also had it in RAM for awhile but didn't notice any particular increase in speed.
MultiIE is excellent and it works with Skweezer for its "fit to screen" application. Skweezer is a server website that costs $15 a year and it's fast and fits all websites very neatly. Skweezer is available at http://www.greenlightwireless.net/

[Andy Whiteford]

I still prefer NetFront 3.1. I've never come across this "lag" issue you've been experiencing though - so what the problems you're having are a little odd...

I'm still waiting for NetFront 3.2 to be rolled out on the Pocket PC - but the rollout is taking a *long* time... :roll:



I haven't seen anything on the NetFront website with regards to this weird lag issue but say you click on a link, the PPC appears to lock up for about 10 - 15 seconds and then it becomes responsive again and the page loads quite quickly. This seemed to be the case regardless if Smartfit was employed or not which was a bit frustrating as the functionality of the application seemed great for my needs. When I say lock up, I mean everything, the task managner or even start menu would not come up and then all of a sudden it would start working which makes me think the CPU was being hammered when you click on a link. As I mentioned though, I cannot attribute this to SmartFit as this option was not always selected and this was always happening, regardless if straight after a soft reset or not. Anyone else experienced this?

[Darius Wey]

Do you have enough memory allocated for it to operate efficiently?

[Andy Whiteford]

Do you have enough memory allocated for it to operate efficiently?


31mb free prior to starting it up. I'll maybe re-install it tomorrow to main memory and monitor memory usage after starting it up although I don't think it is a memory issue because after the lag the page loads up just fine and that is regardless if you have one or more pages open.

[Darius Wey]

31mb free prior to starting it up. I'll maybe re-install it tomorrow to main memory and monitor memory usage after starting it up although I don't think it is a memory issue because after the lag the page loads up just fine and that is regardless if you have one or more pages open.

I'm sure you will get a lot better performance running off the main memory. There may be an associated lag when it's accessing files off the storage card.

[ipaq_wannabe]

If you visit any secure websites, Netfront works best and coupled with Tweaks2k2 IE6.0 trick, it's even better. I have Netfront on my SD card as well and I agree that it's slower than I'd like it to be. I've also had it in RAM for awhile but didn't notice any particular increase in speed.
MultiIE is excellent and it works with Skweezer for its "fit to screen" application. Skweezer is a server website that costs $15 a year and it's fast and fits all websites very neatly. Skweezer is available at http://www.greenlightwireless.net/

has anyone had the privilige of trying this with PIE? or with Netfront?

at only 15 bucks, i think this would be a good deal...

one question however - how is this different from provider proxies that purport to also “compress” the webpages that you view so that it loads faster during mobile situations...

-@PIE@Loox

[bmurphy]

I have a question about browsers... I have the new 2003se version of IE that came with my Dell. Does it have java enabled or able to be enabled? or is there another webbrowser that uses java? I want to go to my Banking sites, and I can't , and get an error message... saying java disabled. The site loads, but only allows a password to be entered, not the banking number.
Thanks
Barb
and what is the tweaks2k2 IE trick?

[Darius Wey]

I have a question about browsers... I have the new 2003se version of IE that came with my Dell. Does it have java enabled or able to be enabled? or is there another webbrowser that uses java? I want to go to my Banking sites, and I can't , and get an error message... saying java disabled. The site loads, but only allows a password to be entered, not the banking number.

No - it does not have Java installed. You need another package which installs a Java console on your Pocket PC, or alternatively, you can get the NetFront JV-Lite2 bundle which has Java already configured.

and what is the tweaks2k2 IE trick?

This creates a UserAgent profile for NetFront which makes sites (not all) think that you are running IE6. This can be done for Pocket IE too. You don't need Tweaks2K2 to do all this though - it can easily be done within the NetFront program or the registry (for Pocket IE). However, Tweaks2K2 makes things easy... ;)

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Darius, don't you have an hx4705? How do you run Netfront on that? I installed Netfront 3.1 on my unit and found that the display was horribly pixelated in QVGA mode, though it was much sharper in VGA mode.

Perhaps that's why you're eagerly awaiting v3.2?

I'm trialing MultiIE right now because that's the only PIE replacement that supports WM2k3SE. It's terrific so far, but I'd like to see what Netfront and PIEPlus do once they roll-out their WM2k3SE support.

FTR, I also have PocketPlus installed and the PIE enhancements work relatively well, but is not quite as rich or robust as MultiIE.

[Darius Wey]

Darius, don't you have an hx4705? How do you run Netfront on that? I installed Netfront 3.1 on my unit and found that the display was horribly pixelated in QVGA mode, though it was much sharper in VGA mode.

Nope. I don't have a VGA device. I think NetFront 3.1 still works on VGA devices but you may get rendering problems of the address bar, but it's still usable. Some people have tried using the Toshiba E800/E805 version of the product, but I'm not 100% sure if it's compatible. It would appear pixelated in QVGA mode because your device is designed to run in VGA mode.

Perhaps that's why you're eagerly awaiting v3.2?

No - I'm just an update freak. :lol:

[safjazz]

I just added netfront to my Dell 50v's built-in storage card, which works like a charm on most sites when using IE. I found that using multiIE's ability to view pages in Landscape mode takes care of most of the fitting issues. However, what I really want is to be able to use only Netfront to surf. :::sigh:::.

[zilla31]

you have got to try thunderhawk v2. this browser is second to none really - only problem is it requires a subscription (but give it a try before you balk at this). pages are viewed in landscape mode - and in my opinion seem to load MUCH faster than any other pocket browser i've tried (and yes i've tried them all multiple times). no problem w/ secure sites etc. either. just try it - i think you'll be stunned at what you see on each page (they shrink down the font etc. and set it in landscape so a really amazing amount fits on an even non-VGA screen).

[Menneisyys]

Nope. I don't have a VGA device. I think NetFront 3.1 still works on VGA devices but you may get rendering problems of the address bar, but it's still usable.

It does work. By using the hi-res resource hack described at http://www.pc-counselor.com/How_to/index.htm#doublepixeling , you'll be able to run Netfront 3.1 in forced VGA mode, even in plain SE. The menu fonts will have terrible rendering problems then, however; the contects will still be displayed OK, without pixel doubling.

[Darius Wey]

It does work. By using the hi-res resource hack described at http://www.pc-counselor.com/How_to/index.htm#doublepixeling , you'll be able to run Netfront 3.1 in forced VGA mode, even in plain SE. The menu fonts will have terrible rendering problems then, however; the contects will still be displayed OK, without pixel doubling.

That's good to know. :)

I was referring to rendering problems without any hacks, but it's good to see that it can be resolved...well mostly... :)