New bugs found in PIE

[Menneisyys]

Over at the PPCMag forum, I was pointed to three URL's that don't work with Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) (the thread can be found here (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17961)). Because these problems are pretty common with PIE (especially the 'My eBay' problem, which may have caused problems to others as well), I've decided to post the results of my in-depth, technical, HTML/JavaScript source-level investigations to other Pocket PC forums as well, also as an addition to my well-known roundup of PPC web browsers (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,42026&/pocket_pc_web_browsers_-_the_complete_roundup.htm), which you really should read if you haven't done so yet.

There're several bugs in PIE, even in the WM2003SE version. One of them I've clearly spotted is related to relative/absolute URL's used from JavaScript, which cause no problems to desktop browsers/NetFront/Thunderhawk; to PIE, however, they do.

Relative URL's are often used on free web page hosts to avoid their users blocking their ads by directly linking in their pages from Web pages hosted on other hosts. An example of this is Tiscali (http://webspace.tiscali.it/), which inserts some JavaScript code in all the uploaded HTML pages. A small section of the inserted script follows:


function refresh() {
top.frames[0].location='/banner-tiscali/banner.html';
top.frames[top.frames.length-1].location='/banner-tiscali/stats.html?userpage_'+shortuserdir;
}


Here, the '/banner-tiscali/banner.html' and the URL starting with '/banner-tiscali/stats.html?userpage_' are both relative; that is, they don't contain the full host address.

PIE can't resolve these relative links, as can clearly be seen on the following screenshot:

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/PIERenderingRelativeURLInJS.gif.png

(Note the 'blank/banner-tiscali/banner.html' at the top, meaning it can't find the resource. With older versions, PIE displays an error dialog box instead.)

Both NetFront (NF) 3.0+ and Thunderhawk (TH) are able to render these kinds of pages without problems:

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/NF30Compatibility-2.gif.png

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/THItalian-1.bmp.png

(Notice the pictures in the upper frame!)

The second, problematic page that PIE is absolutely unable to render are subpages (for example, Investing) of http://www.fineco.it/ . It causes no problems to NF 3.0+ / Thunderhawk, though:

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/NF30Compatibility-1.gif.png

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/THItalian-3.bmp.png

(The only advantage of WM2003SE PIE over, say, the PPC2k PIE is that the latter can't even render the main page. The latest PIE version is at least in this respect better than the 5.5-year-old one...)

Finally, a third, even more important page PIE is unable to render is the ' My eBay ' link at ebay.com (http://my.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MyeBay). NF 3.2 (but not NF 3.0!) and TH, however, can:

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/NF32MyEbayCompatibility.gif.png

http://winmobiletech.com/kuvat/THItalian-2.bmp.png

Therefore, if you find pages like the above three that PIE can't render, you have a good chance that alternative browsers can.

Please note that I haven't tested Minimo (see my test) or Opera (http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?p=38051) for compatibility.