ThunderHawk Finally Lands!

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.bitstream.com./wireless/info.html">http://www.bitstream.com./wireless/info.html</a><br /><br />A few weeks ago, <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=846&highlight=thunderhawk">Jason announced the imminent release</a> of the new ThunderHawk Web browser. Well, it's finally here! <br /><br />The reason so many of us are excited about this release is the beautiful way that ThunderHawk renders Web pages.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/thunder.jpg" /><br /><br />"ThunderHawk gives you the same browsing experience on a Pocket PC as you are used to on the desktop. You can view the full text and images of any Web page without excessive scrolling. Because it does not rely on WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) or cHTML (Compact HyperText Markup Language), ThunderHawk does not require Web content providers to repurpose their content — or build one Web site for the desktop and another for the wireless world."<br /><br />What this means is that with ThunderHawk Web pages look about the same on your Pocket PC as they do on your desktop PC. The only part of this that will be kind of hard to swallow is the price: $49.95 PER YEAR (and the Bitstream site calls that an "introductory price"). I know it's so expensive because you're actually accessing Bitstream's proprietary proxy server, but I've got to really love a service before I'm willing to pony up fifty smackers every year.<br /><br />Somebody who's used this please tell me if it's worth the money...

[mike6024]

$49.95 per year!!! 8O geez, what are they thinking? I mean, it's cool, but not that cool.

[jdhill]

Am I the only person that has downloaded this and can't get it to finish the install ???

[st63z]

This ThunderHawk browser technology on a 4" VGA screen would be pretty cool :)

[semsoid]

I use it on my 3870 and has no problems so far. The screen displays beautifully and compression works nice. As a test, I browsed to www.news2web.com with PIE and Thunderhawk. PIE downloaded 39K of data, where as Thunderhawk used only 31K. Their compression looks ok, I believe they are utilizing HTTP 1.1 gzip compression.

Keep in mind it is not only the ability to fit all into screen, but also it supports CSS, HTML 4.0, Javascript 1.5 and others (they are all listed on their site)

Cheers,

Sems

[mgd]

Am I the only person that has downloaded this and can't get it to finish the install ???

I had this problem also until I realised that I still had the previous version installed on my computer (not PPC). Once I removed the previous version, the new version installed perfectly; it even kept my login/registration information.

[mjvdl]

Tried it for a day now and yes, most sites look much better than with PIE. It's also a bit faster than PIE when using a gsm-phone. It is still very immature though: no bookmarks, no decent history-list, Outlook Web Access doesn't seem to work, scrolling a page is slow and no options/settings to experiment with.

[ledowning]

Tried the software yesterday and it seems to work OK. Too bad Microsoft has not improved the Pocket IE browser to do the same as Thunderhawk. Will WinCE.net address this issue??

Thunderhawk to me seems pricey when translated to CDN $. Doesn't support external keyboards or favourites folder that I know of. New software is great to try and use, now if only the Pocket PC would come with 256MB or 512MB of RAM standard so that we can run all these nifty programs and still have room for storage.

8O 8O

[Marc Zimmermann]

Somehow I don't trust any vendor with fake screenshots.

[donkthemagicllama]

I'm not sure they're actually fake... granted, the scrollbars aren't PocketPC scrollbars, btu that could just be because they were taken using the PocketPC emulator that comes with the developers kit...

[Jason Dunn]

Fake or not, it really DOES do a nice job of rendering web sites - FAR better than Pocket Internet Explorer. The UI is another matter though - it's downright strange.

[JonathanWardRogers]

Fake or not, it really DOES do a nice job of rendering web sites - FAR better than Pocket Internet Explorer. The UI is another matter though - it's downright strange.

How does it compare to Jimmy's Landscape and Pocket IE combination? Wouldn't this be an alternative to this software? (The rendering/layout part anyway). And ~%25 compression doesn't seem to be worth the considerable extra cost.

Jon

[Jason Dunn]

I'd encourage you to download the trial version and see for yourself. :-)

[jpzr]

The UI is another matter though - it's downright strange.

strange? the UI is totally unusable!!! they have their own keyboard which sucks.

and also: it is not working with usage of proxy server - you need (in home condition where GSM is expensive and broadband is for free) to make activesync connection to use pass-through connection to get this thing working.

it also has problems with switching among various applications and to it back.

idea is great but realization is poooooor.

[jpzr]

FAR better than Pocket Internet Explorer. The UI is another matter though - it's downright strange.

better than IE? maybe, but not in filling out web forms. it is second to impossible to fill web forms with this application. 49 USD a year? no way!

[jpzr]

Somebody who's used this please tell me if it's worth the money...

I am using it NOW. It is not worth 15 cents a year, not to mention 50 bucks a year.

Their virtual keyboard is most crappy virtual keyboard I ever saw: I press 1 button and the other gets presses. When I set proxy then it is not working - although IE is working excellently with the very same proxy.

I think that it should be called "early beta version". I cannot understand how they dare to call it full release and request money for it...

[jpzr]

Somebody who's used this please tell me if it's worth the money...

hi, here is how pocketpc thoughts dot com looks like on this browser:

http://www.wirelesssoftware.info/archives/2002.5.22_212949/4jason.jpg

if only it would work with my proxy server...

[kalex]

Hi,

I'm trying to install it and i'm getting an error message:

The setup wizard detected that lcd is not appropriate for ThunderHawk. Please make sure you choose appropriate PDA before installing TH1.01. Exit setup, collect appropriate PDA and run the installer again"


I'm using Toshiba e570


Anybody have any ideas how to bypass this?

Thanks


Alex

[denivan]

Hmm, that program really seems like a ripoff. If they charged USD10 for it, then maybe I would have considered it, but this yearly price is outrageous.
Normally I only use my mobile dial up for e-mail only. No gprs at the moment, so I don't do any mobile surfing, and I'm glad just using mazingo ;) But i just gave NVDManager (rotates the screen) and PIE a trie and it works great for browsing the net. On 320 x 240 landscape you may have to scroll a bit more, but it's really viewable, it doesn't cost so much and you can use your own proxy server. So : don't buy this ! ;)

[Arne Hess]

Find a complete review of ThunderHawk at PPCW.Net now:

http://www.ppcw.net/stories.php?story=02/05/23/6614936

[skaasila]

:) Hi,

I am the the VP of R&D Bitstream Inc. and I wanted to add a few comments to this thread!

We will add favorites capability and expand the current history-list in a future version of ThunderHawk.
Curently also if you are using a proxy server you need to manually configure the application by bringing up the keyboard and then hitting the check-mark icon on the tool-bar.

A key difference compared to JS Landscape type of approach is that our text is fully legible!
You can see a direct comparison at:
http://www.ppcw.net/stories.php?story=02/05/23/6614936
You really need to try it to see how sharp the text is on the actual PDA!

We do rely on an array of ThunderHawk content adaptation servers acting as proxies. These servers have a very fast Internet connection so they are able to download all he HTML and images fast. They do not strip out content, instead they do all the heavy weigh lifting (page layout with font substitution) on the server and the actual page content is then transmitted in a compacted format to the PDA. This makes this all possible and explains why we need to charge $50 per year.

A key thought behind what we do is that we are trying to preserve the content and desk-top experience on the wireless device.


Cheers
---Sampo Kaasila
PS1: We have posted no fake screenshots!!! This thing is real!
PS2: We do not yet run on the Toshiba e570 -- please stay tuned for a future version.

[JonathanWardRogers]

...
A key difference compared to JS Landscape type of approach is that our text is fully legible!
You can see a direct comparison at:
http://www.ppcw.net/stories.php?story=02/05/23/6614936
You really need to try it to see how sharp the text is on the actual PDA!

...

I'm sure you know this, but an online capture of a Pocket PC rendering Cleartype text is not going to look good.


PS1: We have posted no fake screenshots!!! This thing is real!
...


The following link is on your server, and is a doctored photo:
http://www.bitstream.com./wireless/samp/boston.html

AFAIK, the screenshot you captured could not have been taken from that jornada unless it was running a different OS than Pocket PC (at least I can't recall any Pocket PCs with 3D scrollbars), in which case it was not an accurate comparison to Pocket IE/JSLandscape combination.

Jon

[skaasila]

Hi again,

I want to again state that the screen-shot at:
http://www.bitstream.com./wireless/samp/boston.html
is real !!! :-)

You had noticed our 3D scroll-bars and you realized that the the PocketPC OS does not support these kind of scroll-bars! Thank you for explaining the reason :idea: you thought our screen shots were fake. But now let me explain:

We actually have our own graphics layer 8) . We call this TGL (ThunderHawk Grahics Layer). It is resposible for drawing everything including all GUI elements to the screen. This means we are running on the PocketPC OS but we are not using it to help us draw to the screen!!! This explains the confusion. Our only dependency on the OS is that we need to know how the screen-frame buffer memory is organized and we need Berkeley style TCP/IP sockets to function. This makes our code easy to port to other devices in the future. The server side stays the same.

And yes it is better to look at the text quility on an actual device, the screen-shots just give you an indication.

Cheers
---Sampo

[JonathanWardRogers]

Hi again
...

We actually have our own graphics layer 8) . We call this TGL (ThunderHawk Grahics Layer). It is resposible for drawing everything including all GUI elements to the screen. This means we are running on the PocketPC OS but we are not using it to help us draw to the screen!!!
...

Cheers
---Sampo

I was referring to the "Pocket IE" screenshot and scrollbars, not yours.

Jon

[skaasila]

Hi,

The the "Pocket IE" screenshot on http://www.bitstream.com./wireless/samp/boston.html
was taken using the PC emulator for the PocketPC.

Cheers
---Sampo