Thunderhawk browser for Axim

[Pat Logsdon]

For those of you that are interested, I am posting this using the Thunderhawk beta on my Axim. It's REALLY nice, and I've encountered no problems so far.
MUCH better than PIE and pretty quick, too! I'd probably even pay the $49.95/year for it if everything else goes smoothly...

[Rirath]

Okay slick, but if you're gonna post and tell us all about it how about some more detail than "It's really nice"? :) :wink:

[Computer Ninja]

I would differ from what Surgical Snack has to say. I, too, am testing the beta for the Axim, and I have to say, it's pretty slow if you ask me. The scrollbar doesn't work very well. Most of the time, it scrolls down if you click the down arrow or the area beneath the slider. However, scrolling up is a different story. Either clicking the up arrow or the area above the slider didn't work. The screen would flash, but it would stay on the same spot. Perhaps it was the site I was on, but that shouldn't matter.

Also, I was posting on my forum, www.aximusers.com, and right after I submitted my post, a BitStream screen came up telling me the connection with the server was disconnected. Exit the program and restart it.

[Pat Logsdon]

First Impressions/Mini Review:

This thing is MUCH faster than I thought it would be, considering that it goes through proxy servers over at ThunderHawk HQ. It renders pages perhaps three times as fast as PIE over my wireless network.

The font, while scaled down, is still very readable. I held my Axim close to my face at first, since it was very small and I thought I had to. But then I started moving it farther away, and found that I could still read the text clearly with the Axim at arm's length. Not too bad for a tiny font!

The first site I brought up (of course) was this one, and it loaded and was rendered perfectly. The only slight drawback was that the images were scaled very small, and the text within the images was very difficult to read. This might be a problem for sites that use image maps for navigation.

Accessing the forums was particularly exciting, mostly because I could actually do it! I clicked the discussion link below the Russian "SUXX" article, and the forums page loaded in about 2 seconds, with no horizontal scrollbar. On PIE, it takes at least 10, and it's almost totally unreadable.

It doesn't look like it supports animated gifs, but I don't think that's critical. And while you can tap a link to navigate, tap-and-hold and tap-and-drag don't do anything, so you won't be copying and pasting anything in Thunderhawk.

There's very little in the way of configurable options - you're limited to just your username, password, registration code and proxy information and that's it.

Tapping a hardware button (in the Axim's case, the "Contacts" button) brings up the software keyboard, the address field, and buttons for cancel, back, forward, refresh, resolution (three choices - the smallest seems best and fastest), favorites, options, and close program. There's also a "go" button that seems like a redundant "enter" key, and an "Esc" button.

Scrolling is accomplished by either tapping the arrows at the side or bottom, or by clicking the D-pad to the "right", which is "down" in landscape mode. According to Thunderhawk's site, the server refreshes the page every time you scroll, rather than caching it on the PPC. It's a bit slower than a PIE-rendered page in this respect, but it's not really noticeable.

All in all, this seems to be an excellent product - I'd even call it a killer app, as it provides the growing wireless masses with a very capable, mostly standards-compliant, USABLE web browser. If you can take the $50 hit per year, I'd definitely recommend it.

[Computer Ninja]

Nice review.

[cesmithsc]

I've looked on the Bitstream site and cannot find the beta version for the Axim. Where is it available??

[Computer Ninja]

It's not publicly available as far as I know.

[Janak Parekh]

I would differ from what Surgical Snack has to say. I, too, am testing the beta for the Axim, and I have to say, it's pretty slow if you ask me. The scrollbar doesn't work very well. Most of the time, it scrolls down if you click the down arrow or the area beneath the slider. However, scrolling up is a different story. Either clicking the up arrow or the area above the slider didn't work. The screen would flash, but it would stay on the same spot. Perhaps it was the site I was on, but that shouldn't matter.
In general, at least on the older release version on my iPaq, it tends to be slow until the entire page is downloaded; you can then scroll pretty decently.

--janak

[Computer Ninja]

That's good to know. I wish the program was $49.99 lifetime, and not yearly. I understand you use their proxy server, but still...

[ttime4four]

Instead of paying the $50/year -- does someone have a program that just allows you to turn PIE 90 degrees?

I understand the benefit for running through their server to optimize the view, but if we just get landscape, that may work "well enough".

[ux4484]

I've looked on the Bitstream site and cannot find the beta version for the Axim. Where is it available??


send them a request (from the "don't have your device listed" link) they'll email you with beta info.

[Janak Parekh]

Instead of paying the $50/year -- does someone have a program that just allows you to turn PIE 90 degrees?
Nyditot Virtual Display (http://www.nyditot.com/).

--janak

[beezer23]

I am currently testing TH on my Axim as well. I have had no major problems. My thoughts...

Pros:
Significantly faster page rendering than PIE
Horizontal Display
Virtual 320X480, 640X480, or 800X600 display (working perfectly on Axim)
Large vKeyboard

Cons:
Can't save web pages
No copy and paste
Can't download files (at least not video,ebooks, etc. - have not tried .exe or .zip)
Sssllloooww scrolling - but not that much slower than PIE
Subscription based - though with the current browsers out there worth it

Until we see PPC Mozilla or Opera - this is as good as it gets

[Computer Ninja]

I am currently testing TH on my Axim as well. I have had no major problems. My thoughts...

Pros:
Significantly faster page rendering than PIE
Horizontal Display
Virtual 320X480, 640X480, or 800X600 display (working perfectly on Axim)
Large vKeyboard

Cons:
Can't save web pages
No copy and paste
Can't download files (at least not video,ebooks, etc. - have not tried .exe or .zip)
Sssllloooww scrolling - but not that much slower than PIE
Subscription based - though with the current browsers out there worth it

Until we see PPC Mozilla or Opera - this is as good as it gets

Are those browsers in the works for PPC?

[Janak Parekh]

Until we see PPC Mozilla or Opera - this is as good as it gets
Are those browsers in the works for PPC?
Opera - maybe. Mozilla - no way. :)

--janak

[Computer Ninja]

Thanks.