Access NetFront 3.0 Reviewed

[Andy Sjostrom]

<a href="http://www.pdajunkie.net/pdajunkie_net_netfront30.htm">http://www.pdajunkie.net/pdajunkie_net_netfront30.htm</a><br /><br />PDAJunkie.net has reviewed the Web browser NetFront 3.0 from Access. Steve Yee writes: "As we all know, the browser that comes with the Pocket PC has been somewhat behind the technological eight ball, lacking basic support for what many web pages utilize for standards. For users, this makes browsing the web with Pocket IE very unsatisfying. Thankfully, two web browsers have come out that allows users to have a more fulfilling web browsing experience. One of them, Bitstream's Thunderhawk, was reviewed earlier. The other browser that has recently been released is Access' NetFront 3.0. Access is a Japanese company that has been producing compact browser software for years in the telephone and non-PC marketplace. They even make a NetFront browser for the Playstation 2! Thankfully, they have taken their expertise in browser technology and brought it to the Pocket PC world. Their browser conforms to the following standards:<br /><br />• HTML4.01, XHTML1.0, cHTML (Compact HTML), XHTML Basic 1.0 <br />• CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) 1, 2 <br />• ECMA Script 3rd Edition (JavaScript 1.5) <br />• DOM (Document Object Model) 1, 2 <br />Various image formats:<br />• GIF/animated GIF, PNG, JPEG, MNG, BMP <br />• HTTP/1.1 <br />• SSL2.0/3.0, TLS1.0 <br />• Cookie support <br />• Java plug-in, JV-Lite2 Personal Edition for Pocket PC"<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/nf_01.jpg" />

[mccollin]

Sadly, Access does not support Pocket PC Phone Edition. I pleaded my case with them on this issue and they said they may do it in the future. Perhaps if more people requested it, they would move in that direction.

[Perry Reed]

Not a bad article, but the reviewer has thoroughly confused Java and JavaScript (two entirely different things).

[paris]

I have used Netfront extesively the last 2 weeks since i and no pc and its a kick ass app, beter than thunderhawk, better than IE. Ony thing is missing is landscape view

[Peter Traugot]

Consisder using Virtual display for landscape. Yes, it would be nice if were built in, but VD is a very tight package these days.

[daveshih]

Landscape view missing? I was told of this:

Pocketop keyboard driver for ppc (available at www.pocketop.net) is available for download. It offers a built-in landscape software. Though it requires a soft-reset everytime you want to switch modes, it is still quite a good solution.

Dave

[vincentsiaw]

of all the feature, does this mean i can now open a web based email using this brower? because PIE is definately a no no on this thing!!

[sgyee]

Landscape view missing? I was told of this:

Pocketop keyboard driver for ppc (available at www.pocketop.net) is available for download. It offers a built-in landscape software. Though it requires a soft-reset everytime you want to switch modes, it is still quite a good solution.

Dave

The Pocketop keyboard driver's Landscape mode is a "corrupted" version of Nyditot's Virtual Display. It does work, however, it restricts you to 320x200 only.

[sgyee]

of all the feature, does this mean i can now open a web based email using this brower? because PIE is definately a no no on this thing!!

I've been able to use Exchange 2000's Outlook Web Access, Earthlink's Web Mail, AT&T Wireless' Office Online Web mail (in WAP Mode), and it's been reported (but not personally run by myself, so take it for what it's worth) that Hotmail works if you change the User-Agent string to "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)".

[Golfer]

I've downlaoded the trial version, although I have not yet had an opportunity to try it out. So this may be a stupid question, but here goes. Can it be used to view offline content ie Avantgo, so that you can have tabs for different downloaded channels/pages etc?

Thanks in advance

[blusparkles]

At the moment I'm currently debating whether to purchase the Thunderhawk annual subscription ($49.95) or just buy the NetFront browser for $29.95. Thoughts?

[sgyee]

I've downlaoded the trial version, although I have not yet had an opportunity to try it out. So this may be a stupid question, but here goes. Can it be used to view offline content ie Avantgo, so that you can have tabs for different downloaded channels/pages etc?

Thanks in advance

Supposedly, you can take the AvantGo URL and cut/paste it into NetFront.

I've personally never tried it.

[Nikhil]

I've used AOL Mail (the Australian link earlier posted) via NetFront and it does allow me to send mail too (unlike PIE...to send mail, you must open a new window). NetFront basically rocks!

[Golfer]

I tried cut & pasting the avantgo url but it didn't work :cry: So I do not think you can use Netfront for offline Avantgo viewing. Thanks anyway

[BGinWA]

I didn't want to go with thundewrhawk because I didn't want to be tied to thier proxy server.

Netfront seems to work pretty good so far, except I am having a problem since I installed it into my ipaq's filestore. It seems to have trouble saving it's config file. I sent an email to support but have not heard back from them!

Being that the app takes over 5MB, I really want it to work from filestore. It works, but it takes a long time to startup as it has to build and try to save the config file every time.