Skweezer, MultiIE, NetFront, ThunderHawk

[Jereboam]

Now that a new version of MultiIE is out and it supports easy use of the Skweezer service, just wanted to ask...

Has anyone here used or currently has Skweezer? Is it worth the subscription, and more importantly, does it work well?

This would address one of my "doesn't make the grade" complaints...

Oh and I'm hearing of hard resets with MultiIE...if anyone hears anything re a fix or what the problem is...

In fact, I've come back and edited this a little...I'd very much like to hear any opinions on NetFront and ThunderHawk as well...

Which gives the best browsing bang for the buck? I like the VGA-ness of ThunderHawk, but like the concept of Skweezer/MultiIE for GPRS use...

Any commentary much appreciated.

Thanks, J'bm

[Robb Bates]

I have a subscription to skweezer. I got it cause it looked cool and I was only using 9600 bps GSM dial up. It helped a bit, but now that I have a h2215 and a T610 with GPRS, I don't need it.

It works ... uh ... OK. I've had problems with anything but straightforward web sites. It is useful as a web based email client that I've used on school computer terminals.

Basically, get it only if you have a real need for it. Otherwise, it's not of much use.

Robb

[Southway]

Personally, I prefer to view web pages in the way they are intended. But, sometimes it is handy to either get the web page to fit to the screen or if I am using a GPRS connection I prefer just text.

For MultiIE 3, I worked on a mode to smartly re-format the HTML screen to fit, and to strip graphics, etc. I had something workable, but I really wasn't that impressed with it so I pulled it from release 3.0.

I really did like what the Skweezer service did, it made very impressive smart reformating for many web sites and it did not slow down the initial rendering. Also, since it is a service it means images get reformatted before downloading which vastly imrpoves the time to open a web page.
Also, I can see Skweezer improving over time with more options. The thing I didn't like about Skwezer was that it was yet another interface inside the browser and that makes it a little difficult to use. If you look at MultiIE 3 you'll see that this problem is solved by being able to pass the current URL to skweezer.

For the power users, you'll be interested to see that support for Skweezer is NOT hardcoded. If you are geekly inclinded you can send the current URL to your own Skweezer style web server to strip images or whatever. (This is also the same way MultiIE can send google searches, stock quotes or whatever by combing a URL with the text in the address bar).

But, Skweezer is onlu $10/yr which for me is great value, and it's a nice option to have. As I say, I tend to render 1/10 pages via Skweezer.

I'd be interested in any ones opinions about this,

Peter