ACCESS Announces Availability of NetFront v3.1 Browser for Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.netfront.no/2003-12-08_press.400.0.html' target='_blank'>http://www.netfront.no/2003-12-08_press.400.0.html</a><br /><br /></div>"Access, a global provider of mobile content delivery and access technologies, announced today that its NetFront v3.1 browser software for Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ 2003 for Pocket PC will be available this month from popular download sites Handango.com and PocketGear.com. Also available will be versions to support Pocket PC 2002, including support for Pocket PC Phone Edition and for the original Pocket PC operating system, as well as free trial versions and distinct versions with Java™ support. Limited time discounts are available for all of the newly available versions of NetFront. <br /><br />"Windows Mobile is growing fast, and we’re happy to complement its increasing popularity by releasing a Windows Mobile version of our NetFront browser," said Toru Arakawa, president and CEO of ACCESS. "We’ve built special capabilities into NetFront for Windows Mobile, such as Smart-Fit Rendering™ and multi-window browsing, to give users a better mobile Internet browsing experience than is currently available on their platform."<br /><br />NetFront certainly <a href="http://www.handango.com/brainstore/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=311&productId=48866">seems like a capable browser</a>, but I have yet to try it. Since it's competing with the free Pocket Internet Explorer, it would have to be quite a bit better to be worth $25 USD. What's the verdict? Anyone here tried it? If so, what did you think?

[Eitel]

You forgot what it seems a really good part...

For a limited time, users can download NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC from Handango (www.handango.com) and PocketGear.com (www.pocketgear.com), LLC at steeply discounted prices. Users can also download time-limited trial versions for Pocket PC 2003 and Pocket PC 2002.

Looks like the version with JV-Lite2 s going to be on sale for $19.80 and the plain version (no JV-Lite2) for $16.80. That's a really good price for this great browser.

[arebelspy]

The reason I like it is because it can open up to five browser windows while only using 1 process. Critical because of the XDA II hitting the 32 process limit sometimes..

-arebelspy

[thanos255]

umm well it seems that handango and pocketgear seem to have the old version....wonder where I can get the new one.

Thanks
Thanos

[Eitel]

umm well it seems that handango and pocketgear seem to have the old version....wonder where I can get the new one.

Thanks
Thanos

Right now, nowhere.

NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC

Available on December 22

[thanos255]

Eitel,

You don't expect me to really read a press release do you? :)

Thanks
Thanos

[Jason Dunn]

Available on December 22

It's SO cheesy when companies send out press releases on software before it's available for download. Sheesh. :roll:

[ShivShanks]

Available on December 22

It's SO cheesy when companies send out press releases on software before it's available for download. Sheesh. :roll:

I suppose its a pathetic attempt to drum up interest before christmas. They must have missed the ball in trying to get it ready before christmas and the release date indicates its going to be one rushed out product with some bugs in it.

BTW anyone know if it supports landscape mode? Coz without that its not worth the money IMHO. PIE in WM 2003 is quite okay for browsing really considering that so many sites are coded specifically to look good on IE. BTW they do not mention whats so different about the SmartFit feature compared to PIE's Fit to Screen (which is not perfect but livable in VGA mode). They also seem to boast ActiveX support. Huh? Who in the world makes ActiveX controls for ARM CPUs (other than limited support by MS itself)? ActiveX is native code so almost all of it is for x86 CPUs. Some of the other things it has are nice like multiple windows and drag scroll etc but none of them are killer features. Perhaps when they wrote it they weren't aware that someone would hack the e805 VGA support and allow PIE to be a viable browser. They perhaps banked on being the only VGA mode browser for e805. As of now I don't really see anything ground breaking about this product quite frankly, but I'm willing to be proven wrong after trying it.

[nosmohtac]

Available on December 22

It's SO cheesy when companies send out press releases on software before it's available for download. Sheesh. :roll:

I suppose its a pathetic attempt to drum up interest before christmas. They must have missed the ball in trying to get it ready before christmas and the release date indicates its going to be one rushed out product with some bugs in it.

BTW anyone know if it supports landscape mode? Coz without that its not worth the money IMHO. PIE in WM 2003 is quite okay for browsing really considering that so many sites are coded specifically to look good on IE. BTW they do not mention whats so different about the SmartFit feature compared to PIE's Fit to Screen (which is not perfect but livable in VGA mode). They also seem to boast ActiveX support. Huh? Who in the world makes ActiveX controls for ARM CPUs (other than limited support by MS itself)? ActiveX is native code so almost all of it is for x86 CPUs. Some of the other things it has are nice like multiple windows and drag scroll etc but none of them are killer features. Perhaps when they wrote it they weren't aware that someone would hack the e805 VGA support and allow PIE to be a viable browser. They perhaps banked on being the only VGA mode browser for e805. As of now I don't really see anything ground breaking about this product quite frankly, but I'm willing to be proven wrong after trying it.

Not everyone owns a VGA pocket PC. :mrgreen: The Smart fit feature is intended to allow QVGA pocket PC users to view the page without having to side scroll for every line of text.

[Gator5000e]

PiePlus works well also. When you go to pages like CNN.com you can read everything on the screen without side scrolling. Also works well for forum pages.

[ShivShanks]

Not everyone owns a VGA pocket PC. :mrgreen: The Smart fit feature is intended to allow QVGA pocket PC users to view the page without having to side scroll for every line of text.

Erm ... My questions was how is SmartFit different from PIE's "Fit to Screen"? It does the same thing. Unless SmartFit is substantially more capable than what PIE can do its not worth it IMHO.

[Stephen Beesley]

Not everyone owns a VGA pocket PC. :mrgreen: The Smart fit feature is intended to allow QVGA pocket PC users to view the page without having to side scroll for every line of text.

Erm ... My questions was how is SmartFit different from PIE's "Fit to Screen"? It does the same thing. Unless SmartFit is substantially more capable than what PIE can do its not worth it IMHO.

I cannot talk for the browsing experience using PIE On a PPC 2003, which I believe is much improved over the PPC 2002, but I can say that the fit to screen feature in NetFront v 3.0 does a great job of rendering nearly all pages onto the screen without needing to scroll sideways. An improvement on that in V3.1 I have to see!

All in all I find the current (soon to be supperseeded) version of NetFront to be a very good web browser and hardly ever fire up PIE any more.

[DaleReeck]

I saw on another site the release date is 12-22. But I agree about the press releaes. "Availability" usually means that its AVAILABLE :D

[feo]

I looked into it a bit a go, and it was the solution for a specific customer I had. They needed to be able to access an older version of web outlook from their pocket pcs. Netfront does support multiple windows, which is how that specific version of web outlook works. So to them it worked perfectly.
I am curious to knwo if the new version would support the html form field type 'file'. PIE doesn't do that. To me that would be a HUGE point, as I would be able to upload files using a web interface.

[johnm]

I've been using NetFront for almost a year now. I really like it. The fit to screen feature was what made surfing the web on pocketPC actually usable for me. The lack of 2003 support has been keeping me from updating my Axim. I must admit that newer PIE plug-ins like pie plus and ftxPBrowser do nearly as good a job at the fit to screen and support multiple windows or even tab browsing like netfront does. Netfront has two other strengths however, 1. it has a JVM. 2. You can customize the browser ID string which is nice for sites that don't support pie properly.

It looks like the 2003 version is optimized for Xscale. I hope so as the previous version runs a bit slow.

[nosmohtac]

Not everyone owns a VGA pocket PC. :mrgreen: The Smart fit feature is intended to allow QVGA pocket PC users to view the page without having to side scroll for every line of text.

Erm ... My questions was how is SmartFit different from PIE's "Fit to Screen"? It does the same thing. Unless SmartFit is substantially more capable than what PIE can do its not worth it IMHO.

I'm assuming that the fact that you have a pda with a vga capable screen, that the fit to screen option on PIE actually does work. It does not work on a QVGA screen. At least it doesn't on any of the pocket pc's I've owned.

[VanHlebar]

Since this is a 3.0->3.1 update, to me that would indicate a "minor" update. I find it a bit hard to swallow that they are going to charge current owners $14 to upgrade to what looks like a minor update.

NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC Upgrade Offer
>> NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC 2003 with JV-Lite2
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC with JV-Lite2 user Upgrade price: $14.80
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC user Upgrade price: $16.80
>> NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC 2003
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC with JV-Lite2 user Upgrade price: $14.80
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC user Upgrade price: $12.40
>> NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC 2002 with JV-Lite2
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC with JV-Lite2 user Upgrade price: $14.80
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC user Upgrade price: $16.80
>> NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC 2002
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC with JV-Lite2 user Upgrade price: $14.80
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC user Upgrade price: $12.40
>> NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC with JV-Lite2 user Upgrade price: $14.8
- NetFront v3.0 for Pocket PC user Upgrade price: $12.40


The biggest complaint I have with NetFront is that it must be installed to main memory or it will not run. It is a very large app, much too large in my opinion to be installed to main memory. I have emailed the developers to see if they fixed this and will now allow it to be installed on a CF or SD card.

Updated:
I didn't read enough on the web pages. They do state that the application can now be installed to an external storage card.

Their upgrade policy leaves alot to be desired though. :evil:

-Eric

[cpw]

Has anyone tried the Java lite product. It appears you have to buy it first to find out.

Regards

Chris