Menneisyys
07-22-2006, 10:50 AM
The built-in Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE for short; note that it has been renamed to Internet Explorer Mobile in WM5. For clarity, however, I’ll only refer to it as PIE even when referring to the WM5 version) shipped with all Windows Mobile operating system is, well, far from perfect. This is why any serious user should check out the so-called PIE plug-ins. One of them is PIEPlus, which is constantly enhanced. The second beta of its forthcoming, 2.1 version has just been released and is freely available (as a 15-day trial) here (http://www.reensoft.com/PIEPlus/), under ‘Or please download V2.1 Beta 2, if you have any problem on V2.0.’, for all Pocket PC 2002+ platforms (yes, even the Pocket PC 2002 operating system is supported.)
Unfortunately, the homepage of the application contains no information on the changes over version 2.0, which has been reviewed here (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=review_brand_new_2_0_version_of_great_in&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1). They will, however, become apparent as soon as you start using the program and discovering its menus and options.
http://www.reensoft.com/PIEPlus/images/s_standard.gif
Please note that this review only contains information about the new features implemented after version 2.0. If you want to know more about all the other features (which were already present in 2.0), please do read the above-linked 2.0 review (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=review_brand_new_2_0_version_of_great_in&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1). I will, on the other hand, provide a lot of comparisons to the most recent version of MultiIE, the most important alternative PIE plug-in. Also, you may want to stay tuned for the stand-alone review of MultiIE 4, which I will shortly publish.
1. Greatest news: Saving Web pages is finally implemented!
The most important of them is my biggest grief with version 2.0: that is, the lack of the ability to save Web pages to the local file system. This has been fixed in the new version: the ability to save pages has been added.
This feature is accessible from the leftmost PIEPlus menu (accessible with the http://www.winmobiletech.com/052006PIEPlus20/IPIEPl2icon-1.png icon), from Tools/ Save As... (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-1.bmp.png). As with MultiIE, you can choose between saving the entire Web page (this is the default, ‘HTML Complete’ (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-2.bmp.png)) and the HTML itself only (‘HTML Only’).
During resource fetching (if you go for saving the entire web page – that is, not only the HTML page but also all the in-line resources like images, stylesheets and JavaScript includes), if PIEPlus doesn’t find something in the local Internet Explorer cache in the file system, it will prompt for you to fetch the resource right from the original server as can be seen in here (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-FetchResourceFromServer.bmp.png). This, in cases, may result in better results than with MultiIE.
1.1 Downloading - Gzip decoding support
There are HTML pages that are sometimes stored Gzip-compressed in the PIE cache at least under pre-WM5 operating system versions. (I’ve never encountered this problem under WM5. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s non-existent – I may just have been lucky.) BTW, this problem (and the solution to that) has only been about a year ago discovered (by me) as can be seen in here (http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=215584); therefore, PIE plug-in authors would have had little time to correctly implement the solution I’ve outlined in the linked article & thread. (I only know of MultiIE’s author being surely aware of my solution.)
Unfortunately, PIEPlus 2.1 isn’t able to un-gzip Gzip’ed resources. It, however, doesn’t save (as opposed to old(er) MultiIE and Spb Pocket Plus versions, which happily copied the GZIP’ed file off the PIE cache to the destination directory without complaining about its not being an uncompressed file at all and it was sometimes only later, when you could no longer access the same Web content again, that you realized the files are binary and, while it can be decompressed by hand, none of the linked resources have been fetched) files Gzip’ed – it instead complains about being unable to read the file as can be seen in this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-GzipedFileSave-1.bmp.png). This will both happen when you’re trying to save the resource as a HTML-only, single page and as a page with all the related resources. That is, you won’t end up having ‘unreadable’ (unless you un-Gzip it with the tools I’ve recommended in my above article; that, however, won’t help you with missing external resources as you won’t be able to restore them locally) files at all.
After an unsuccessful saving attempt (which, again, is caused by the HTML web page being Gzip-compressed), if you try saving it once more, it will be correctly saved.
An example of pages that are often (but not always!) strored Gzip’ed is, for example, Tero Lehto’s (Finnish) mobile blog (http://lehto.net/blogi/). Give it a try: if you entirely clean up the PIE cache and then you try to save the page (with or without the in-line resources), you will most likely get the above-shown ‘unreadable’ error message. A second attempt at saving it, however, will almost surely result in the page being correctly saved. (And, again, don’t forget this only applies to pre-WM5 operating systems. Under WM5, I’ve never run into Gzip’ed files in the PIE cache.)
This all is really good news – if you use PIEPlus 2.1, you can be absolutely sure that the pages saved will be readable (unlike with older MultiIE and Spb Pocket Plus versions) and all the in-line resources will be present.
1.2 HTML parsing (and related resource saving)
Speaking of resources, something must be pointed out. HTML files must be parsed in order to all the essential resources (CSS stylesheets, JavaScript includes and, of course, images) to be correctly identified and, consequently, saved. Correctly parsing a HTML file requires a sophisticated parsing algorithm. This, unfortunately, is a definitely problematic area with PIEPlus 2.1.
For example, upon trying to save the PocketDOS homepage (http://www.pocketdos.com/), it will only save two image files (HeaderBG.gif and spacer.gif) of the 13 and won’t save the CSS (Style sheet) file either. MultiIE, on the other hand, will save 8 of the 13 images (everything except BotNav.gif, BottomGradient.jpg, Count.gif, HeaderBG.gif and TopNav.gif) and also the CSS file.
This doesn’t, however, mean that MultiIE4 is much better at parsing HTML files than PIEPlus 2.1. For example, it never saves JavaScript includes. With the above-mentioned Tero Lehto blog (http://lehto.net/blogi/), PIEPlus saved 14 image files, 2 JS files and one .gne file, while MultiIE4 only saved the 14 image files and no JS files.
That is, the two PIE plug-ins both have far-from-perfect HTML parsing capabilities. PIEPlus severely lacks CSS saving and MultiIE lacks JavaScript saving.
2. Save link targets
This feature has also been painfully missing from all Pocket PC Web browsers and Pocket Internet Explorer plug-ins (except for the non-WM5-compliant ftxPBrowser (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=do_you_know_ftxpbrowser&more=1)). This is of extreme help with, for example, downloading CAB files right in your browser.
To do this, just tap-and-hold the link to the file to be (directly) saved so that the Link context menu is displayed (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs.bmp.png). Choose ‘Save Target As’ from there and, then, in the following dialog (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs-2.bmp.png), just click Yes if saving to the internal storage is OK (and opening the file right after it). If you’d like to save it on a storage card instead, click Save As and choose the target accordingly (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs-3.bmp.png).
Note that this isn’t the only way to download a, say, CAB file. If you click a CAB file directly (in browsers or PIE plug-ins that don’t support direct download), you may end up watching the browser trying to render its contents as can be seen in for example this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-clickOnCabLink.bmp.png). If you try to save it (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-clickOnCabLink-TryToSave.bmp.png), the saved results, albeit (see the screenshot!) PIEPlus will display its type as textual, will have the correct contents (that is, no binary to textual conversion will take place).
This applies to any page saving-capable PIE plug-in, not just PIEPlus. This is because all these plug-ins just copy the files from the local PIE cache in the file system to the target directory, and PIE downloads these binary resources as binary, without converting them. It’s just that it tries to render them as textual, which, of course, won’t work.
3. Custom User-Agent string
Finally, another really welcome addition is granting the user the ability to set any kind of an user agent. Very few other browsers or plug-ins offer the same: NetFront and ThunderHawk are the ones that do this, while, for example, MultiIE (not even as of version 4), ftxPBrowser, Spb Pocket Plus and Opera Mobile don’t. (The latter sends out a User-Agent string that both identifies the client as a desktop MSIE and Opera browser (see this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/OperaMobileSendsOpera860String.bmp.png). You can’t make it pretend to be a desktop Internet Explorer browser and this may cause problems like the one explained in the comment section of my article on Opera Mobile (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=ladies_and_gentlemen_the_waiting_is_over&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1) – see Joshue’s comment and my answers.)
This will be of a definite advantage if, for example, you’re an anti-Internet Explorer guy and you’d like your PIE to pretend to be a, say, desktop Mozilla/ Firefox/ Opera browser ;)
To supply your own User-Agent string, go to the PIE menu, Tools/Options Plus… and, there, the User Agent tab. Choose Custom from the drop-down list (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPL21-CustomUserAgent.bmp.png) and edit the headers to your liking.
Note that you can safely disregard the ‘All settings in this page require restart of PIE.’ remark – as has been pointed out by me several times, new PIE instances (that is, new tabs) opened after changing the User-Agent will use the new settings; it’s only old tabs (old PIE instances) that will still send the old User-Agent information to the Web servers they connect to.
4. Verdict
PIEPlus, which was (feature-wise) definitely worse than MultiIE before version 2.0, has got even better. Now, PIEPlus is definitely the better of the two, apart from some of the really nice features (for example, location-based content) of MultiIE. I’ve been testing and comparing MultiIE 4 to PIEPlus 2.1 for quite a long time and have found PIEPlus 2.1 substantially better and more stable. Make sure you give it a try!
Unfortunately, the homepage of the application contains no information on the changes over version 2.0, which has been reviewed here (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=review_brand_new_2_0_version_of_great_in&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1). They will, however, become apparent as soon as you start using the program and discovering its menus and options.
http://www.reensoft.com/PIEPlus/images/s_standard.gif
Please note that this review only contains information about the new features implemented after version 2.0. If you want to know more about all the other features (which were already present in 2.0), please do read the above-linked 2.0 review (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=review_brand_new_2_0_version_of_great_in&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1). I will, on the other hand, provide a lot of comparisons to the most recent version of MultiIE, the most important alternative PIE plug-in. Also, you may want to stay tuned for the stand-alone review of MultiIE 4, which I will shortly publish.
1. Greatest news: Saving Web pages is finally implemented!
The most important of them is my biggest grief with version 2.0: that is, the lack of the ability to save Web pages to the local file system. This has been fixed in the new version: the ability to save pages has been added.
This feature is accessible from the leftmost PIEPlus menu (accessible with the http://www.winmobiletech.com/052006PIEPlus20/IPIEPl2icon-1.png icon), from Tools/ Save As... (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-1.bmp.png). As with MultiIE, you can choose between saving the entire Web page (this is the default, ‘HTML Complete’ (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-2.bmp.png)) and the HTML itself only (‘HTML Only’).
During resource fetching (if you go for saving the entire web page – that is, not only the HTML page but also all the in-line resources like images, stylesheets and JavaScript includes), if PIEPlus doesn’t find something in the local Internet Explorer cache in the file system, it will prompt for you to fetch the resource right from the original server as can be seen in here (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21SaveAs-FetchResourceFromServer.bmp.png). This, in cases, may result in better results than with MultiIE.
1.1 Downloading - Gzip decoding support
There are HTML pages that are sometimes stored Gzip-compressed in the PIE cache at least under pre-WM5 operating system versions. (I’ve never encountered this problem under WM5. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s non-existent – I may just have been lucky.) BTW, this problem (and the solution to that) has only been about a year ago discovered (by me) as can be seen in here (http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=215584); therefore, PIE plug-in authors would have had little time to correctly implement the solution I’ve outlined in the linked article & thread. (I only know of MultiIE’s author being surely aware of my solution.)
Unfortunately, PIEPlus 2.1 isn’t able to un-gzip Gzip’ed resources. It, however, doesn’t save (as opposed to old(er) MultiIE and Spb Pocket Plus versions, which happily copied the GZIP’ed file off the PIE cache to the destination directory without complaining about its not being an uncompressed file at all and it was sometimes only later, when you could no longer access the same Web content again, that you realized the files are binary and, while it can be decompressed by hand, none of the linked resources have been fetched) files Gzip’ed – it instead complains about being unable to read the file as can be seen in this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-GzipedFileSave-1.bmp.png). This will both happen when you’re trying to save the resource as a HTML-only, single page and as a page with all the related resources. That is, you won’t end up having ‘unreadable’ (unless you un-Gzip it with the tools I’ve recommended in my above article; that, however, won’t help you with missing external resources as you won’t be able to restore them locally) files at all.
After an unsuccessful saving attempt (which, again, is caused by the HTML web page being Gzip-compressed), if you try saving it once more, it will be correctly saved.
An example of pages that are often (but not always!) strored Gzip’ed is, for example, Tero Lehto’s (Finnish) mobile blog (http://lehto.net/blogi/). Give it a try: if you entirely clean up the PIE cache and then you try to save the page (with or without the in-line resources), you will most likely get the above-shown ‘unreadable’ error message. A second attempt at saving it, however, will almost surely result in the page being correctly saved. (And, again, don’t forget this only applies to pre-WM5 operating systems. Under WM5, I’ve never run into Gzip’ed files in the PIE cache.)
This all is really good news – if you use PIEPlus 2.1, you can be absolutely sure that the pages saved will be readable (unlike with older MultiIE and Spb Pocket Plus versions) and all the in-line resources will be present.
1.2 HTML parsing (and related resource saving)
Speaking of resources, something must be pointed out. HTML files must be parsed in order to all the essential resources (CSS stylesheets, JavaScript includes and, of course, images) to be correctly identified and, consequently, saved. Correctly parsing a HTML file requires a sophisticated parsing algorithm. This, unfortunately, is a definitely problematic area with PIEPlus 2.1.
For example, upon trying to save the PocketDOS homepage (http://www.pocketdos.com/), it will only save two image files (HeaderBG.gif and spacer.gif) of the 13 and won’t save the CSS (Style sheet) file either. MultiIE, on the other hand, will save 8 of the 13 images (everything except BotNav.gif, BottomGradient.jpg, Count.gif, HeaderBG.gif and TopNav.gif) and also the CSS file.
This doesn’t, however, mean that MultiIE4 is much better at parsing HTML files than PIEPlus 2.1. For example, it never saves JavaScript includes. With the above-mentioned Tero Lehto blog (http://lehto.net/blogi/), PIEPlus saved 14 image files, 2 JS files and one .gne file, while MultiIE4 only saved the 14 image files and no JS files.
That is, the two PIE plug-ins both have far-from-perfect HTML parsing capabilities. PIEPlus severely lacks CSS saving and MultiIE lacks JavaScript saving.
2. Save link targets
This feature has also been painfully missing from all Pocket PC Web browsers and Pocket Internet Explorer plug-ins (except for the non-WM5-compliant ftxPBrowser (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=do_you_know_ftxpbrowser&more=1)). This is of extreme help with, for example, downloading CAB files right in your browser.
To do this, just tap-and-hold the link to the file to be (directly) saved so that the Link context menu is displayed (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs.bmp.png). Choose ‘Save Target As’ from there and, then, in the following dialog (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs-2.bmp.png), just click Yes if saving to the internal storage is OK (and opening the file right after it). If you’d like to save it on a storage card instead, click Save As and choose the target accordingly (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-SaveTargetAs-3.bmp.png).
Note that this isn’t the only way to download a, say, CAB file. If you click a CAB file directly (in browsers or PIE plug-ins that don’t support direct download), you may end up watching the browser trying to render its contents as can be seen in for example this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-clickOnCabLink.bmp.png). If you try to save it (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPlus21-clickOnCabLink-TryToSave.bmp.png), the saved results, albeit (see the screenshot!) PIEPlus will display its type as textual, will have the correct contents (that is, no binary to textual conversion will take place).
This applies to any page saving-capable PIE plug-in, not just PIEPlus. This is because all these plug-ins just copy the files from the local PIE cache in the file system to the target directory, and PIE downloads these binary resources as binary, without converting them. It’s just that it tries to render them as textual, which, of course, won’t work.
3. Custom User-Agent string
Finally, another really welcome addition is granting the user the ability to set any kind of an user agent. Very few other browsers or plug-ins offer the same: NetFront and ThunderHawk are the ones that do this, while, for example, MultiIE (not even as of version 4), ftxPBrowser, Spb Pocket Plus and Opera Mobile don’t. (The latter sends out a User-Agent string that both identifies the client as a desktop MSIE and Opera browser (see this screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/OperaMobileSendsOpera860String.bmp.png). You can’t make it pretend to be a desktop Internet Explorer browser and this may cause problems like the one explained in the comment section of my article on Opera Mobile (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=ladies_and_gentlemen_the_waiting_is_over&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1) – see Joshue’s comment and my answers.)
This will be of a definite advantage if, for example, you’re an anti-Internet Explorer guy and you’d like your PIE to pretend to be a, say, desktop Mozilla/ Firefox/ Opera browser ;)
To supply your own User-Agent string, go to the PIE menu, Tools/Options Plus… and, there, the User Agent tab. Choose Custom from the drop-down list (http://www.winmobiletech.com/072006PIEPlus21MultiIE4/PIEPL21-CustomUserAgent.bmp.png) and edit the headers to your liking.
Note that you can safely disregard the ‘All settings in this page require restart of PIE.’ remark – as has been pointed out by me several times, new PIE instances (that is, new tabs) opened after changing the User-Agent will use the new settings; it’s only old tabs (old PIE instances) that will still send the old User-Agent information to the Web servers they connect to.
4. Verdict
PIEPlus, which was (feature-wise) definitely worse than MultiIE before version 2.0, has got even better. Now, PIEPlus is definitely the better of the two, apart from some of the really nice features (for example, location-based content) of MultiIE. I’ve been testing and comparing MultiIE 4 to PIEPlus 2.1 for quite a long time and have found PIEPlus 2.1 substantially better and more stable. Make sure you give it a try!