10-11-2009, 09:36 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,067
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REVIEW: New Windows Mobile Web browser "Dorothy"
A new Web browser, Dorothy, has been announced slightly more than two months ago.
I’ve waited until now so that I can give the developers some time to enhance it so that I can recommend it. Unfortunately, the (today) current version, 0.2.2, still only has files dating back to August. (Compare this to the frequency (in general, at least one per month) of updates arriving to the now-extinct Iris, which was also based on WebKit.)
As you may already have guessed: in its present incarnation, I in no way recommend the new browser. Going for Opera Mobile, Opera Mini 4.2 (not the beta-stage 5.0 - see my dedicated article HERE) with a decent MIDlet manager (refer to my MIDlet manager-related articles) or SkyFire is a much-much better choice. Of the three, you‘ll surely find the most useful. (For example, if Opera Mobile doesn’t really work on your phone – which, unfortunately, is the case with some models –, you still have two other, excellent browsers to choose from; if SkyFire’s using QVGA resolution only is unacceptable to you if you’re a VGA user, go for the other two browsers etc.)
(Note: I haven’t tested the brand new BOLT 1.5 yet so I don’t know whether it’s worth checking out and/or recommending. Some people – see Serola’s article - reported it isn’t at all bad.)
The problems with the current Dorothy version are as follows:
- Absolutely no support for tabs (both Opera Mobile and (via History) Mini support this)
- Absolutely no link / page / image context menus
- No text reflowing, unlike in all the three recommended browsers. This means your only way to make the text readable is zooming in (with the on-screen + and – icons in the lower right corner). Then, however, you’ll end up having to extensively scroll back and forward. All the decent browsers (not only the three most recommended ones, but also almost all WinMo-based ones – see THIS) are able to reflow text and/or switch to more mobile-friendly (for example One Column) views.
- There’s not even built-in favorite support. This also means you won’t have access to, for example, scriptlets, which can become life-savers with all scriptlet-capable Web browsers (even Internet Explorer Mobile) (latest, related article HERE)
- It seems to be incompatible with several WinMo PDA’s / phones. For example, on my HP iPAQ 210 standalone PDA (with the official ROM version it’s coming with and the “dummy” Phone and SMS DLL hacks in place so that both Jbed and SkyFire run on it), it constantly displayed a missing resource. On the other hand, it runs OK on my HTC Universal running WM 6.1.
- No full screen
All in all, it's much-much less usable than any of the recommended browsers. Even the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile is far better (full screen, context menus with goodies like image saving, reflowing, settable character size, different view modes including One Column, favorites etc.)
Getting it
If you would still want to give the browser a test ride: Register on the official homepage; after the account activation, you’ll be sent the link to the installable CAB archive.
Additional info
See THIS XDA-Devs thread.
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