With the pending 2009 release of Internet Explorer Mobile 6, Microsoft is making a major change in its approach to the mobile Web.In November Microsoft announced a package of emulator images, which developers can add to Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 to test applications, including IE Mobile 6, for Windows Mobile 6.1.4. Here's what you can expect in the new mobile browser:
- A full HTML rendering engine, based on the code from the older version of the desktop browser, IE 6.
- Support for Adobe Flash Lite 3.1,to improve multimedia experience (by contrast the Safari browser in Apple's iPhone currently lacks Flash support,but supports Scripting and CSS).
- Enhanced Script and AJAX support (Jscript v5.7 from IE8)
- The ability to quickly shift from a site's mobile page to its standard desktop version.
- Layout fixes to accommodate a mobile screen (text wrap)
- Deeper integration with search
- User interface improvements,Web search integrated with the browser's address bar, multiple levels of zooming and touch (but not multi-touch as with the iPhone) with support for panning.
Underneath the current IE Mobile browser is the old IE4 code, with its own unique set of bugs making web browsing in IE Mobile a miserable experience.It supports a fewer Web standards than the latest desktop browser, Internet Explorer 7 and requires some muscular hardware resources: 128MB of RAM, and a 400MHz processor, according to Microsoft. Nor will it be available as a separate product: the operating system on the handheld has to be reflashed to support the new browser, so Microsoft will partner with device makers and mobile operators to supply it.
But even with the improvements and the benefits cited by Microsoft in its forthcoming major release,end users have a growing number of alternatives, from vendors who are pushing mobile innovation far ahead. These include two different mobile browsers from Opera Software with touch friendly PAN/Zoom Interface, Firefox for Mobile ("Fennec") from Mozilla, the browser with the Open Handset Alliance's Android mobile OS (separate from Google's Chrome desktop browser), the Nokia browser for Symbian-based phones, and server-based browser introductions from Skyfire and Bitstream.
I'm not going to support it, and neither will a lot of web developers. Why? I can live with a few CSS hacks, but I need transparent PNG's. And I doubt the mobile IE6 will support the PNG hacks which utilize directx.
Last edited by simon360 on 22 Dec 2008 - 03:44
MS aren't going to win back the mobile web by including a sub-standard product.
Either keep your pity (and pitiful) code, or give the users something they could actually use. Until then, my iPhone is where I'm staying, and that's where I'll develop my mobile apps thank you very much.
Why do you like IE4 so much??
* And Windows Desktop too :p
I was unable to find a about dialog... Browser if very good, at least as good as opera 9.5 .
Hopefully by then the might have learned something and include their most recent browser and hopefully it's decent.
Oh, who am I kidding. IE5 for WM7!
Not so sure. The yellow bar is hideous. Firefox is quite extensible. Chrome is simple clean and quick.
I have no faith for the mobile space.
Last edited by LTD on 22 Dec 2008 - 13:01
Drop it Microsoft, PLEASE. Let the web community MOVE ON.
I can't imagine how many man hours lost on making the web backwards compatible with IE 6 these days.
On average, I spend ~2-3 hrs extra per site testing and ensuring compatibility with IE 6. It used to be a lot more, too before I had gathered a complete set of scripts and tools for testing and debug.
What bugs me the most is a particular error related to modifying the DOM tree before the page has fully loaded. IE7 fails gracefully. IE6 pops an error message saying something to the effect of "This page contains errors and has stopped loading" (even when the page has visibly fully loaded). It then redirects to a blank page and leaves no chance for debugging.
IE6 FTL.
+1
I want the HTC Touch Pro because the hardware is great and the slide-out keyboard in combination with a touch screen can't be beat for a human interface... but now I learn that it comes with Windows Moronic OS.
Meanwhile, there's the iPhone*, which ( I must admit) has, unlike WinMOS, a not-retarded OS, but no actual keyboard because the Cult Of Apple has decreed that thou shall not have real keyboards on thine cellular phone, lest ye be cast into the pit of Microsoft to slowly roast at an intolerable eternity until you reach an internal temperature of WinME 7.0 (or until you break down and buy an iPhone, whichever comes first.)
Will someone PLEASE just make a phone that has an actual keyboard attached to it and then keep it the heck away from Microsoft? Yes, I know about the Blackberries, and no I don't want to use their keyboard. If only RIM make a blackberry with a slide-out keyboard :sigh: Or Palm. Why the fark doesn't Palm make a PDA with a keyboard and a cell phone built into it? Auuuugggg!
I'm in cell-phone hell.
I want the HTC Touch Pro because the hardware is great and the slide-out keyboard in combination with a touch screen can't be beat for a human interface... but now I learn that it comes with Windows Moronic OS.
Meanwhile, there's the iPhone*, which ( I must admit) has, unlike WinMOS, a not-retarded OS, but no actual keyboard because the Cult Of Apple has decreed that thou shall not have real keyboards on thine cellular phone, lest ye be cast into the pit of Microsoft to slowly roast at an intolerable eternity until you reach an internal temperature of WinME 7.0 (or until you break down and buy an iPhone, whichever comes first.)
Will someone PLEASE just make a phone that has an actual keyboard attached to it and then keep it the heck away from Microsoft? Yes, I know about the Blackberries, and no I don't want to use their keyboard. If only RIM make a blackberry with a slide-out keyboard :sigh: Or Palm. Why the fark doesn't Palm make a PDA with a keyboard and a cell phone built into it? Auuuugggg!
I'm in cell-phone hell.
There's the Nokia N97 running symbian coming or there's HTC G1 or G2 running android on the way...
I want the HTC Touch Pro because the hardware is great and the slide-out keyboard in combination with a touch screen can't be beat for a human interface... but now I learn that it comes with Windows Moronic OS.
Meanwhile, there's the iPhone*, which ( I must admit) has, unlike WinMOS, a not-retarded OS, but no actual keyboard because the Cult Of Apple has decreed that thou shall not have real keyboards on thine cellular phone, lest ye be cast into the pit of Microsoft to slowly roast at an intolerable eternity until you reach an internal temperature of WinME 7.0 (or until you break down and buy an iPhone, whichever comes first.)
Will someone PLEASE just make a phone that has an actual keyboard attached to it and then keep it the heck away from Microsoft? Yes, I know about the Blackberries, and no I don't want to use their keyboard. If only RIM make a blackberry with a slide-out keyboard :sigh: Or Palm. Why the fark doesn't Palm make a PDA with a keyboard and a cell phone built into it? Auuuugggg!
I'm in cell-phone hell.
There's the Nokia N97 running symbian coming or there's HTC G1 or G2 running android on the way...
I have the att fuze (same as the touch pro just att) and it is very good even with windows mobile. Windows mobile is great if yo utake off all the isp related crud. On the fuze all you have to do is when the att customization program starts up just soft reset and you have a stock windows mobile install.
Shut off touchflow and its a fast phone.
Windows mobile isnt bad if you can uninstall all the crud other companies install on it just like xp.
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