The final version of Opera Mini 4.1, one of the best Web browsers available, has just been released; see THIS for more info. I’ll post a detailed multiplatform review in some days, after having used it for some time on all my three mobile operating systems. Finnish computer mag Tietokone has just published a summary of their desktop browser speed test published in their (offline) papermag.

In my last (and, now, heavily outdated) article on making Opera Mini 4 be invoked on by just clicking a URL, I’ve already elaborated on the advantages of doing this (and, actually, the advantages of Opera Mini 4 itself). Please do read it if you want to know why making use of direct invocation can be really advantageous. Because there’s a lot of news worth reporting on (and I’ve been asked by Serola to join the Opera Mini Fan Blog as the first blogger, because of which I've decided to update this really important tutorial) and the original article didn’t elaborate on other mobile platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry, I’ve decided to devote an entirely new article to this question. 1.1 badbob101’s StartOperaMini (the download is at the bottom of the first post; as of 05/12/2008, 09b is the latest version, which you'll want to go for.) I recommend this solution the most because it’s really-really easy to install and maintain and it’s much more flexible than, say, superdave’s, otherwise, in some respects cleaner and faster solution. All you need to do is, in order to set it up, downloading and installing the free MortScript (just copy the MortScript-4.1-PPC.cab file from the cab subdirectory of the ZIP file to your handset and tap it there) and, then, just copying StartOperaMini.mscr anywhere (including a storage card) on your handset and, as with MortScript, clicking it from File Explorer. It’ll automatically find the current location of Jbed, the index of Opera Mini and set up everything just fine. Unlike with the early solution, absolutely no manual setup is needed.

In several of my articles, Bibles, W3C presentations etc., I’ve explained what HTTP User-Agents are, what they can be used for if you’re a webmaster etc. As my previous articles (see THIS, THIS and THIS, in addition to the W3C presentation and the two Web Browsing Bibles HERE and HERE) on the subject got a bit outdated with the latest browsers and firmware versions out there, I’ve re-checked the User-Agents. This time, I also provide you with all the other headers, should you want to correctly identify the mobile browser even if it’s User-Agent spoofed (that is, it’s trying to hide its identity). Note that I don’t explain what this info is used for – I’ve already done this several times in the above-linked articles, read them first if you need more info on the usage of all this info. Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) WM6.0 Classic (HP iPAQ 210, official ROM): Accept: */* Accept-Language: en-us UA-OS: Windows CE (Pocket PC) - Version 5.2 UA-color: color16 UA-Voice: FALSE UA-pixels: 480x640 UA-CPU: ARM Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.7) Connection: Keep-Alive

CONTINUED FROM HERE



Now that we’ve reviewed the browsers’ approach to rendering pages / textual page content originally designed for at least 800-wide screens on 176…640-wide screens, let’s turn our attention to other questions like (easily) controlling the browsers – for example, scrolling pages using hardware buttons.

As has been announced some weeks ago, I had a W3C speech a week ago devoted to Web browsing on mobile devices. You can find the (English) slides HERE. (Sorry, some of the example screenshots are in Finnish. This, however, doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the overall understandability of the material.) In order to understand the slides, I’ve also decided to comment on all of them so that the entire Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry mobile community can benefit from my speech – in written form. Finally, note that, albeit this article is over 80kchars long, it in no way can provide a FULL, absolutely thorough overview of the Web browsing scene on these platforms. That is, if you don’t understand something, don’t despair: in my referenced, previous articles, you can, in most cases, find a very thorough dissemination of the subject. Just an example: in this article, I only devote some 2kchars to the subject of downloading files while my original, devoted article, along with its (recent) updates, amount to over 100 kchars.

I also provide in-line screenshots in this article so that you know what I'm speaking about without constantly switching to PowerPoint; however, to see the original document at its full (and copy/pasteable) glory and resolution, you'll need the PPT file.



(Sorry for the comparatively bad quality – captured from the 1024*768 M-JPEG video(!) recording of my Canon 960IS camera.)



(no comments needed)

Watching YouTube videos is a favorite pastime of many. With data charges constantly decreasing (or, should I say, plummeting), not-that-expensive flat 3G data rates getting common, Wi-Fi’s getting pretty ubiquitous and, of course, YouTube’s getting really-really full of videos worth checking out, you might be tempted to watch YouTube (or other) videos on your handset. After all, it's a great pastime and these handhelds have both the processing power, the necessary hardware and, in most cases, connection speed to render these videos well.

In this YouTube Bible, I show you how this all can be done on the three major non-iPhone platforms: Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 and BlackBerry. (As the iPhone, as opposed to most other solutions, already comes with a decent player, there isn’t much point in elaborating on it. You just fire up the YouTube icon and off you go at – if you have Wi-Fi connectivity – very good quality. Nothing needs to be installed and there’re no alternatives you will need to know to make an intelligent decision.)

Note that I’ve published several YouTube-related articles (a quick search for YouTube on my blog reveals these tutorials). These, however, are pretty outdated now – particularly that a lot of vastly superior solutions have been released in the meantime. I’ll, however, refer back to for example the HTC Streaming Media tutorial.

Also note that this Bible is multiplatform, as with the majority of my later Bibles. If you're a fanboy of any of the three reviewed operating systems, don't post angry messages like "Why on earth did you include operating system X? I hate it, it's sooooo inferior and lame!". Sorry, both as a gadget-loving geek and as a professional IT advisor / consultant, I MUST know all the mobile operating systems. (Particularly now that the Microsoft folks have just told me they would be interested in some of my week-long lectures on the differences on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices. I need such kinds of work because I (more precisely, my employer) prefer getting mobility-related IT consultant contacts as opposed to non-mobility-related ones. This is also why I keep posting on other operating systems - as I need to know them, why wouldn't I post on them? Finally, I won't create a separate version of the Bible for Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices for two reasons: 1. it'd cause me a LOT of additional work not only initially but also when I post a revised, updated version: restructuring the entire Bible, taking out all references to other OS'es; 2. knowing what other operating systems are capable of won't do anyone any harm - you may even find that having read info on another OS useful if you are given a handset running a different OS.)

Also note that, Windows Mobile-wise, the discussion applies to both touchscreen-less MS Smartphones (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) and touchscreen-enabled Pocket PC’s (Windows Mobile 6 Classic / Pro) models. All the reviewed Windows Mobile solutions run on both platforms. In the compatibility lists, I've listed the earliest Windows Mobile operating system a given solution is compatible with but didn't list them all. This means if you see WM2003+, it means compatibility with WM2003 and all subsequent operating system versions (WM2003SE, WM5, WM6, WM6.1), not only with WM2003.

1.1 Browsing the desktop Web version of YouTube

This section applies to both platforms of Windows Mobile starting with WM2003+ and used with Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) and Opera Mobile; Symbian with integrated Flash Lite 3.

1.1.1 Windows Mobile

1.1.1.1 IEM / Opera Mobile + Flash 7 plug-in

If you install the Flash 7 plug-in (see the Flash Bible HERE for more info on the availability etc.) on your Pocket PC and either use the WM5+ (not earlier: due to bad JavaScript support, they won’t work) Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) or WM2003+ Opera Mobile (any version), the videos will be played back in-line, just like on the desktop.

This is, however, the worst approach you should ALWAYS avoid because it, in some cases, grinds the entire handset to halt and is very slow, even on high-end Windows Mobile devices. All in all, it’s in NO WAY recommended - there are far superior approaches.

1.1.1.2 IEM + FlashVideoBundle

This is an immensely better solution having all the advantages of the desktop version; most importantly, direct access to YouTube, Google Video & Veoh links sent in, for example, mails. Then, when IEM is invoked, you’re shown a context menu, where you can instruct IEM to show the video in TCPMP, save it into a file or, alternatively, take you right to the page so that you can see for example the comments / related videos:

If you directly enter the URL in the address bar (by, for example, pasting it to there), it’ll too present you with the same context menu; the same will happen if you just click a video link on YouTube (GV etc.) pages.

The current version is 1.4.4; CAB file available for download HERE (if you don’t want to register, I’ve mirrored it HERE); my old, now-outdated article HERE. Installing it is pretty straightforward; just follow the section "Installation instructions" in the tutorial on the homepage.

This is one of the most recommended ways of playing back online videos, particularly if you get links in e-mails / other, offline documents like Word files.

1.1.2 Symbian with Flash Lite 3

In order to play back (Flash, including YouTube) videos embedded in Web pages, you’ll need to have a device with Flash Lite 3 preinstalled. One of them, the, currently, best multimedia handset of all, the Nokia N95 received Flash Lite 3 support in firmware version v21 released some weeks ago.

If you have a compatible handset, you don’t need to install anything else (no third-party apps at all): videos will be played back right in the pages that contain them, with much-much less adverse effects than (currently) with Windows Mobile relying on the CPU-hog Flash 7.

As has already been emphasized, Flash Lite 3 on Symbian behaves much-much better than the full Flash 7 on Windows Mobile. While the latter is in no way recommended, the former – if you have a Symbian device – is. Note that you can still use the Mobile YouTube Web and the MIDlet-based interface too (see sections 1.2 and 1.3, respectively), but they only deliver 3GP videos at a much lower quality than Flash Lite 3. Alternatively, if you need high-quality (Flash / H.264) videos, you may also want to prefer Mobitubia – or the soon-to-be-released, YouTube-capable version of CorePlayer.

Note that Portrait playback will always be oversized as can be seen in THIS screenshot (source link HERE). Also, if you use the standard Nokia Web menu (Options / Rotate Screen) to switch to Landscape mode, it’ll stay oversized. The trick is clicking the Flash Lite 3 surface with the Action button – it’s then that it’ll be resized to fit into the screen as can be seen in the first screenshot.

Also note that there’s still no Flash Lite 3 on Windows Mobile but will, hopefully, be soon released; see THIS and THIS for more info.
 

Web browsing is one of the major application areas of portable devices – no wonder the iPhone is also Web-centric with its excellent Safari browser.

The “accelerated” scrolling mode of Safari is widely copied in the Windows Mobile world. The latest title to support this kind of screen dragging mode is Touch Browser by Makayama available for purchase and, now, trial download HERE (manual HERE).

It’s an external wrapper to Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM), just like Webby and unlike traditional IEM plug-ins like Spb Pocket Plus, PIEPlus and MultiIE. This also means it has some of the inherent problems common to all these solutions; more on this later.

OK, enough talk, let’s get straight to the facts: frankly, as of version 1.0.2, I’m not at all satisfied with this app. Currently, there are far better alternatives. Why? Let’s take a detailed look. (Note that this list is pretty much terse. If you don’t understand it, make sure you read my other Web browser reviews and Bibles; in them, I’ve thoroughly elaborated on all the issues I’ve referred to in this review.)

• The keyboard is either vowels on top or numbers – there’s no QWERTY layout, unlike on the iPhone or with, say, Spb Full Screen Keyboard. This itself makes URL input very hard – iPhone’s QWERTY inputting is just far better and, if you’re (as most people) used to QWERTY, faster. Screenshots showing this: Landscape 1 2, Portrait 1 2. System-level auto-completion works in URL input mode (see THIS), but there’s no address completion (based on the history / the favorites) the like in Opera Mini 4.1 or all versions of Opera Mobile. Also note that it’s impossible to enter symbols like ~, ? and & - this is a MAJOR problem too! All you can do is assigning a hardware button to <Input Panel> and use it to quickly bring up the keyboard and enter anything on it, unrestricted.
• It’s in no way possible to access the standard menu. Fortunately, it’s possible to access favorites via the context menu and the usual PIE / IEM context menu items, including for example Save Image for images, are all accessible. The lack of menu access results in, say, the inability to switch between low and hi-res modes on VGA Pocket PC’s on the fly. What is worse, it’s not possible to access the three (One Column / Fit to Screen / Desktop) different rendering modes in View, should you want to switch between them on-the-fly. Yeah, sure, TB does have an entire button for one-column view, so, the problem is mitigated to some degree. Nevertheless, the default mode seems to be the desktop (!!!) view, which is, in most cases, completely useless and to-be-avoided. That is, you’ll end up having to switch to the one-column view, which, with some kinds of content (for example, charts) results in a huge decrease in readability (in general, the “Fit to screen” mode, which isn’t supported by Touch Browser, is the best of the three modes).
• Speaking of the (W)VGA hi-res mode switch introduced in WM5 AKU 3.5, independent of its state, documents will ALWAYS be rendered in low-res. This is not what you may want to prefer if you have a hi-res device and want to take advantage of the resolution to fit as much data into the screen as possible.
• The Settings menu has been hastily designed for Portrait devices and needs scrolling in Landscape – (this is, of course, a minor issue, compared to the major problems of the app)
• No tabs or other enhancements; the only enhancement is the one-column mode, which doesn’t add much to WM2003SE+ devices (it was in WM2003SE that One Column mode was introduced). Compare this to the tab support of Spb Pocket Plus
• No way to switch to text copy/paste mode – VERY bad!
• No hotkey support at all – all you have is the D-pad (and, of course, the on-screen menu) for shortcuts
• Dynamic scrolling is just far less spectacular and far slower than with Spb– mostly because of the slow CF-based engine
• The D-pad can’t be used for scrolling and the Action button to select links – it’s strictly for bringing up / hiding the menu (up/down), navigating to the previous/next page (left/right) and showing the actual position of the viewport in the page (Action). The latter (displaying the actual position with scrollbar-alikes) doesn’t let for scrollbar-based scrolling and is far-far inferior to, say, Opera Mini 4’s or NetFront’s minimap / page overview solution. That is, there’s absolutely NO way of scrolling the page without using the touchscreen, only via the buttons. This is a REAL disadvantage compared to ALL other browsers or PIE plug-ins, where you can not only use the D-pad for scrolling, but you can also configure how scrolling should be done (link / line / page-based scrolling) or, in cases, can even use other hardware buttons for scrolling. Touch Browser doesn’t allow for the latter (that is, assigning scroll or page down functionality to hardware buttons as is explained in the Button Enhancer Bible.) It isn’t compliant with SmartSKey either, configured to page scrolling using the volume slider – unlike with most other Web browsers (or plug-ins).
• Sometimes it just crashes – for example, when just entering http://www..com or the random URL given in the system input panel tip above. The latter can only be helped with the phone buttons. Also, upon exiting the app with the X icon, it always throws exceptions (like THIS and THIS). This certainly shows it needs some HEAVY, additional debugging.
• Absolutely no feedback on the state of loading pages – unlike with the underlying IEM.

Verdict

While I pretty much liked Makayama’s past Windows Mobile-related software titles, all I can say is you’d better stay away from this title for the time being – that is, before it undergoes a real facelift and enhancement. It’s just worse than the alternatives. If you do need iPhone-like accelerated (!) scrolling, go for any of the newer browsers: Opera Mobile 9.x, NetFront 3.5 or, if you plan to stick with IEM, Spb Pocket Plus 4. If all you want to have is screen-based dragging (without the nice “acceleration”), then, other, even older browsers will do: NetFront 3.3/3.4, Opera Mobile 8.6x, Thunderhawk, Opera Mini (all versions) or the two traditional IEM plug-ins: PIEPlus and MultiIE. Technically, these browsers are ALL far superior – far more reliable, far more feature-packed, easier-to-use (buttons, fast scrolling, minimap etc.) and, with some of them (Opera Mini, for example) even free.

Also, this browser (as with Webby) certainly shows Compact Framework is just unsuitable for writing fast-scrolling apps. Use native C++ for implementing applications that rely on quick (!) graphics.

Knowing the Makayama folks are pretty adept and knowledgeable people, I really hope they do improve this browser and that, once, Touch Browser will become a decent alternative to screen-dragging solutions. For the time being, I don’t recommend it, however.

Some days ago, I promised I would benchmark the brand new Adisasta WinMobile Download Accelerator (wmDA), version 1.x of which I’ve thoroughly benchmarked in The definitive guide to downloading files, images and saving Web pages with Pocket PC-based Web Browsers. As I’ll keep a W3C session in a week, I found it necessary to test it – along with all the other, current (!) Windows Mobile-compatible Web browsers like the current NetFront 3.5 TP, Opera Mobile 9.33 beta, Opera Mini 4.1 beta. I also took the chance to compare it to the, so far best downloader tool, HandyGet.

I’ve tested everything on a Dell Axim x51v running makuu’s makuu A06 privß06p WM6.1, using exactly the same card and Internet connection so that there aren’t any differences. Please consult the above-mentioned Definitive guide to downloading files, images and saving Web pages with Pocket PC-based Web Browsers for the meaning of the results. For the card, I used a very fast (as far as file creation and random block writing is concerned) Ridata 256M CF card.

Browser / getter:Op. Mobile 8.65Op. Mobile 9.33 betaOp. Mini 4.1 beta + Jbed 3.1IEM 6.1NF 3.5HandyGet 1.6wmDA 2.0 (in parentheses, last, current 1.x version)
Makes downloads to cards impossible due to internal memory shortage?+- (while it still uses the internal storage for caching)----- (+)
Browser integration?n/an/an/an/an/a+, must be explicitly configured+, excellent
7M HTTP file to CF card0:570:412:200:540:520:22… 0:270:22 (1.40… 2:15; with cache on card: 2:24)
to internal memory0:450:25(couldn’t reconfigure it to download to int. memory)0:500:271.07… 1:11 (split: 1)0:28

To summarize:

- Opera Mobile 9.33 (and, therefore, the forthcoming 9.5) is much better than 8.65 in both speed (there is a certainly visible download speed increase) and in that it no longer stops when the internal memory fills up when you download files to cards that are too big to be stored in the internal storage (which is used for temporary cache).

- Opera Mini 4.1 beta is tolerably fast – pretty good results for a Java program. Note that you may still want to prefer downloading in the external, native browser - at least under Windows Mobile – because, as can clearly be seen, even Internet Explorer Mobile is far faster.

- HandyGet 1.6 is VERY fast when downloading to cards (but not when doing the same to the internal memory) – with the default settings. Note that, by default, it doesn’t monitor IE; this must be separately configured in File / Setting / General / IE Monitor.

- NetFront 3.5 is pretty fast – about the same speed as IEM when downloading to cards and much faster when downloading to internal memory

- Finally, wmDA has indeed been HUGELY optimized. Now, it’s FAR faster than the 1.x series when downloading to cards – and no longer needs to relocate the cache to the card when there’s little internal memory. Actually, it’s equally fast than HandyGet 1.6 when downloading to a card and much faster than anything else. Even Opera Mobile 9.33 (the fastest standalone browser) is almost two times slower than wmDA.

Now that I’m working on my 45-minute speech & demo for my (international) W3C speech next week, I’ve re-tested the latest version of all browsers with the just-published, new W3C test suite specifically targeted at mobile devices. The greener, the better; red denotes a failed test.

Let’s start with Windows Mobile.

Windows Mobile

As you can rightfully guess, the built-in Internet Explorer Mobile (even as of WM6.1) is pretty bad:

… which is the same as on WM6 Standard 6.0 (MS Smartphone):

…and is only a bit better as in the 5-year-old WM2003:

Finally, here’s the Pocket PC 2002 screenshot so that you can see the difference between it and WM2003:

Opera Mobile:

Version 9.33 beta (the one presented at WMC this February):

I don’t need to introduce Opera Mini for any serious mobile device user – it’s been one of the best browsers ever since the release of version 4.0 with all its goodies like favorite synchronization and full layout mode, the latter being excellent on (W)VGA Pocket PC’s and high-resolution Symbian devices like the Nokia E90. Note that I’ve written a review & full comparison to other browsers HERE – please DO read it if you don’t know what Opera Mini is or how it compares to other browsers, in which cases you might want to prefer it to native, fully-fledged browsers like Opera Mobile. Also, make sure you read my two Web Browsing Bibles, linked from the OM4 article, for additional info & comparisons. Finally, note that the linked article only discusses version 4.0; 4.1 is even better and more featureful.

The just-released 4.1 beta takes things even further and implements a lot of long asked-for functionalities. It’s REALLY worth upgrading; note that it can coexist with older versions (including 4.0) on the same handset. That is, if you, for some reason, find it useless, you can easily switch back to the older version without having to reinstall / reconfigure anything.

1.1 Availability; which version to go for?

Navigate to http://mini.opera.com/beta either with your phone’s WAP browser or, if you have Opera on your desktop, with it:

(mobile browser)