PocketIE vs DeepFish

September 11, 2007

2 months ago I introduced Microsoft DeepFish, the new browser for Windows Mobile devices, still in beta. Thanks to Fábio I was able to try that version in my TyTN.

Once you navigate to a website, the first thing you’ll see, is a overall image of the website. Like a resized screenshot of the desktop browser. Then you have to zoom to the part that interests you. To read some text, you’ll have to scroll both horizontal and vertically, what just sucks! And regarding the menus, it requires various clicks for something basic. One thing I really enjoyed was the scrolling drag of the page.

Pocket IE is the traditional browser that renders the content for the PDA resolution. Almost all the websites fit the window and you only need scrolling vertically, which is very good while reading text (and the TYTN scroolwheel is just marvelous!). The left button has also the most probable action you’ll take (favorites or back, depending on the situation) and that makes the navigation truly easy and fluid.

When on my PDA I visit almost only blogs, twitter, gmail, google reader (ok, and flickr once in a while), so I’ll keep using PocketIE that gives me exactly the kind of presentation I want for the content I visit. I guess Microsoft is on the wrong path here.

This post has 2 comments. Feel free to read them and leave your own.
DeepFish sounds very similar to Safari on the iPhone. Maybe it can recognize the viewport tag like iPhone does:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=320" />

For example tells iPhone to treat the screen like it is 320px wide, so it doesn't try to scale down an 800px wide screen.
Indeed it is a lot like Safari on the iPhone (which I haven't tested, but if it is like this one, I won't like it). But it does not recognizes the viewport (just tested with twitter).

And the viewport would take me to another issue: what about the large majority of pages that doesn't have that tag? Even if Deepfish would support it, I'd keep using PocketIE, it does the job for my specific device quite well.

Maybe on larger displays Deepfish will have a future, who knows...

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I used to write in this blog, but I've found a better format to express myself. From now on, you may read my writings on ideas, programming and politics on my new wiki.

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Name: Alcides Fonseca
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Nov 24, 1988 40.197958, -8.408312

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