Alcides Fonseca

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.

Following my last post, this one will also be about Microsoft Browsers. However this one is for mobile devices. As a Windows Mobile 5 user, when surfing the web I get all freaked out because a lot of websites aren’t rendering properly on the PocketIE (most because of frames, flash and image-based layouts btw). Well microsoft is getting ready the solution for these problems: Microsoft Deepfish.

Deepfish is a Windows Mobile browser in which content is displayed as in a desktop one, and then you can zoom, pan and cue map for quick navigation and browsing. It will also have new interesting features like ActiveX controls, AJAX, cookies, Javascript, and HTTP POST that will make webdevelopers like me truly happy.

After reading this, you surely are thinking the same I did: Microsoft is putting a full browser into mobile devices just like apple did with Safari for the iPhone and copying the same navigation style. I bet in a near future multi-touch PDA running WM6 will be released.