With the near ubiquity of wireless hotspots and the growing trend to integrate Wi-Fi into Pocket PCs and Smartphones, some users are becoming concerned about the limitations of Pocket Internet Explorer. The first concern is related to the size of the display. Most Web pages are designed to be viewed on larger desktop PC displays. Pocket Internet Explorer can reformat Web pages to display in single column format. But the results are often unsatisfying and require a lot of horizontal scrolling. The second problem is that many Web pages use Cascading Style Sheets and other Web technologies that Pocket Internet Explorer is unable to deal with. The most common frustrating experience is going to one's banking site and being unable to log in, or not being able to access navigational aids such as dropdown menus. As a result, many Windows Mobile users limit themselves to visiting so called "mobile sites" formatted to display well on smaller screens. (You can find a list of mobile directories on our Web site: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/mobile/mobile.asp.) Unfortunately, mobile sites are a small subset of the Internet universe. Many people want it all!
Fortunately, alternatives abound. In previous articles we've discussed proxy services such as Skweezer (http://www.skweezer.net) and webXcope (http://www.webxcope.com). These dynamically reformat Web content for the small screen of your device. While these services do a good job of shoehorning content, they are still limited in regard to letting you access Web pages that use advanced technologies. In this article, we'll look at some of the alternative commercial and freeware Web browsers available for Windows Mobile devices.
Opera Web Browser for Windows Mobile devices
Opera has long been an excellent alternative for desktop computers, first as a commercial product and now as a freebie. Much current excitement surrounds Opera's Mobile Browser (http://www.opera.com/products/mobile). Opera 8.0 for Windows Mobile Smartphones was made available last year for $29. A free beta version of Opera 8.5 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC was released early this year (beta expires on June 1). Opera supports all major Web standards, including CSS2, DOM 2, and JavaScript, allowing it to access pages that are Pocket Internet Explorer cannot. Our testing shows that its ability to access Web pages that use advanced technologies is excellent.
Opera 8.5 for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs
Opera's most notable feature, according to early users, is its phenomenal speed—faster than any other Windows Mobile browser. Other features include a popup blocker, zoom capability, a download manager, tabbing/multiple windows, and smart-rendering technology that dynamically formats Web pages to fit the width of any size screen.
Also available is the free Opera Mini. It's primarily intended for low-end mobile phones that aren't ordinarily able to access the Web or are able to do so with a limited WAP text-only interface. It's written in Java, and to use it on a Windows Mobile device, you first need to download a Java Virtual Machine. It has basic features such as bookmarks and browsing history, but doesn't have the advanced features of Opera's Mobile Browser.
Warning: When you install Opera on your Pocket PC, you are asked if you want to make it your default browser. We've received reports that if you do this and then remove Opera, the uninstall procedure does not change Pocket Internet Explorer back to your default browser. This means that if you click on a Web link in an e-mail, etc, it may not automatically open Pocket Internet Explorer. For the time being, it's probably best not to make Opera your default browser.
NetFront Web browser for Pocket PCs
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