| Browsers: | Picsel 1.0.0 b2319 | Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) / Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) | Opera Mobile 8.65 | NetFront 3.3 (official, final) / 3.4 Feb-Mar TP build | Minimo; (0.1x nightly builds here; not updated to 0.2); as of 09-Jan-2007 (referred to as 0.1x) and 0.2 | Opera Mini 3.1.7196 | ThunderHawk 2.10304 | PIEPlus 2.2 (review; that of 2.0) | MultiIE 4 D72 (review) | Webby 2.6.0.5 (review) | Spb Pocket Plus (SPP) 3.2.0 |
| Price | < Not available officially > | n/a (built-in) | $24; free update from 8.60 and to all 8.x future updates | $29.80; no free updates between major version bumps; however, owners of the previous major version get a 50% rebate | Free | Free (but requires a midlet runner app; the latter is built-in in almost Windows Mobile phones or can be acquired separately for all Windows Mobile versions. I recommend either the built-in Intent Midlet Manager or, if it doesn't exist, IBM J9.) | $5.95 / month or $49.95 a year. Note that Bitstream no longer seems to offer a 30-day trial period (after registering yourself, you're taken to their account page, which you can't exit); their online FAQ is still reflecting the old state by stating "The first time you run ThunderHawk after the install, ThunderHawk will open to a registration screen. Enter the necessary information to create your new ThunderHawk account. When you finish, your new account is registered to your PDA and you can begin browsing." | $14.95; update from 1.x is $7.45 | $17.95; FREE update for all 3.0 users | Registering is free and also incorporates a free 30 day trial of the Webby Pro features; Pro version costs $20.0 | $24.95 with a lot of other tools |
| Trial version? | < Not available officially > | n/a (built-in and can't be separately acquired) | the beta "will expire on June 1, 2007"; final version probably 30-day unresricted | Heavily restricted (same stands for the currently available 3.4 Technical Previews; they are, in addition, timebombed) | n/a (free) | n/a (free) | No trial any more | 14-day unrestricted | 15-day unrestricted | with registered version, 30-day unrestricted Pro trial | 30-day unrestricted |
| Application type | Standalone | Standalone | Standalone | Standalone | Standalone | Midlet | Standalone | PIE plug-in | PIE plug-in | Hybrid | PIE plug-in |
| Documentation / manual / FAQ quality (and URL)? | Offline docs displayed at starting the browser (and available at \Browser\ Help\0409\ app.html) is pretty usable. | Built-in; sufficient | As opposed to that of Opera Mini (and, of course, that of the desktop Opera), not very good (PPC, Smartphone). However, you'll find some of the not directly WM-related tutorials (for example, that on opera.ini) very useful. Last but not least, ResearchWizard's tutorial is by far the best Windows Mobile-related tutorial - make sure you read it! | Online FAQ is useless; offline, built-in help is pretty good (not available with 3.4 demo / TP versions, only with 3.3) | Only FAQ is available; weak and really outdated (mostly refers to 0.08-0.09) | Good | Pretty good, albeit has some missing images and, in some respects (for example, it still refers to the availability of a trial) outdated | Pretty weak | No on/offline manual at all, it seems | As is stated here, the document here should be the manual. Very weak. | Good (see page 17) |
| Platform compliance? : WM5 / 6 | + | n/a (built-in) | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | +; WM5+: One Column view mode is missing; WM6+: High Resolution mode is missing. Fortunately, you can quickly invoke PIE on the current page (via View / In Pocket IE) to alleviate these problems, should they really annoy you. | +; note that it may be buggy on ALL WM6 devices (see the tabname / background opening remarks!) |
| WM2003/ WM2003SE | - | n/a (built-in) | 8.x: +; the forthcoming 9.x series are also supposed to support WM2003(SE) | 3.3: +; 3.4: it seems - | 0.1x: + (albeit it's very slow on most WM2003(SE) devices); 0.2+: - | + | + | + | + (starting with 4.0 D71; prev. 4.x versions weren't WM2003(SE) compliant, only WM5+) | +; One Column view mode is missing in WM2003SE+! | + |
| PPC2k2 | - | n/a (built-in) | - | - (3.1 is the latest PPC2k2-comp. version; not available for purchase any more) | - | + (you'll need to get hold of the old, PPC2k2-compliant version of IBM J9) | + | + | - (last compatible: 3.10-d0059) | - (CF2 required, which isn't available for pre-WM2003) | + |
| PPC2k | - | n/a (built-in) | - | - (3.0 is the latest PPC2k-comp. version; not available for purchase any more) | - | - | + (even MIPS / SH3!) | - (only ARM; last compatible version: 1.1) | - (last compatible: 3.10-d0059) | - (CF2 required) | - |
| Screen: Standard AND (if standard mode results in pixel doubling) forced/native VGA compliance? | + | +/ +. Note that pre-WM6 versions used pixel doubling or, at least, stretching with images, char sizes and tables in standard SE VGA mode. This can, at last, be disabled in the WM6 version. | + / + | + / + | + / + (also Preferences) | + / + (pixel doubling in SE mode depends on the midlet manager used; for example, the older IBM J9 5.72 did pixel doubling. The 6.x series no longer does this; neither does the Intent Midlet Manager) | QVGA real resolution / QVGA real resolution | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Dynamic landscape switching compliance? | + | + | + (switching can be initiated from the app itself); it, naturally, doesn't work under WM2003) | + | + | + (quickly reloads the page after orientation switching) | Default is Landscape, no Portrait mode. Note that it was only some 8-9 months ago that Left-handed Landscape mode has been implemented; previous versions weren’t, therefore, compatible with devices with slide-out / clamshell keyboards in keyboard mode | See PIE | See PIE; also supports in-app orientation change | See PIE; note that in Settings, Tasks and Buttons aren’t really Landscape-compliant (no scrollbar/pane). | See PIE |
| 240*240 square screen support? | ? | n/a (built-in) | + | + (Settings dialogs are fully optimized for 240 height in 3.4 and are all scrollable in the still-not-optimized in 3.3) | + | + | - (!) | + options dialogs are specifically square screen-friendly (that is, they occupy 240*240 only, unless they contain non-drop-down lists; then, the latter are dynamically sized (1 2)) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Screen estate utilization: Full screen mode? | - (albeit only the taskbar is taking up screen estate) | - under pre-WM5; + under WM5/ WM6 | + | +; tap-and-hold to switch back | + | - | + (default) | +, small icon (or a bar) to switch back, configurable | +, small icon (or WM5 hotkey OR configurable key OR WM5 softkey) to switch back | + | + |
| Address bar hiding? | n/a (address bar invisible all the time) | In pre-WM5 browsers only (View / Address Bar). For some strange reason, this has been removed from WM5 and above (prolly because of the introduction of official Full Screen support). Note, however, that PIEPlus is still able to display it. | - (The address bar contains some other, important icons; maybe this is why it can't be hidden) | + (View / Toolbars / Location) | +; only in Full Screen mode | n/a (address bar is invoked by a menu) | (By default nothing is visible – a long-tap brings up the GUI, including the address bar) | Adds hiding support to WM5+ | See PIE | If you DO install the address bar plug-in, then, you won’t be able to hide it (only by disabling it entirely, which requires restarting), not even in full screen mode – as is the case with the Tab plug-in | When you hide the command bar (see the setup dialog; this is the default), it only puts a small icon in the lower left corner; otherwise, it really offers full screen |
| Scrollbar (may be) hidden in full screen mode? | + (it’s always hidden) | n/a (under pre-WM5) / - (under WM5/ WM6) | -, not even in screen drag mode | -, not even in screen drag mode | - | - | - | +; everything is configurable | +; everything is configurable | - | - |
| Context menus: Image | n/a (no context menus at all) | Save Image in WM5+ | In addition to the page context menu, Save image (new in 8.65) | The same as with Link context menu; with Open in New Window and Copy shortcut greyed out. However, then, Save / Image will be enabled. | - (Nothing additional) | No context menus at all | - | Save Target As… / Save Picture As / View Picture Text / Copy Address / View Address / (Add to favorites) | Under WM5+, nothing particular (don’t forget WM5 added image saving to the default image context menu!), just the usual link tools even with non-linking images to for example see where a particular image is from | - (No additional context menus) | The three link context menu items + Save Picture As |
| (Generic) page context menus | n/a (no context menus at all) | Full Screen in WM5+ | New window / Back / Forward / Go to (direct address entering, with http://www. prefix already given), Zoom, Full Screen; available in link / image context menus too | The same as with Link context menu; with Copy shortcut greyed out; Open in New Window opens the same page again | Find / Toggle Full Screen / Reload | No context menus at all | - | Copy Address / View Source / Screen Drag / Tab Bar / (Select All Text / Add to Favorites / Properties… / Refresh Page) | Rotate Screen and Scroll at the top level; View Source and Save Web page as on the second ("Page Tools”) and, as with links, Send To (an application) on the third. Note that Menu / MultiIE / Page Tools also contains the same menu items | See above | - (no for example Full Screen on pre-WM5 devices) |
| Link context menus | n/a (no context menus at all) | Nothing additional | Copy Text / Copy link address / Send address as (new in 8.65), in addition to the traditional Open in New window | Open in New Window, Copy shortcut and also Save / Link Target (present in both 3.3 and 3.4) | In addition to the standard page context menu, Open link in New Tab | No context menus at all | - | Save Target As… / Copy Address / View Address / Link Target (Current / New / Back New Tab) (1 2) | Open (in (Back) new Window); setting the default open action right there; Copy / View (!) Link Address (like seeing the target at the bottom of a desktop browser) and sending to another application. Note that the latter can be hidden from all context menus from inside Options | See above | Open in New Window; Open in Background; Copy Shortcut |
| Advanced address bar features (macros, completion): Domain completion? If setting the default completion is not supported, does it default to .com? | -; only very simple, predefined addresses | - | - | -; no defaults | -; defaults to .com | - | - | + ("URL Service" in Options); there are three groups by default: Global (com/net/ org/biz/ edu/gov / info / name / pro) , local (individual countries) and Ext(ended) (mobile/ / index / default / .asp(x) / cgi / html / html / jsp / php); fully configurable / editable | +, EXCELLENT and fully configurable! 1 2 3. The list of the countries can also be freely edited (1 2) | -; you can, however, quickly add prefixes / suffixes by clicking them in the Enter Url dialog install the Address Bar plug-in, which allows for an address builder (and has history / Web search support). This allows for pre-defining several quick texts, which, then, will be listed and, by selecting them, quickly pasted to the address bar. Of course, this is in no way as sophisticated as the automatic address expansion of some other solutions but can still help in some cases. Note that if you enter a non-URL in here, Webby will, instead, run a Web search on ask.com | - |
| Web search shortcuts / macros? | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | No IMDB, Wiki, Dictionary, Amazon, Ebay and CNN Stock Quote, unlike with MultiIE; of course, can be easily added / configured | +; by default, Google Web / News / Local (via GPS!) search, this can, of course, be edited. More searches include, by default, IMDB, Wiki, Dictionary, Amazon, Ebay and CNN Stock Quote; this is also editable | - | - |
| Web compression service shortcuts / macros? | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Google Mobile, Skweezer, MobileLeap, WebWarper built-in; fully configurable / editable | Skweezer (all the three modes) by default, of course, this can also be edited, new menu items added etc | + (four compression services are built-in; Skweezer is used by default) | - |
| Translation services shortcuts / macros? | - | - | - | + wired-in Japanese-English only | - | - | - | To English / from English to others built-in (editable, of course) | - not built-in, but can, of course, be easily added | - | - |
| Generic macro language? If no, are there predefined macros (for example, g [something] for Google?) | - | - | + (new in 8.65: a - Answers.com ; g - Yahoo (NOT Google!) ; s - Opera Web search ; w – Wikipedia; y - Yahoo!; z - Amazon.com) | - | Not definable by hand; however, there're some pre-defined ones like g (Google) | - | - | + ("URL Alias"); a lot of predefined (for example, ‘g’ for Google) | + | - | - |
| Rendering modes: Fit-to-screen (tested with the PPCMag test)? | Unfortunately, no REAL fit to screen (there's only zoomable "Desktop" and the One column view (see below)); there is a very sophisticated, stylus-based zooming system, though. That is, it it starts with fully zoomed-out mode but, of course, you can freely zoom in) (2) | View / Fit to Screen in all IE versions; very poor, compared to the alternatives and doesn’t result in really forcing the contents into the available horizontal screen estate (screenshots: VGA 1 2; with Brighthand, Desktop and Fit to screen) | +, works great on VGA devices (while the Desktop mode may require some horizontal scrolling at times - NOT with ALL web pages!); on QVGA devices, it’s the same as the One Column mode | Just-fit rendering: pretty close (1 2 3; with Brighthand as opposed to the normal (default) "desktop” view). QVGA examples with default char size and Portrait: 1 2 3 4. It’s worth pointing out that 3.4 doesn’t display table column boundaries in Just-Fit mode, unlike 3.3 as can be compared in here (3.3 QVGA) and here (3.4 VGA). This is pretty much annoying in the new version. (Also see the other screenshots.) | + SSR, enabled by default; unfortunately, it doesn’t work with the PPCMag page (and many other pages; for example, redhotpawn.com or the dynamic HTML test page). It, however, does work with a lot of other sites; for example, the Brighthand forums (as opposed to the normal view) | - (Everything is one-column) (1 2) | Default functionality; it’s very rarely that you end up having to scroll horizontally | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| One (single) column view? | + (Reflow Layout) (2 3) | + in WM2003SE+ and works great (1 2 3; with Brighthand), - in earlier versions | + (was buggy in 8.60 in Landscape mode and on VGA devices because of the fixed 240 pixel width) | Smart-fit: about the same but doesn’t put everything in separate rows as can be seen in here: (1 2 3) with 3.3); with Brighthand QVGA examples with default char size and Portrait: 1 2 3 4. | As with Webby, it solely depends on external services to achieve the same (and, of course, at the same time it mostly loses the JavaScript & similar contents – for example, in the dynamic HTML example, all fields are displayed with Google Mobile showing the JavaScript content has been severely reduced / removed by Google Mobile); see View as Google Mobile in the main menu | + (default; can't be switched off) | - (only one layout is available) | In addition to the standard One Column support in WM2003SE+, Pocket View; inserts spaces in long words (this is configurable). Note that this feature, as far as PIE plug-ins are concerned, unique and, therefore, you may want to prefer PIEPlus to any else PIE plug-in if you have a Pocket PC 2002 or a WM2003 device | See PIE | - - as with Minimo, only via Skweezer and similar content stripping / compressing services (note that using Skweezer is the default content stripping service used by Webby) | See PIE |
| Rendering mode (does it show the start of the document even when it’s not entirely downloaded?) | In general, it starts rendering soon and continues downloading the background. Works very good. However, it switches to the final layout only at the end of the loading, which may be annoying if you would like to continue browsing, preferable in One Column mode, even during page loading. | Excellent: not even a fraction of second needs to be waited | Excellent: Starts to be shown right at the beginning (after 2-3s) | It's pretty hard to predict when the default (otherwise, recommended) Browsing Mode / Full Browsing starts showing the document. I've benchmarked wildly different results. In the majority of cases, rendering a page started after 3-4 seconds; in some cases, only in the last 2-4 seconds. Initially, it was in order to combat the latter that Browsing Mode / Rapid-Render was implemented. I don't really recommend it: full page loading is far (at least two, but, with 3.4, even three times - with 3.4, Full Browsing downloads are devidedly faster and Rapid-Render ones slower than in 3.3) slower, but it is guaranteed to be started to be rendered right at the beginning (after 1-2 secs), just as with PIE and Opera Mobile. However, as Rapid-Render causes a complete re-rendering at the end of the (dog-slow) download and, up until that, a style-less, mostly text-only representation is rendered, I don't recommend using it at all. | Not the best: it only starts showing the results in the last 2 seconds (and it's already pretty slow) | Good (taking the very fast page download in account): Have to wait a bit; started to be rendered in the last 3-4 seconds | Good (taking the fast page download in account): Have to wait a bit; rendered at once and very quickly; images downloaded / rendered later. | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Multiple page operation (multitabs): Feedback on page loading events (sound effects / bringing to the foreground)? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a (no tabs) | - | - | - | - | n/a (no multitabs) | It can switch to them/can beep when loaded | beeps and may bring into foreground; beeps can be quickly en/disabled (without having to go to Options) in Menu / MultiIE / Options / Page Load Sounds | - | No feedback on loading. No tabs at all; active pages’ titles are listed under Menu / Spb Pocket Plus (see the numbers here). Note that Spb Pocket Plus’ inability to correctly acquire the title of a given page is a well-known problem (earlier versions didn’t work at all on any platforms); while it does work under WM5 and pre-WM5, it doesn’t under WM6 |
| Opening links in…-support, particularly as opening something in a background tab is concerned | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a (there is only one tab) | New tab only (no background tab; only "Open in New window" is available) | New tab (no background tab) | No background | n/a | n/a | New tab / Background tab (latter is new from 1.x!) | +; you can also set the default functionality (EXCELLENT!) | As there are no context menus, opening links in a new tab is menu-based. You select Tabs / New Tab using Link, and, then, as is instructed by the following dialog, click a link. No background tab loading is supported. | Both new and background tab; note that background opening doesn’t seem to function under WM6 (it works about 80% of the times under WM5) |
| Max. number of tabs open at a time? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | Any | 5 (!!!) | Any | n/a; several dozens of pages can be open at a time | n/a | Any (memory- and number of processes constraints only) | Any | Also depends on the subscription / program type (3 for the free, unregistered version, 5 for the registered one and unlimited for the Professional) | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Tabs constantly on the screen, their taking up screen estate etc.: Settable tab height / width? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | - | -; no, not even in full screen | - (can be collapsed to be thinner) | n/a: no tabs - menu-based switching between pages | n/a (no tabs) | + (as opposed to the 1.x series) | Yes, everything can be set: height, width; these separately for Portrait and Landscape orientation, where you will want to use shorter tabs to save screen estate (EXCELLENT!). | +: Webby offers no visible tabs by default. You must install the Single Click Tab Extension to enable this functionality. Therefore, this section assumes you’ve installed it; screenshots & evaluation based on version 1.0 of the extension. Also note that tabs are somewhat buggy: when there is less than four tabs open, just switching to a tab (on my WM6 VGA HTC Universal) automatically opens a new, empty tabas with Webby itself, the tabs display the Internet address of the page and NOT its title – that is, the <title> HTML tag isn’t (correctly?) parsed by Webby. This is a big letdown. | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Auto-hide tab bar when there is only one tab open? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | + | + | + | n/a | n/a | + (disabled by default) | - | - | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Manually hide tab bar? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | - | - | - | n/a | n/a | +; the current tabs will still be accessible under Menu / Tab | + even with a menu-based shortcut | - (by en/disabling the plugin; it, however, requires a program restart) | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Configuration capabilities: Are tabs opened at the far right end or next to the current tab? | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | - (far end) | - | - | n/a | n/a | Can be explicitly set (EXCELLENT!) | Can be explicitly set (EXCELLENT!) | - | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Tab context menu (if any) | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | - (only the Close icon on the far right) | - | New Tab / Reload Tab / Close Tab; Reload all Tabs / Close Other (this is pretty unique!) Tabs | n/a | n/a | - | - | - | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Quick close tabs? If the close icon is part of every tab, can they be closed even without the tab's being active? (Problem with desktop Opera, as opposed to IE 7.) | n/a (no multitabs at all) | n/a | One close button (configurable!) at the right end | Close icons on all tabs; prone to unintentional closing | - (albeit the context menu has Close Tab / Close other Tabs) | n/a | n/a | Double-clicking them | One close button (configurable!) at the right end | + (x on them); inactive tabs can also be closed | n/a: no visible tabs |
| Misc.: Closed tab history (just the URL, not the contents!) | n/a (no multitabs at all) | - | - | - | - | - | - | EXCELLENT, Unique: Menu / Tab / New from Closed and Current from Closed ; history list can also be quickly deleted | - | - | - |
| Address bar history? Address bar autocomplete? History deletable? | - / - / +; note that the latter refers to the History view. In there, it lists the thumbnail & title & link & visiting time of the by default last 7 pages. Note that, in the Preferences, you can alter the default 7 days and can also clean up the history. Also note that the thumbnails are stored in .bmp.png files under \Browser\history\ . | + (you can even supply the days to remember) / + / + (Menu / Tools / Options / Memory / Clear History) | + / + / + | + / + / + (you can even set the items saved and expires after) | + / + / + | + (on both the home screen and Menu / Previous Addresses) / - / + (Menu / Tools / History / Clear all (left hotkey)) | + / - / + | See PIE | See PIE | - (neither with the default nor the plug-in has inter-session history, only intra-session one) / + / n/a (no point: it doesn’t remember anything). Note that the system-level View / History doesn't list addresses visited in previous sessions (1 2). This is a major problem and should be fixed ASAP! | See PIE |
| Back / Forward buttons equipped with history? (Much better than the traditional Address Bar History) | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | +, Menu / Back/ Forward; EXCELLENT, both backwards and forwards. Note that I’ve used the numbered HTML files available here. Note that Forwards will only be seen when you use the Back button to step back; otherwise, only the Back history will be active. | - | - | - |
| Set as default browser? | + | - | +; it also asks upon the first start. Note that 8.60, when installed to a storage card containing spaces in the name, was buggy when fired up on a standalone file. See THIS for more info. | + | + | - (there would be no point in it as it can’t read local file-system based files) | - (there would be no point in it as it can’t read local file-system based files) | - | - | - | - |
| Quick configuration change (like F12 or the Image button in desktop Opera 9.x) | - | - | - | In 3.4, EXCELLENT support for quick profile creation / switching in 3 screen taps (Menu / ViewProfile / selecting the needed profile); allows for setting the browsing / display mode, whether images and animations are displayed, zoom, virtual canvas and text size (1 2). This is particularly useful because settings don’t stick in any NetFront version – you’ll end up re-setting them every time you start NetFront. | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Visual bookmarks / graphical representation of an opened tab (see for example the desktop Opera browser) | n/a | - | - | +, added in 3.4, can be disabled | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Keep Backlight On | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | + Configurable both in the Options menu and via a shortcut | - | - |
| In-page text search | - | - | - | + ; unlike Minimo, it also supports going back to the previous hit; it, however, doesn’t support auto-scrolling and dynamic highlighting (unlike Minimo) | +; only "Next” is possible; automatically scrolls the page to show the next hit and highlights them all, as does the desktop Mozilla – very nice! | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Screen drag? | + (by default) | - (only with plug-ins) | +, starting with 8.65 (Misc / Use grab and scroll) (in 8.60, not supported) | + ([Menu/]Tools/Scroll Mode) | + (Globe / Pan (1 2) | + | + | + (enabling: from Menu, page context menu or hot key assignment); even with configurable speed! | +; note that you can quickly enable it in Menu / MultiIE / Options / Screen Drag too, not only in the Options or via a hardware button assignment | - | - |
| Access to standard PIE favorites? | - (!) | + | Only for reading (both from the file system and the Registry), not for writing / synchronizing; that is, newly created favories are only stored in opera6.adr and not under \Windows\Favorites as standard favorite URL's. +, starting with 8.65 (screenshot asking for importing at first run) (in 8.60, not supported) | + for both reading and writing; also has access to the PIE favorites in the Registry | - | - | + | See PIE | See PIE | +; also for addition | See PIE |
| View source? | - | - | - | -, only in cache | - | - | - | +; editor configurable | +; editor configurable | + (1 2) | +, Word Mobile (Pocket Word) only |
| Page Pilot (quick navigation like on Nokia E-series (S60 rev 3) browsers) | +, excellent with quick zooming in/out AND zoom area selection (double tap on screen, and refrain from moving after the second one; then, subsequent highlighting will work) | - | - | + (introduced in 3.4), excellent | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Form autocomplete / fill-in? Passwords remembered? | -; note that there isn’t even pasting into input fields! | - | - | Supposed to have; however, it has never worked with me | Passwords yes | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Text size? | Three character sizes in one-column mode | The five usual sizes. Note that the naming is pretty inconsistent in WM5: while in other OS’es it refers to text size (what it REALLY should to; examples: WM6: Menu / View / Text Size; pre-WM5: View / Text Size), in WM5 it is accessible under Menu / Zoom | Can be fine-tuned and extremely low/big charsizes used (the latter very good for native VGA mode) : between 8 and 36. (Incidentally, on VGA devices, you should increase the default 11 to, say, 16 at once.) | The five usual charsizes as with PIE | You can decrease / increase the font size one size at a time (1 2 3 4) | four sizes (1 2) | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Zoom? | Any level of VERY FAST zoom in both viewing modes, accessible via Up/Down keys (after redefinining them in Preferences, instead of the original “Pan”) and the touch screen (quickly double-click the touch screen anywhere and, then, move the stylus up/down to zoom). Excellent! | - (see the remark above on "Zoom” in WM5!) | + | + (in addition to charsize) | - | - | - "virtual resolution” has three states: default (640*480), High (800*600) and Low (480*360). The first two do NOT change the text size; the latter does. | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Other goodies | Built-in DOC / PPT / image / XLS / PDF / TXT viewer (albeit not the best with large files, where alternate solutions are still usable; often runs into “out of memory” errors even with 1-2M files, which don’t cause any problem with other document readers, et them be the built-in Office Mobile apps or the Adobe Acrobat 2.0 reader) | - | Pop-up blocker (can be disabled) | Pop-up blocker (configurable); Page pilot / minimap (as with Nokia's S60 OSS browser and Microsoft's DeepFish); Auto-Cruise (1 2 3 4) | - | - | - | - | - | Plug-ins: 1 2 3 4 5 6; see other entries for the Address builder and the Tabbed interface ; gestures for quick control (albeit I consider buttons much better); ad blocking (NOT generic popup blocking but requires an adsite URL to be entered: 1, 2) | - |
| Standards compliance Part I: JavaScript, scripting, Java: JavaScript in general / AJAX in particular (0: worst; 5: best). (Do see the linked AJAX tests for more info on how the tests have been committed!) | 1 (even worse than that of PIE!) / 0 (no Ajax tests worked; for example, the Image Labeler didn’t render anything and the other tests produced exactly the same output as with IEM / PIE). | 2 / 0 (even in WM5 AKU3 / WM6, where it should be better) | 5 / 5 | 3.3: 3 / 0; 3.4: 4 / 4 | 5 / 5 | - (no local JS / Ajax execution) | 4 / 3 (note that the official product page states it’s only partly AJAX compatible. It seems not all real-world AJAX-powered pages are compatible with the browser.) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| redhotpawn.com test? | - (didn’t even render the board, unlike PIE) | WM6: - (and, of course, earlier versions) | + | 3.3: - (selecting for example the black pawn will work (see the green highlight); however, when trying to actually move it somewhere (clicking somewhere else on the board), the selection will be hidden and, of course, Submit won’t work either); 3.4: + | + | n/t (it would most surely mess up the board) | - (while highlighting / selecting the starting position works, the target doesn’t – it selects four squares instead of one) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Google maps? (Note that you won’t want to use this interface in real life. Neither will you want to use the midlet-based one. Use the official WM client instead (see the CAB at the bottom left).) | - (doesn’t get past of the “Loading” stage) | - (WM5: absolutely no support), WM6 (starts because the WM6 PIE User-Agent has been changed in the meantime and GMaps doesn't recognize the browser to be a PDA-based one): stops at loading) | - (Desktop: while it's rendered OK, there are no scrollbars; pretty much messed up in Fit to Screen) | 3.4: -, with NF acting as a desktop browser (1 2) , - | Pretty good (1 2 3 4) | Pretty much messed up, useless (1 2 3 4 5 6) | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Gmail autocomplete | - | Not even in WM6 (only the Basic HTML mode works, where, of course, it isn’t supported) | (Identifying itself as the desktop Opera (User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) Opera 8.65 [en] ) – not the default mobile one!): + | 3.4 with reporting itself as the desktop IE: - | - (by default, it uses the PDA-formatted / basic HTML pages) | (No autocomplete (also) because of the non-inline data input method; however, Gmail, in general, works – in the non-PDA-optimized, "full” version) | - (switches to Basic view, which means it's in no way possible to even test autocomplete) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Yahoo mail buttons (Reply, Forward etc) | - (the buttons don’t work at all); in addition, it loads Yahoo Mail REALLY slow (must be a JS problem as it doesn’t do the same with, say, Gmail or other secure pages) and doesn’t at all display the body of mails | WM6: - (Reply / Forward can’t be clicked, as was the case with WM5) | - (not even buttons (let alone their menus) work with either Desktop or Handheld identification) | 3.3: all buttons work, button menus don’t. 3.4, with default (PDA) User-Agent, button menus also work (but not autocompletion): + (1 2) | Works great (except for, of course, the autocompletion) | Buttons work (1 2); their submenus don’t. | Forward/reply buttons do work, submenus don’t | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Java quality? Radar applet compatibility? | - | No native support (third party JVM's only) / + with CrEme JVM (no Jeode) | No Java support / n/a | Mostly toy applets / - (unlike with the previous version of the applet) | No Java support / n/a | No Java support / n/a | Mostly business applets requiring infrequent screen redraws only / + | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Standards compliance Part II: HTML Frames: Maximal number of sub-framesets? (Tested with a custom frameset starting with this one and ending with this) | With 1.html, nothing is displayed; the first one to work was 4.html – that is, it can handle embedded framesets up to level 7 | 3 (note that PIE states it's capable of displaying up to 10 frames, which certainly isn't the case with subframes - it solely refers to parallel frames (see next test). The eighth test page was the first to work; the seventh still didn’t) | There doesn’t seem to be a restriction | 7 (it still works with the fourth but not with the third one); unfortunately, the error message, as usual with NetFront (for example, it always complains about a DNS error – which is REALLY misleading! - when you just mistype the address), is pretty cryptic and doesn't really mention the cause for the problem | 10: Less restricted than even NetFront. When trying to render the first one, nothing was shown; with the second one, the end frame was correctly rendered. Incidentally, exactly this is how the desktop Mozilla / Firefox works. | There doesn’t seem to be a restriction | + | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Max. number of parallel frames (test page) | No restrictions, it seems | 12 in WM6, 10 in pre-WM6; interestingly the error message refers to 10 frames in both cases – even with WM6, where 12 frames are rendered | There doesn’t seem to be a restriction | Both 3.4 and 3.3 | 0.2: +; 0.1x: Theoretically, compatible; however, pre-0.2 Minimo versions seem to have problems with HTML pages referencing more than 10-12 resources (in here, frames) – it would never finish the page fetch and just stalled at the depicted position | There doesn’t seem to be a restriction | No restrictions | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| View a frame in a (separate) tab / window (tested with this page) | - | + Go to Frame (2) | - | + Both clicking it and Open in New Window in the context menu will work. If you disable the, by default, enabled Smart Frames Operation, you can stop the frames being highlighted and clickable; then, only Open in New Window will work | + ; however, it’s not guaranteed to work as is the case with the example redhotpawn (it works with the planets example) | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Frame boundaries settable? | - | +, even in Fit to Screen mode | Only in desktop view, in Fit to screen view, they aren’t even displayed | + in all view modes, even Smart-Fit Rendering | + (albeit it may take ages) | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Iframe support for for example Yahoo / GMail AutoComplete (test page) | to some degrees: it’s displayed but can’t be scrolled | Starting with WM6 (absolutely no iframe support in previous versions); note that it’s unable to compress the iframes horizontally, unlike other browsers (on VGA devices, Use High Resolution helps this to some degree but still can’t render internal frames with >~620 pixels without horizontal scrolling). This can’t be helped with One Column / Fit to Screen either. | + | + | + (note that it has the same problem with wide iframes as PIE and SSR doesn’t help) | + | + | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Standards compliance Part IV: Internationalization support - showing Unicode chars | +; you can also supply the character encoding | + | + | + | + | + | - (!) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Language / country-dependent HTTP request (Accept-Language) header (related article here) | - | + with WM2003SE+ (but not in previous versions): simple Registry hack; proxy-based solution works. With WM2003, Paragon Language Extender works - but not with prev. OS'es | -; proxy-based solution works | - (While it is supposed to have support for changing the request language, it, as with many other NetFront features, is buggy); proxy-based solution works | + (configurable in "about:config” URL / intl. accept_languages) | - | -; proxy-based solution DOESN'T work | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| URLs with accents | - | + | - | - | + | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| POST upload Unicode contents to a server, 8859-1 | ? (couldn’t test because of the lack of paste support to text input fields / areas) | To some degree (punctuation / west-European umlauts OK, East-European accents nope - converted to ou). Switching to Central European (Windows) or UTF-8 converted the latter chars to õû upon uploading. | -, only Western accents, not even Word punctuation. Changing the encoding in Menu / Display / Encoding (tested with UTF-8 and 8859-2) didn't help. | - (uploads a space instead of all non-standard chars; only Western accents get uploaded, not even punctuation) | Central-European accents are converted to ou | n/t | + (while it doesn't display Central-European chars, it uploads them OK) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | ? |
| POST upload Unicode contents to a server, Windows-1250 | See above | + (all; punctuation only visible by explicitly switching desktop IE to Windows-1250) | + (Central-European and Scandinavian accents), but no Word punctuation at all | + As with PIE | +; posts everything but it converts the special 8859-1 punctuation characters to their "basic" equivalents | n/t | n/t | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | ? |
| Unicode / UTF-8-encoded files? | + / + | - / + | + / + | + / + | - / + | n/t | - / - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Standards compliance Part V: Misc: Dynamic HTML forms / explicit form field disabling | - | - | + (1 2) | 3.3: -; 3.4: + (1 2) | + (1 2) | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | ? |
| Macromedia / Adobe Flash? | -; interestingly, some articles promised it would receive built-in Flash 7 support | With plug-in in all versions (6+: PPC2k2+; 7+: WM2003+) | +, starting with 8.65 (in 8.60, not supported); uses the same, official Macromedia / Adobe Flash plug-in (the same compatibility / CPU usage / inputs etc) | +; weaker and much more CPU-hungry than with PIE | - | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| YouTube support? | - | - even in WM6 because of the bad JavaScript support | Works, but pretty slow (remember to use it in Desktop mode, not in fit-to-screen; then, controls will surely be displayed too). (Also see for example this and this); can be pretty jerky. The latter can be fixed by using a 50% zoom in Desktop view. | - with NF 3.3 (bad JS & not very good Flash support); ? with NF3.4 (no Flash support in the demo / TP version) | - (no Flash support at all) | - | - (mediocre Flash support: no local playback) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| File upload capabilities? | - (while it displays some button, it can’t be activated) | +, Starting with WM5 (in previous versons, not possible) | + | + | + | - | + (albeit you need to manually enter the path of the file to be uploaded – pretty awkward) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| WAP? | Really bad: with mobile.globeandmail.com, you can’t navigate through the drop-down menu; with Elvira, you can’t press the OK | + in WM2003; - in pre-WM2003 . Note that Wap buttons are, with PIE, listed in the top of Menu and they, unlike with NetFront 3.4, do work. (This – via the More item – is the only way to access the body of news with mobile.globeandmail.com!) | + | +. Note that Wap support must be manually enabled in Tools/Browser Setting/Misc / Enable text/vnd, wap, wml (pre-3.4); in 3.4, it’s under Network. Also note that the Wap buttons (for example, Next / More with mobile.globeandmail.com) on the bottom don’t work with 3.4 (unlike with 3.3, where they work OK), which is kinda a showstopper with some Wap services. Hope these button problems will be fixed in the official version of 3.4. Note that this only affects Wap services solely relying on buttons; others can be fully used | -, as with the desktop version, which needs a separate Wap plug-in, wmlbrowser | Will not always work: With Globe and Mail, it presented a drop-down list of OK's only (instead of the main subject areas); with the train timetable test, it worked OK. | It seems it’s very basic: while some widgets are rendered, for example after selecting something in the mobile.globeandmail.com drop-down list nothing happens. The same stands for the other (Elvira) test: after clicking OK, nothing happens. | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| CSS compliance: Acid (CSS2) / CSS1 tests (0: worst; 5: best) | 1 / 3 (the latter displays OK but chops off the bottom) | CSS support added with WM2003 (no CSS in pre-WM2003); 1 / 5 (the latter under WM5+; the same test crashes WM2003(SE) and, of course, doesn't run under pre-WM2003) | 4.5 (will only be 5 when the 9.x series is released with really flawless CSS2 support) / 5 | 2 (with 3.3; with 3.4, 3) / 5 | 4.5 / 5 (0.2 has exactly the same CSS2 compliance as previous versions. Remember to switch off SSR for the test!) | ? | 4 / 0 | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Cookie handling: Cookies browsable/editable? | To a certain extent: dates are binary; otherwise, you may edit them to some extent in \Program Files\ Picsel\ Browser\ history\ cdata.dat | + | + | Not any more (in pre-3.2, NF3.cok was human-readable) | + (\profile\ Mozilla\ minimo\ cookies.txt in the home directory of Minimo) | - (couldn’t find any textual cookie file under \Application Data\Tao\ intent\app \jam\ midlets\ operaamini\ .rms\) | (Cross-session ones need to be explicitly enabled): + (the SessionCookies subdir has the verbatim Set-Cookie header sent back by the HTTP server) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Inter-session persistence test | + | + | + | + | + | ? | - buggy | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| DST taken into account in cookie handling? | n/t | + | + | - (!) (1 2) - still not fixed, some 1.5 years after my publishing the bug! Bad, Access, VERY BAD! | + | ? | + | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Speed, dynamic RAM memory usage benchmarks: Overall rendering speed: PPCMag test loading speed | 45s on the 520 MHz HTC Universal | Mediocre in pre-AKU2 WM5 and earlier OS'es (PL720 with RAM-based cache: 37s; with flash ROM-based cache, even slower); good in later versions (that is, WM5 with at least AKU2 / WM6); in there, 28.5s in default (fit to screen; the One Column mode has always been considerably – about 27% – faster!) mode (on the WM5 624 MHz x51v), even with flash ROM-based cache. On the WM6 HTC Universal, 34s in fit to screen mode and 27s in One Column mode. | Excellent (x51v: 16s; HTC Universal: 20s in Fit to Screen mode) | Just / Normal rendering: WM6 520 MHz Universal: 14s in Full Rendering mode. WM5 624 MHz x51v: 3.4: 9s in Full Rendering and 36/44s in Rapid-Render; while, with v3.3, 14.5s for Full and 19/28s for Rapid-Render. With a WM5 240 MHz HTC Wizard, there were no real differences between the two versions. (The two Rapid-Render benchmark numbers: stops rendering text version and starts spitting out the full one (by hiding the text version first) / full version is completely rendered.) As can clearly be seen, 3.4 has brought some speed increase in Full rendering mode and a noticeable speed decrease in the non-recommended Rapid-Render mode, making it even slower. Note that the speeds in Display Mode are the same for Normal and Just-Fit and about 5-10% less for Smart-Fit (~"One Column”). | 0.2: couldn't load the test page at all (crashed and exit after 70s) on the WM6 HTC Universal because of the lack of RAM (I had some 4M of free RAM after loading Minimo because I couldn't get rid of the Ramdisk); on the x51v, it loaded in 30s in both SSR and normal rendering mode. 0.1x: Depending on the PPC model used, pretty slow to bearable. Unfortunately, Minimo is pretty slow on some (for example, the HTC Universal or most WM2003(SE)) models, while, on others (like the x51v) it’s pretty responsive. See this thread for more info on this. On the x51v (with which Minimo is 100% compatible with), 34…38s | Excellent (HTC Universal with the Intent Midlet Manager: 11s, which, taken the faster CPU / architecture of the x51v into account, is about 9s on the Dell) | Excellent (Pocket Loox 720: 14s equalling about 11s on the x51v) | Same; note that if Pocket View is enabled (as is by default), it may result in SOME speed decrease – but it’s mostly only apparent with synthetic transfer benchmarks! | See PIE | See PIE | Not much slower than the underlying PIE itself: 43s (as opposed to the 36s on the Universal) in Fit to Screen mode (and 22s using the default Skweezer client) |
| Overall memory usage: program itself with a blank page (important particularly for HP iPAQ rx1950 / Palm Treo 700w users with ~11Mbytes of free RAM at most). Note that the PIE plug-ins show additional RAM usage, in addition to the "base" PIE RAM usage. | 3.9M | Excellent: 532k (WM6 VGA) / 404k (WM5 QVGA) | 5M; note that even 8.65 may suffer from driver memory problems (but to a much lesser degree than 8.60 betas and, if it does, it mostly complains of it upon startup and refuses to start (1 2) to avoid further problems) | 3.4: 4.82…5.128M; 3.3: 2.79M; that is, the new version consumes definitely more RAM than 3.3; may suffer from driver memory problems | 0.2: VERY BAD! 13.6M (!!!!); 0.1x: 4.6M | Almost zero | ~1.3M | Excellent: +~90k (WM5 QVGA) | Fair +528k (WM6 VGA); +308k (WM5 QVGA) | Average when full-fledged browsers are concerned and poor when PIE plug-ins (~2.6M) | Excellent (+56k) |
| An opened, new tab | n/a | n/a (no tabs) | 12-14k | 3.4: 316k (WM6 VGA) / 112k (WM5 QVGA); 3.3: 284k (WM6 VGA) / 70…100k (WM5 QVGA) | Both 0.1x and 0.2: Some 8 kbytes at most, but in most cases 0...4k | minimal | n/a (no tabs) | 0.36…0.456M (WM6 VGA); 0.38..0.52M (WM5 QVGA) | 0.8-0.9M (WM6 VGA); 0.65..0.66M (WM5 QVGA) - that is, way better than with the 3.x series, which had a much higher memory consumption / tab | 0.136M (WM6 VGA) | 0.408… 0.424M (WM6 VGA) |
| PPCMag test memory consumption | 3.1M | Pretty bad 7.5…9M | Very good (2.36M) | In general, average. Couldn’t reliably measure it (always got different results between 3 and 6 Mbytes). | 0.2: Average (5.2M); 0.1x: Tolerable (~7M) | Minimal (some dozens of kilobytes at most) - but don't forget it's a converted page! | Excellent (~0.3M) - but don't forget it's a converted page! | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Network connectivity: Proxy support? If it does support proxies, does it require the proxy settings entered locally, or, does it get from the system-wide Connectivity framework? | Theoretically, it should support proxies as the docs states the following: If your Internet service requires a "proxy" for you to access the Internet, you can select this in the preferences from the main menu. You should either specify the proxy machine name and port in that dialogue box, or you will be able to set that elsewhere in the network settings for your device, outside Picsel Browser.” However, I couldn’t find this setting in the Preferences. | System-level | Used to be local; according to Opera guru ResearchWizard, local proxy settings are removed from the settings in 8.65 beta (while introduced in the previous version 8.6 final) - as far as he knows Opera now uses system proxy settings, but he didn't test it | Local; also able to use the system-level setting (the default) | Local | n/a (Own server) | n/a (Own server) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Proxy-based anonymity? | ? | + | + | + | + | - (X-Forwarded-For passed) | + (its server is anonymous) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Does use the PPC2k2+ Connections framework to diff. between The Internet/Work connections? | ? | + | - | - | - | - | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Bandwidth reduction: GZIP/Compress support? Does it really work? | ? | + | + | + | + | n/a | n/a (uses its own server which only uses content stripping but NOT additional compression) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Toonel-compatibility? | ? | + | + | + | + | (no proxy support) | (no proxy support) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Saving, downloading : Saving the current (Web) page (also see this)? (Note that it can even be a, say, as textual "rendered" CAB file too!) | - | - | - | + (.mht only - no HTML!) ([Menu/] File / Page Memo / Add Page Memo (1 2). The output is compatible with desktop IE7. However, the opposite direction isn’t true; for example, IE7 MHT’s exported from the suomi24.fi forum and msmobiles.com articles have never worked (example MHT’s here – in the suomi24.fi MHT, the body of the article isn’t shown; in the MSMobiles MHT, nothing at all, except for the starting image). As far as (input) compatibility with other desktop browsers is concerned, it’s entirely incompatible with MHT files exported by Opera 9.x (and Mozilla / Firefox has no MHT output). Therefore, when exporting in desktop Web browsers, prefer exporting to full HTML’s instead of MHT's to be 100% sure NetFront is able to read your exported / saved pages. | - | - | - | +; also full (new in 2.1+) (1 2) | +; full | - ("only" link saving is possible; this also means no full page saves) | + (HTML only) |
| Save link directly to file, w/o opening? (""Save Target As...") (also see this) | - | - | - | + (Save / Link Target in the pop-up menu) (new in 3.3) | - | - | - | + (1 2) – new in 2.x! | - | + View / Save to file (1 2 3 4 5). | - |
| Co-working with HandyGet | - | + | -: needs manual URL copy | -: needs manual URL copy | -: needs manual URL copy | -: needs manual URL copy | -: needs manual URL copy | + | + | ? | + |
| File download (NOT "Save Link Target"!)? | - (!!!). Nothing happens when you click a binary link. In addition, when directly trying to give it a document URL (see for example this ZIP file), it will display an “Unknown document type” message box | + | + | + | +; you can even set the default download location. Note that you can select the target with the other browsers too - see the Download Bible for more info. | Starting with 2.x | + | See PIE | See PIE | + | ? |
| Caching; cache benchmarks: Does caching exist at all? | - | + | +; by default, in the built-in storage | + | +; default: no caching; can be redirected to a storage card right from the app (1 2); in there, it creates a "Cache” subdirectory in the root and stores the files with cryptic names in there | (New in 2.x (3.x?); cache is stored under \My Documents\My Midlets with the Intent Midlet Manager and it seems it cannot be disabled / relocated) | - | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Relocatable? | n/a (no cache) | + | Settable in init files | + (starting with version 3.2) (3.4 screenshot) | Settable from inside the browser (see above); can only be on non-central memory types | - | n/a (no cache) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Size settable? | n/a (no cache) | + max. size settable via Registry | Settable from inside the browser (see above) | Settable from inside the browser | Settable from inside the browser (see above) | - | n/a (no cache) | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Many-images cache & image load test, enabled cache, WM6 Universal. When are files flushed to cache? (Does the cache on a very slow-to-write file system seriously slow down loading a new page? See this and this for more info) | n/a (no cache) | During page fetching (at least with previous versions), which does result in a noticeable download speed decrease with slow-to-write-to media. See this for more info on PIE cache relocation; for example, SKTools works just great | After page fetching (which takes about ~7s). Flushing is done, at first, in the background (as opposed to NF) and, during this time (about 8 sec) the user will hardly notice anything. After this, however, Opera Mobile will stop responding just like NetFront (with the tested, slow card, for some 30 seconds – that is, while flushing out is finished). To redirect the cache, put the Cache Directory4=\<Directory> row in the [User Prefs] section of opera.ini. (This entry doesn’t exist by default in there.) Also see this for more info. | Right after having finished loading (which is about 13-16s on the HTC Universal). Then, during the time of flushing, NF stops responding. That is, a slow cache doesn’t slow down loading a page, but stops NF right after loading – you won’t even be able to scroll down. It’s also very important that selecting "Do not use cache” alone will still result in cache files flushed out to the target. This means you MUST also set the "Size” of the cache to 0, should you want to get rid of caching entirely. | During page fetching AND exiting the app; note that 0.1x simply stalled during loading (as was also the case with the 15-parallel-frames test); therefore, here, I've "only" tested v0.2 | n/t | n/a | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| On a slow card (90 seconds for 150 small files) | n/a (no cache) | 61s (!!) | +~22s; only during the first 8s of it is Opera Mobile responsive | +~22s | Excellent results: puts all image resources in the same _CACHE_001_ file instead of storing all files separately. It starts doing this while loading and flushes the file upon exiting Minimo. This means no measurable page loading time increase when you use slow cards for caching. | n/a (Cache not relocatable) | n/a | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| WM6 Universal, built-in storage | n/a (no cache) | 23s (default case) | No point in testing this | +~9s | n/t | n/t | n/a | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Disabled cache | n/a (no cache) | n/t | ~7s | (the basic ~14.5s) | 89s (!) on the x51v and 84s (!) on the HTC Universal | n/a (can't be disabled) | n/a | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Cache in real RAMDisk | n/a (no cache) | 17s | +~1s (except when the user actively uses Opera Mobile; then, flushing can even take as much as 10s) | +<1s (~instant flush!) | n/t | n/a (not reloctable) | n/a | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE | See PIE |
| Explicit cache navigation? | n/a (no cache) | - | Opera:cache (very slow) as well as history (Action / Go to / History and Opera:history) and Files (Menu / Tools / Show Downloads) | + (Menu / File / History) | - | -; all files contain the HTTP response headers and use the naming convention <number>.dcf | n/a (no cache) | - | - | - | - |
| Offline mode: Highlighting favorites present in cache? Loading cached pages without a connection? | n/a (no cache) | + (has always been present; however, it doesn't work under WM5, only in pre-WM5 and WM6+) / + | - / - | - / + (even without special configuration / enabling Tools / Offline Browsing) | - / only before restarting (didn't find it in disk cache) | - | n/a (no cache) | See PIE | See PIE | Does NOT highlight as it uses its own favourite list, which is a plain menu and not a colored list | See PIE |
| Images: Save Image As (also see this) | - | + in WM5 ("Save Image..." in context menu); - in previous OS'es | +, starting with 8.65 ("Save image" in image context menu) (in 8.60, not supported) | + | - | + (Menu / Tools / Page Information / Download) (Starting with 2.x.) | - | + (yes on pre-WM5) | + | + (use the generic View / Save to File for this) | + |
| View Image Text with displayed images possible even when the images are visible? (In most cases, they are only shown when the image fetching / rendering is disabled) | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | + | Present in 3.x; removed in 4.x | - | - |
| Set as wallpaper | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Present in 3.x; removed in 4.x | - | - |
| Copy/paste support : Copy link address (also see this) | - | - | + in 8.65 (Copy link address in link context menu), - in older | + (new in 3.3) | - | - | - | + | + | - (View / Copy Address to Clipboard only copies the URL of the current page) | + |
| Text select/copy to clipboard? | - (note that you can’t paste from the clipboard to text input fields, ONLY the address input field) | + | + | + | +; note that after a while pasting will become impossible, even system-wide. This is a problem even in 0.2 | - | - (!) | + | + | + | + |
| Hardware buttons not related to scrolling: Hardware buttons assignable? Does the browser dynamically enumerate the available buttons (incl. their additional hold functionality), or, does it only use a static list? (See this) | - | - (only the two WM5 softkeys with the default functionality) | Currently, only directions (including the D-pad) and hardware keyboard buttons can be mapped (see input.ini) | - (only the two WM5 hotkeys with the default functionality) | -;other HW buttons are all unmapped during the session and are useless | - | - | + assignable to both PIE and PIEPlus functions | + assignable to both PIE and MultiIE functions. Dynamic enumeration | + / -. Starting with 2.6. It only allows for configuring six buttons on all PPC models (with wildly varying number of buttons) | - |
| Assignable functionality to HW buttons, if supported? | n/a | n/a | see above | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Greatly enhanced in 2.x. Not only a lot of assignable functionality have been added, but also it adds (!) fine-tunable press-and-hold functionality. The complete list of the assignable functionality: 1 2 3; also see here, in section "3.3 Options/Buttons" for the comparison to the 1.x version | Note that the 4.x reduced the hardware button-assignable functionality; for example, ‘Show/hide address bar’, ‘Window List menu’, ‘Open new window’, ‘Open URL’, ‘Keypress TAB’ are all gone. The list is as follows: 1 2 3 | Back/ Forward; Previous/Next tab, Close everything but the current one / the current only; Full Screen toggle (1 2) | - |
| WM5+ softkeys? | - | Brings up the default menus (Favorites and Menu). When pressed in full screen mode, it needs two button presses: the first to switch back from Full Screen; the second to open / activate the given menu; a subsequent (third) button press returns to full screen mode at once. | Brings up the default menus (Action and Menu) from full screen mode, at once, unlike PIE / IEM. A subsequent button press returns to full screen mode at once. | Brings up the default menus (Operation and Menu) unless they’re disabled (Activate soft key enabled menu bar in Misc (3.3) and Key Operation (3.4) ). Full screen: see Opera Mobile. | 0.2: only the right one is used to show/hide the SIP; the left softkey isn't used. 0.1x: Left iterates through left menu / the address input field / right menu; right brings up the SIP | With IBM J9 6.x, the two Opera Mini soft buttons work. Not with the Intent Manager or earlier IBM J9 versions (a MAJOR pain with the otherwise excellent Intent Midlet Manager!) | - | Must be enabled by hand (disabled by default); only provide the default PIE functionality. You can also configure how they behave in fullscreen mode | Adds two useful press-and-hold functionalities to the two softkeys (in addition to the default ones): toggling scroll mode and full screen mode. Note that these two functionalities are also accessible with the quick corner buttons (configurable) displayed in the two lower corners and you can’t assign other functionalities to these buttons. That is, you’ll need to use for example SmartSKey for added functionality. | + (must be explicitly enabled) | See PIE |
| Scrolling - D-pad | Line scroll by default, VERY nice. After manually clicking a link, link scroll; unfortunately, then, only “previous” / “next” link functionality is available, meaning Up/Left do the same and take you both to the previous link and Down/Right to the next. That is, you can’t navigate the links in four directions, only two. | Default (Page under pre-WM5 and Link in WM5+) | Link by default; very easy to reconfigure in input.ini | Page/ link jump / link, line scroll; scroll % can be set | Link | Link only | Page | + (can be set from main menu independently for D-pad and (real) jog dial); scroll percentage can also be set independently | Page / links / lines; starting with 4.x, this can be set from inside the app, along with scroll percentage (Menu / MultiIE / Options / Options / Scroll Buttons) | Down: page, up: link | see PIE; otherwise, no built-in support for switching to page / line scroll |
| D-pad configuration capabilities? | Panning OR zooming / page switching. After selecting a link, stepping over them via D-pad / selecting with Action. | - | Via input.ini; in there, you can switch between link / page. Unfortunately, not from inside the app (switching requires restart and file editing or, at least, copying). That is, if you have a volume slider on your device, use SmartSKey. | Page/ link jump / link, line scroll; scroll % can be set; in 3.4 (but NOT in 3.3!), "Down" and "Up" are multi-functional and can be used to bring up the PagePilot functionality (default), quickly scrolling up/down (PageJump) (can't really be used for one-page up/down functionality) and, finally, to draw a minimap (MiniMap), while quickly scrolling through the page (per page) | ? | - | - | Page / link / line (can be set separately from Jog dial) | Page / links / lines | - | - |
| Jog dial (PL720; WM5 HTC P3600) | ? | Default ( Links ), can be overridden | As with the D-Pad | Same as with D-pad | Page | n/t | Doesn't use jog dial at all | Default / line (can be set separately) | Default / line + links (same setting as with D-Pad) | ? | Default (Links) |
| SmartSKey + volume control | - | Page only | Page only (in 8.65; in the initial 8.60, there was absolutely no SmartSKey support - a NICE addition to 8.65!) | Page only, independent of what scrolling method is set in Misc / Cursor Key | - | - | - | Page only, fully independent of the in-app scrolling settings | Page only | Page only | Page only |
| User-Agent: Built-in browser identification change | +; also custom | - | + (two predefined); changes will be visible at once, even in already-open tabs | +; change will be seen at once, even in already-open tabs | - | - | +; there pre-defined settings (IE / Mozilla / Netscape) + editable; change will be seen at once | +; doesn't force the user to reset (as opposed to, say, MultiIE) – EXCELLENT (note, however, that the changes will NOT be visible in already-open tabs because PIE reads this info out of Registry only when it's started)! In addition to the three predefined values (Pocket IE, IE 5.5, 6.0), you can also supply a custom User-Agent (1 2) – EXCELLENT! | +; requires reset (which is a bad thing, particularly for advanced users) | - | - |
| On-the-fly external browser identification change visible without PIE restart in tabs opened after change? (Everything is +, also showing that all reviewed PIE plug-ins load a full copy of PIE into memory for each and every tab, unlike the old ftxPBrowser, which does require a full restart.) | n/a | n/a (No tabs) | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | + | + | + | + |
![[Menu/]Tools/Scroll Mode](http://www.winmobiletech.com/032007WebBrowsers/NF34Drag.bmp.png){kind=link}
