Inside Microsoft's new mobile browser
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft still isn't quite ready to release its new mobile browser, but I did get an advance look at Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Mobile at a Microsoft event Wednesday night.
The biggest benefit will be the fact that it is the full IE 6 rendering engine, meaning that any page that renders properly in IE 6 on the PC should do just fine on Windows Mobile. Tim McDonough, a senior director in Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit, showed me the browser running the standard MSN home page.
The current version of mobile Internet Explorer, seen here, leaves a lot to be desired. A new version, based on the same rendering engine as Internet Explorer 6 for the PC, promises Flash support and other improvements.
(Credit: Microsoft)I saw the browser running on Windows Mobile Standard--meaning on a non-touch-screen device. The browser makes good use of a D-pad controller to go from link to link, but it's still not as elegant as on a touch screen. I'll be interested to see how the browser works on a touch-based Windows Mobile device, but am still not expecting navigation to be up to the iPhone level.
Navigation may be better on the iPhone, but IE 6 will have some advantages, such as full Flash support.
"The market today is really at 'Can I see a page?' Very quickly we're getting to 'Can I do something?'" he said. "That's where we will really shine."
Another interesting option on IE 6 is the ability to quickly shift from a site's mobile page to its standard desktop version. Just because IE 6 can show the full site, doesn't mean that's always what people want. It's particularly true in Europe where even so-called "unlimited" data plans typically have data caps that can easily be reached by loading a lot of standard Web pages. IE 6 toggles between mobile and standard Web pages by sending a different user agent, depending on which page type a user wants to see.
McDonough didn't offer much of an update on timing for IE 6, except to say that "it's still this year."
That's left Windows Mobile device makers scrambling to try to better compete against Apple's browsing experience. To fill the gap, many are turning to Opera's Windows Mobile browsing, which offers better navigation and rendering than the current mobile Internet Explorer.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
What is the problem over at Microsoft? Are the Windows Mobile programmers not allowed to see the source code for Explorer 7? Is Explorer 7 so bloated and clunky there's no way to squeeze it onto a mobile device? Is everyone on the development team for Mobile using drugs?
Now that I think about any of you Windows mobile developers with a hankering can go get webkit (www.webkit.org) and do it yourselves.
In the meantime, my iPhone and me will be surfing away...
Windows Mobile is designed to run even on very constrained devices (not just phones but in-dash nav systems, portable media players, etc.) having as little as 32MB (!) of total RAM. So the memory budget for Mobile IE + Flash + Silverlight is probably 10MB. The fact that they can shove in a full IE rendering engine is a great accomplishment.
Safari on the iPhone can access 128MB or RAM yet still struggles. Just Google "iphone safari reset" to see how crappy Safari really is on a memory-constrained system.
Also remember WM 6.1 is just a minor upgrade to WM 6 (release last year) and must run on the same generation hardware. The next version of Windows Mobile (WM 7) will require more capable hardware and maybe we can see the IE7 engine running on it.
Safari would be awesome on a Windows Mobile device, as would a slimmed down Firefox.
I too would love to see a good FF port to WM though.
I am looking forward to seeing what the IE upgrade will look like, if it's going to enable Flash support. That's the one thing I really miss when I browse on my cell phone, which I do on a regular basis.
Internet Explorer Mobile is a completely separate build from the desktop IE versions, not a port. The only thing they share is the name.
What IEM really needs is good zoom support ala iPhone's Safari or even Opera Mini. Something, anything that allows quicker and easier navigation. The current version is just too clunky - I only utilize it for pages that Opera Mini has trouble loading. I would really love to be able to just use one full-feature browser, instead of parts of two.
Unfortunately, as you can see with everyone else on the forum, many people do not understand. To make things simpler or dumber, I strongly suggest that Microsoft should keep the version consistent between mobile and desktop. Done properly with a modularized approach, they could simply take the desktop version, trim out the module they don't need and have it on the mobile.
For the comment
"Windows Mobile is designed to run even on very constrained devices"
Then maybe they should use windows mobile instead of Vista.
When I look at the web I want to see the original version, not the crappy version. Safari could be a memory hog, But I prefer the full version to a half baked one.
Come on Ina... I know you can do better.
It says they are using the IE6 "engine". This doesn't mean it won't have certain IE7 or 8 features. The web has been constructed to support IE6. More pages will look right in IE6 than in IE7, trust me.
This isn't a bad move at all. Hopefully it's a free release/upgrade and/or WinMo 6.2 option.
At least, that was their intent earlier was to bring it to the 6.1 series. Maybe 6.0.
- by donovan1983 September 12, 2008 8:22 AM PDT
- I sincerely hope they updated the absolutely dismal standards support in IE6 before porting it. I refused to design sites to work in it since doing so meant using convoluted and non-standard code that didn't always render properly in standards compliant browsers. I do understand why they used IE6 instead of IE7 as the base since IE6 was released in an era when machines with 64MB of RAM were very common still and 128MB had just become the new standard. I am betting that you will need a device with at least 128MB of RAM to be able to run this, though, so even many current Windows Mobile 6 or 6.1 devices won't be able to use this.
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