1. 6/29/2015 Web Browsing on Three Handheld Platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry) Werner Ruotsalainen

2. 6/29/2015 About me: Currently, the only Windows – Mobile Devices MVP in the country https://mvp.support.microsoft.com /profile=1ED8A582-EE1A-4769-A72F- A32ADB7B7168 Lead blogger, Contributing Editor, Software Awards Manager and Tech Editor for market-leading, US-based Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine http://www.pocketpcmag.com/ a.k.a. “Menneisyys” on almost all Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry user fora

3. 6/29/2015 About us (MTA SZTAKI): IT consulting (not only mobility!), publications, programming (Java (J2EE, J2SE, J2ME etc.), C(++) etc.), lecturing Web browsing-related activities: TCP/IP protocol conformance testing (HTTP, HTML, Ajax / CSS (ref: 1241), Flash, SMTP, IMAP (ref: 1247), POP3 (ref: 1203 stb.), Push Mail etc.) (Closed) beta and conformance testing for various software developers (even the biggest names in the industry)

4. 6/29/2015 What does “ref” mean? To be as concise as possible, the numbers given as “ref” are the “p” parameters of index.php at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php Example: „Ref: 1327“ means you need to build up the full URL as: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php? p=1327 Most important three ATM: Windows Mobile Web Browsing Bible: Pocket PC’s (Ref: 1828); Smartphones (ref: 2084); Opera Mini 4.1 (2571) Web Browsers category on my blog: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&cat=61

5. 6/29/2015 Mobile platforms Windows Mobile (WM): Handheld / Pocket PC (PPC) / MS Smartphone Symbian: (Opera Mobile), Symbian S60 Nokia Web BlackBerry Apple iPhone (Safari) Linux (discontinued: Sharp Zaurus; currently: Nokia Web Tablets; LiMo foundation): Opera Mobile (preinstalled on Zaurii); NetFront Palm OS (Blazer etc.) – pretty much dead

6. 6/29/2015 History of Windows Mobile and browsers - 1 WindowsCE 1.0 (Handheld PC): early 1997 (HP 300/320LX etc.): really basic (no frames), online (non- offline) browser WindowsCE 2.0/2.11 (early 1998/1999): two directions: Handheld PC (Pro): (HP 360LX/620/680 etc.) Palm-size PC (Casio Cassiopeia two-digit series (E10 etc.); Philips Nino, HP Jornada 430); offline browsing only WindowsCE 3.0 (early 2000): the first really successful MS mobile op. system; the following OS versions are based on it: Handheld PC 2000: (HP 720/728 etc.); died out pretty soon; now: niche models only Palm-size PC’s are renamed to Pocket PC’s and receive an online Web client

7. 6/29/2015 History of Windows Mobile and browsers - 2 Pocket PC’s: Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) (renamed to Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) in WM5+): late 2001: PPC2k2 (a step back in speed / memory handling with PIE; ref: http://www.winmobiletech.com/gprs ),http://www.winmobiletech.com/gprs Spring 2003: WM2003 (CSS support added), Summer 2004: WM2003SE, Autumn 2005: WM5 (heavily enhanced PIE engine) with several different AKU versions (ref: 1236); for example, AKU3.5 introduced High-Resolution switch Spring 2007: WM6, no real improvements Spring 2008: WM6.1, no real improvements either; a fully revised version is promised later this (2008) year Six PIE plug-in’s / shells (PIEPlus, MultiIE etc.)

8. 6/29/2015 History of Windows Mobile and browsers - 3 In addition to PIE / IEM, third-party browsers: Opera Mobile (early 2006), NetFront (long-established), Thuderhawk (long-established; no recent improvements; switching to being MIDlet-based), Unofficial Mozilla Firefox-port Minimo (mid-2005; development ceased about a year ago); real, official Firefox port promised Picsel (OEM; slow, incompatible and incapable, albeit a lot of people like it; see ref. 2250) Maximus (Ref: 1500): really poor Streaming-based: SkyFire (3G exclusive; US only); DeepFish (discontinued) MIDlet-based ones (also working on other platforms!): Opera Mini (officially: early 2006; now, it’s a serious alternative) Some other MIDlet-based browsers (TeaShark (Ref: 2186), UCWEB (Ref: 2188)); new Thunderhawk (OEM only)

9. 6/29/2015 BlackBerry Push mail; traditionally enterprise handheld, the Pearl’s being a consumer non-QWERTY model Still no switch towards touchsreen models with 9000 Official, current OS: 4.2 / 4.3; new: 4.5 (Unofficial) betas already available: A2DP, new fonts(!), multimedia streaming, new Web browser, HTML e-mail (BES/BIS-side support needed), HE-AACv2, somewhat better Web browser (in-page search, save page, zoom); ref: 2589

10. 6/29/2015 Symbian S60 S60 is the surviving Nokia Symbian version, S80/S90 being dead; touchscreen added this or next year Nokia Web: WebKit-based; minimap; pretty strong and powerful Flash Lite 2/3 support; 3 delivered in firmware updates (v21 for the N95); much better to play back YouTube / other videos than the full Flash 7 on Windows Mobile

11. 6/29/2015 What can a mobile browser be used for? - 1 Architectural restrictions: (comparatively) small amount of RAM memory (10...90 Mbytes on higher-end handsets; (much) lower on feature phones) CPU power (624 MHz XScale ~= max. 200-300 MHz Pentium) Slow (flash ROM vs RAM writing) and/or restricted-size cache pre-WM7 OS process number restrictions (multitab browsers) on WM Severe bugs / errors with mobile browsers that aren‘t direct ports of their desktop counterparts, even on the HTTP protocol level, let alone HTML / CSS bugs

12. 6/29/2015 What can a mobile browser be used for? - 2 The biggest advantage on all mobile platforms: No need for PDA/handset-only pages; you can access full pages – see the fate and scarcity of WAP. Possible problems: >500k HTMLs (for example Snitz Forums 2000 or even YouTube), particularly under PPC2k2 (max. 100-120k HTML without crashing) Rule of thumb: under PIE / IEM, memory usage is about an order of magnitude more than the original size of HTML. With alternate browsers (particularly with Opera Mini and, to a lesser degree, Opera Mobile) this isn’t an issue desktop ActiveX: not supported, not even on WM (not an x86 architecture) Some browsers (PIE, Thunderhawk, Picsel) have very weak JavaScript support Java applets (login, authentication): custom third-party JVMs only and on WM only (no applet support at all on Symbian / BB); restricted, max. JDK1.4; no official support from Sun. Flash incompatibility and problems Less important HTTP/HTML problems, bugs and restrictions

13. 6/29/2015 Networking model Most online (as opposed to offline; see for example AvantGo, Mobipocket Reader or iSilo offline web downloading) browsers use direct connections; no “dumbing-down” proxies (Pretty much) transparent proxies: Opera Mini (and all the other MIDlet-based browsers), Thunderhawk Cons of proxies: possible eavesdropping; not flexible enough (no way to use other proxies like Toonel) Pros: much less overhead; anonymity (real IP hidden)

14. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers: Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) / Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) (Name changes: Ref: 1276) Built-in Weak / non-existing Ajax/JavaScript support Poor CSS support; No multidocument (multitab) support without 3 rd party plug-ins No link target / current page saving; WM5+: image saving supported restrictions: IFrame in pre-WM6 browsers; max. 10 frames Frequent crashing because of certain CSS constructs under pre-WM5 (ref: 387, 1241); no longer the case in WM5+

15. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers / PIE/IEM - 2 “Pixel doubling” problem on hi-res (W)VGA devices; a major one when used as a plug-in in external apps like CHM readers (ref: 428; see section “Cons”). (Partially) fixed in WM5 AKU 3.5. Being used as plug-ins: “fox jumps over a lazy dog”  bold / italic HTML closing tags should be used right after the (last) word: foo bar; not in the following way: foo bar

16. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers / NetFront (NF) $30; built-in Flash (weaker than that of Adobe / Macromedia; has CPU usage problems), SVG (Japan!) and Java VM; multitab (max. 5 – as opposed to IEM plug-ins or the Operas); minimap; iPhone-like acceleration & dragging Pretty good Ajax/ JavaScript/ CSS; acceptable Java; rendering is better than that of IEM Consumer releases: 3.3 (2006; inferior); 3.4 (2007): OEM only; currently: 3.5 Technical Previews

17. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers / Minimo (MINI MOzilla) Free; cancelled; unofficial Firefox port (official will come later) Two versions: 0.16 (for pre-WM5 devices) and 0.20 (for WM5+ only) Plain useless on some models (speed problems); bugs Excellent scripting (incl. Ajax) and CSS support (ref: 1302)

18. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers / Opera Mobile One of the best browsers: Excellent JS / Ajax support Almost 100% compatibility, particularly with version 9.33 Very fast Flash plug-in support Any number of tabs can be open, as opposed to NetFront or IEM w/o a plug-in Currently, two versions: official (8.65) and preview (9.33 / 9.5), both PPC’s and Smartphones. 9.xx- series has even better standards compliance

19. 6/29/2015 Opera Mini (Ref: 2571) MIDlet (ref: MIDlet Bible; 2266)-based; compatible with almost every phone out there As of version 4.1beta, offers even file upload, address autocompletion and page saving; full page view also supported (added in 4.0), not only one- column Only problem: lack of copy/paste from pages (could easily be fixed as is done in Russian Opera Mod – feeding the textual page contents to a text input area) Proxy-based solution: far less data usage; however, it can’t access local files and the additional processing can take some time Direct invocation: Ref: 2334

20. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers / Thuderhawk Advantage: uses its own fontset, which makes rendering possible even on 320-wide screens. HOWEVER: it only supports Western characters; meaning no support for Eastern European languages. The latter can be somewhat fixed by converting the special, Unicode-only characters used by them to 8859-1 on the server side; ref: 1327 PIE can use similar fonts to look pretty much the same condensed (Ref: http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=250789 )http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=250789 No support for hi-res ((W)VGA) screens; no saving at all (ref: 1302), not even copy from pages. Doesn‘t use client-side caching at all; it is only able to download to built-in storage; no upload etc. Pretty much discontinued; BitStream now is concentrating on a MIDlet-based new version (OEM-only ATM); ref: 2485

21. 6/29/2015 WM Browsers: Microsoft Deepfish Cancelled; might be reused later CF-based; VERY slow, streaming

22. 6/29/2015 WM: PIE plug-ins They greatly extend PIE‘s capabilities (multitab, resource saving, User-Agent GUI-based setting, hardware buttons used for navigation / program usage, GPS-based, location-dependent services, address bar macros, altering the way the document is scrolled by D-pad etc.) PIEPlus: probably the best and most featureful (saving, tabs, buttons etc.; unique feature: Pocket View one- column view for pre-WM2003SE browsers – n.b. “One Column” was only introduced in WM2003SE) MultiIE: used to be better than PIEPlus; however, this doesn’t seem to be the case any more

23. 6/29/2015 PIE plug-ins - 2 ftxPBrowser (Ref: 551): free; in pre-WM5 times, used to be highly recommended. Mostly incompatible with WM5+! Webby (Ref: 1334, 1828):.NET Compact Framework-based and is, therefore, a bit on the slow side. However, it’s become better and better over time and offers for example extensions like Mozilla for for example ad filtering. No One Column mode. Brand-new Touch Browser (ref: 2593) is pretty similar in its functionality (or, currently, the lack thereof). Spb Pocket Plus 4 (Ref: 2250): while in pre- 4 times it was definitely worse (it didn’t even offer on-screen, easily clickable tabs) than PIEPlus or MultiIE, this is no longer the case: version 4.0 has fixed this, along with other goodies like accelerated screen dragging.

24. 6/29/2015 OS-level problems (WM) Operating system-level, runtime problems not fixable on the code level, unlike, say, pre-WM5 PIE CSS crashes Driver memory usage: NetFront and Opera Mobile used to be problematic, particularly under WM2003SE (Ref: 882)

25. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / PIE - 1 Low screen resolution results in having to scroll horizontally: “One column” for the rescue. Supported by all browsers except Thunderhawk PIE received One column in WM2003SE; previously, only the weaker “Fit to screen” was accessible (this remained as “Default”), in addition to “Desktop view”. Example (Desktop / Fit to Screen (Default) / One Column):

26. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / PIE - 2 Therefore: in WM2003SE PIE’s (where there’s no One Column and “Fit to Screen” (Default) often isn’t sufficient, External Web compression / reformatting / one-columnizing services should be used (Skweezer etc.; Ref: 494). They get rid most of JavaScript. PIEPlus (explicit Pocket View mode) Use an alternate browser like Opera Mobile (WM2003) or Thunderhawk (compatible with even PPC2k / 2k2)

27. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / Opera Mobile Three modes – as with IEM. N.b. One Column is buggy: the horizontal size is 240 pixels; that is, it’s only really usable on QVGA devices used in Portrait – preferably not in Landscape and definitely not on a (W)VGA hi-res model.

28. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / NetFront NetFront: Three similar modes: Normal, Just-Fit (about the same as “Fit to Screen” / “Default” in IEM), Smart-Fit. The latter is the best: it’s like One Column, but still tries to render contents horizontally where applicable, unlike IEM

29. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / Minimo (SSR)

30. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: small-screen rendering / Thunderhawk

31. 6/29/2015 Optimizing for PDA / phone 1: D-pad / jog dial-based scrolling (Ref: 547) IEM, by default, uses link scrolling (as opposed to page); can be altered on the Registry level; most IEM plug-ins allow for doing this on the GUI level Some browsers / plug-ins even allow for supplying the scroll amount in percents (see pic) Jog dial / volume controller with SmartSKey (one-handed mode): most of the browsers support it

32. 6/29/2015 Additional Web technologies 1: Applets PIE: Only two JVM’s have applet support (JVM’s with no Applet support are IBM J9 (MIDlet / Personal Java; ref: 787); Mysaifu (ref.: 653)): Insignia Jeode (out of business); last version dates back to 2003 (iPAQ 5550) CrEme (not for non-OEM customers; 30-day trial): the best Built-in JVM in standalone browsers: NetFront 3.1+: acceptable (worse than Jeode / Creme) Thunderhawk: server-side running and image transfer; cons: low- res and slow-to-refresh images; pros: full JDK 1.5+ compatibility. No applet support in Opera Mini/Mobile or Minimo Absolutely no applet support under BB / Symbian

33. 6/29/2015 Additional Web technologies 2: Flash IEM and Opera Mobile : somewhat restricted (Ref: 969); uses Adobe’s own Flash 7 plug-in NetFront (buggy (CPU usage bugs; Ref: 889); weaker) No Flash: Minimo, Opera Mini, Thunderhawk (Several standalone, offline players!) Absolutely no full Flash support under BB / Symbian. The latter, however, supports Flash Lite 3 – unlike WM. (See next slides)

34. 6/29/2015 Additional Web technologies 3: Flash Lite 3 Not available for Windows Mobile / BB as yet; for WM, it’s coming Has recently been released for Symbian S60

35. 6/29/2015 YouTube and other Web videos – 1 (Ref: 2599) HTTP / H.264 & FLV vs. RTSP / 3GP: quality, being firewall- friendly; client coming with iPhone Desktop YouTube Web isn’t the best for mobile usage (slow, huge pages; only Symbian + Flash Lite 3 is able to play back inline videos); the mobile version: Already supports all the functionalities of the desktop (account, upload etc) Is compatible with most mobile platforms having an RTSP / 3GP player like RealOne – no additional player needs to be installed Already has all the videos, unlike a year ago HOWEVER – it’s lower-quality 3GP only (no FLV) and requires RTSP

36. 6/29/2015 YouTube and other Web videos – 2 If you need / must use FLV / H.264 and not on Symbian (where Flash Lite 3 works just great), use an external app or service; for example, vTap...

37. 6/29/2015 YouTube and other Web videos – 3 …or YTPocket (with TCPMP as the player):

38. 6/29/2015 Reducing data usage - 1 (Content-Encoding: gzip) Problem: data connections can be expensive unless you have a flat rate. Pre-3G connections (GPRS, EDGE stb) are slow, too. All WM browsers (starting with PPC2k PIE too) support gzip / deflate HTTP response body compression (Accept-Encoding header!) Server-side optimization Several forum engines (e.g., vBulletin) support GZIP’ing if it identifies the client as a mobile device. See header list: Ref: 796 You still need to find out whether a mobile user is accessing? Several users use User-Agent spoofing: check for UA IEM headers to find out whether it’s a real desktop browser or IEM with spoofed User-Agent. Ref: 1125

39. 6/29/2015 Reducing data usage - 2: client-side optimizing If the server doesn’t return compressed content, you can still reduce data usage: Toonel (Ref: 1002): runs on Pocket PC; free; also supports SMTP/POP3 OnSpeed (Ref: 494): Skweezer, MobileLeap, Google Mobile etc. (Ref: links at 494) online Web services – proxy-based compression; problems: HTTPS; in general, it entirely removes JavaScript; no HTML charts / tables MultiIE, PIEPlus and Webby automatically supports the online services; the first two (Toonel / OnSpeed) can be used with all Windows Mobile Web browsers allowing for proxy usage (that is, everything except Opera Mini and TH – not a problem though as they’re content-stripped / compressed already)

40. 6/29/2015 Compatibility: JavaScript, Ajax (ref: 1241) Best support: Opera Mobile and Minimo. Minimo /OpMob Ajax tests: see pics. IEM pretty weak, even as of 6.1 NetFront as of 3.3: poor; 3.4+: much better; Thunderhawk: poor Bad JS support in IEM: Yahoo Mail buttons don’t work (ref: 318)

41. 6/29/2015 Compatibility - 2: CSS (ref: 1241) Acid 2 test; pics: Desktop Opera (best), on PPC the two best are Opera Mobile (here, 8.60, 9.x is flawless) and Minimo

42. 6/29/2015 Compatibility -2: CSS -2 NetFront: far from perfect IEM: CSS support only starting with WM2003; pre-WM5: frequent CSS incompatibility crashes

43. 6/29/2015 Compatibility – 3: W3C’s “Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers” – 1 – Windows Mobile - 1 IEM (in WM6.1): pretty bad; is only a bit better than in 5- year-old WM2003 and 7-year-old PPC2002 (Ref: 2589)

44. 6/29/2015 Compatibility – 3: W3C’s “Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers” – 2 - – Windows Mobile - 2 Opera Mobile 9.33 (1 st ): almost flawless; indeed based on the new, 9.x-series kernel – as opposed to 8.65 (2 nd pic). Opera Mini 4.1 (3 rd ): acceptable results

45. 6/29/2015 Compatibility – 3: W3C’s “Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers” – 3 – Windows Mobile - 3 NetFront 3.5 TP (1 st ); WebKit-based Iris browser (2 nd ); Minimo 0.20 (3 rd )

46. 6/29/2015 Compatibility – 3: W3C’s “Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers” – 4: BlackBerry, S60, iPhone Safari WebKit-based Symbian S60 FP1 (1 st ), iPhone Safari (2 nd ), BlackBerry 4.2 (3 rd ), 4.5 (topmost)

47. 6/29/2015 Compatibility – 3: W3C’s “Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers” – 5 – Desktop browsers Bottom: Firefox 3 beta5; Internet Explorer 8 beta; IE7; top: Opera 9.5

48. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 1: the problem of (Inline) Frames - 1 PIE: the number of (standard, not i-) frames is restricted (10/12 at most for pre-WM6/WM6+, respectively). One of the most widely known example of the affected pages is freemail.hu (pics: PIE, Opera Mobile)

49. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 1: the problem of (Inline) Frames - 2 Inline Frames (IFrame) are in no way supported by pre-WM6 PIE and TH. Therefore, no Gmail / Yahoo Mail dynamic address completion is possible (which works in Opera Mobile and Minimo)

50. 6/29/2015 WM6 Iframe and standard frame demo (see “Iframe support” row in 1828 Chart)

51. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 2: Cookie- related problems NetFront: a known problem for years: doesn’t take DST into account: if DST is not used (it’s not summertime) and the NF client is given a cookie expiring in less than an hour, it’ll be discarded at once Used to be a huge problem with the index.hu forum (not any more) Ref: http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3514 33 http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3514 33 TH temporary cookie bug requiring the manual copying of cookies; see the 2005 version of Browser Bible for a client-side, manual fix.

52. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 3: Language & encoding problems (Ref: 1327), internationalization Content-Type charset attribute: HTTP header vs. meta tag NetFront is entirely different from the rest – and is buggy when 8859-1 is used along with special 8859-1 punctuation. Opera Mobile is pretty problematic at POSTing special contents (special 8859-1 punctuation and everything different from 8859-1). Consequently: Never ever return special punctuation chars from the server  for example, convert them back to the basic, non-formatted chars: upon recognizing these two browsers, dynamically convert the chars on the server for NF and (for editing; see below) Opera Mobile If an Opera Mobile client edits a non-8859-1 document (like an article or a forum post), convert all special Unicode characters (like ő and ű) to HTML char entity codes (ő and ű with ő and ű, respectively). These entity codes are correctly POSTed back by the browser

53. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 3: Language & encoding problems - 2 Thunderhawk: 8859-1 should always be used whenever possible – that is, when the source language can easily be mapped to 8859-1 (User- Agent check)

54. 6/29/2015 Internationalization - Accept-Language (Ref: 1172) Accept-Language request header: user-preferred language Can only be set in PIE and Minimo; all the other, non-proxy-based solutions (everything except TH, Opera Mini) need a header-altering proxy server

55. 6/29/2015 Avoiding future problems with Windows Mobile browsers 4: File download (ref: 1302, 2590) Content-Type: text/plain response problems with binary content: IEM & NF don’t try to decide whether the body is binary and blindly render it – as opposed to IE on the desktop. No such problems with other Windows Mobile browsers. That is, make sure Content-Type: is correctly set on the server to allow for binary downloading to IEM & NF! NF & Opera Mobile: They send out download requests twice (vs. desktop) – this is why for example RapidShare doesn’t work  never reject double download requests! Referer-related problems: before WM5, PIE (and Thunderhawk even now) don’t pass the Referer header  don’t trust the Referer header always being sent in order to deny out- site download requests Acceleration: multithreaded download (see FlashGet on desktop); two multithreaded apps: Just-released Adisasta WinMobile Download Accelerator 2.0 (do NOT use older versions because they’re slow!) HandyGet 1.6

56. 6/29/2015 File upload (Ref: 1116) All browsers (except for TH) support it; IEM starting with WM5 Therefore, don’t depend on the users’ ability to upload files: either tell them to use an alternate Web browser (for example, Opera Mini 4.1+) or provide FTP upload support (Ref: 508) or, with text input, a HTML textarea to paste to

57. 6/29/2015 We can be reached at... http://www.sztaki.hu/ E-mail: werner@sztaki.hu

58. 6/29/2015 Thanks! Any questions?