.KEYWORD browser
.FLYINGHEAD MOBILE INTERNET
.TITLE A survey of Palm OS Web browsers for IT professionals
.OTHER
.SUMMARY From finding that critical piece of information, to triangulating a network or server outage, to exercising some software’s administrative interface, Web browsers have become essential for the IT professional. Many Web browsers from the Palm OS make compromises to fit the special capabilities and restrictions of a handheld device. However, in this two-part article, Contributing Editor Stephen Vance examines the four most uncompromising browsers, which operate over TCP/IP and process raw HTML using the HTTP protocol.
.AUTHOR Stephen Vance
Continuing my series of articles on network-based tools for the Palm OS, I decided to look into that staple of modern networked communications, the Web browser. It’s not much of a stretch to say that the World Wide Web popularized the Internet. How could your Palm OS tool kit be complete without a full-fledged Web browser?
Many people don’t distinguish the Internet from the Web or email. With the quantity of information available via the Web, a suite of network tools would be limited without Web access. From checking movie times and phone numbers to finding that critical piece of information, triangulating a network or server outage or exercising some software’s administrative interface, Web browsers have become essential for the IT professional.
.H1 The players
Many of the browsers for the Palm OS have catered to the special capabilities and restrictions of a handheld device. However, the compromises associated with these decisions make them only as useful as the sites that supply content for that profile. For this survey, I’ll examine the browsers that do not make these assumptions.
This article examines browsers that operate over TCP/IP and that process raw HTML using the HTTP protocol. I specifically exclude browsers that only operate over the Palm wireless solutions, such as the Palm VII or i705, that only use Palm Web clipping, or that only use the other major mobile browsing standards, such as WAP.
With these restrictions in place, the field rapidly narrows to four candidates. EudoraWeb (at http://www.eudora.com/internetsuite/eudoraweb.html) is the Web browser component of Qualcomm’s free Eudora Internet Suite for Palm OS, at version 2.1 as of this review. It’s pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A EudoraWeb is part of the Eudora Internet Suite for Palm OS.
Handspring’s Blazer 2.0 (at http://www.handspring.com/software/blazer_overview.jhtml) is the proxy-based browser by the first Palm OS licensee. Blazer 2.1 ships with the Treo phones but is not available for general download. It’s pictured in Figure B.
.FIG B Blazer 2.0 is Handspring’s Web browser.
Xiino is the successor to the widely regarded Palmscape browser from the Japanese company Ilinx (at http://www.ilinx.co.jp/products/xiino/). The 1.0 release of the English edition is just recently out of beta. It’s pictured in Figure C.
.FIG C Xiino is put out by Ilinx.
The fourth entry is the PocketLink browser from MDevelopment (at http://www.mdevelop.com/product_PL.jsp). It’s pictured in Figure D.
.FIG D PockLink comes from MDevelopment.
On the off chance I’ve missed any browsers that satisfy the basic criteria, I welcome vendors to let me know. I identified the above list by combing the product descriptions available on the major Palm OS download sites PalmGear, Handango, Tucows, and VersionTracker.
.H1 Review criteria
I based the first part of the comparison on the documented features of the products. Obviously, the quality and quantity of the documentation is critical for this to suffice. Fortunately, all four products give sufficient information to get started.
The second part of the review will compare the browsers using actual Web sites. In all honesty, part of my interest in this review is to find browsers that perform well on my favorite sites. Ultimately, the value of a browser is its ability to serve its user’s needs.
I have specifically decided not to do a detailed technical comparison beyond what was feasible based on the documentation. Space and time constraints primarily motivate this decision. If you’re interested in a more detailed technical review, please email me, and I will consider it as a future article.
.H1 Documentation
With the above declaration of the importance of documentation in the review process, it seems a good place to start a review. All four of the products come with, or make available, reasonable amounts of documentation. They mainly differ in volume, technical depth, and amount in the main distribution.
Blazer supplies the least documentation in the standard distribution. Handspring has chosen to only include a README with minimal installation and feature usage instructions and another text file with the software license. However, an extensive and detailed 44-page Technical Reference PDF is available from the Developers section of their Web site at http://www.handspring.com/developers/Devkit2/TechRef_Blazer_200.exe. This additional documentation covers everything from basic user manual treatment to detailed technical specifications and recommendations for developers and Web designers.
The Xiino distribution contains not only text files for the license and a README, but also a text file detailing the HTML specification support and a 32-page user manual in PDF format. Although the technical information doesn’t have quite the depth of the Handspring documentation, it covers all areas you would expect from both a user and a technical perspective. The only strike against the Xiino documentation is the dependency of the English documentation on a Japanese font on page 13. This dependency causes warnings when printing or viewing without Japanese language support and prevents the PDF file from being converted for reading with Acrobat Reader for Palm OS.
PocketLink comes with a text file change log and a brief six-page PDF manual. Although the manual is brief, it adequately serves its key functions as a user manual and technical specification. Its four pages of well-labeled screen shots make for a very serviceable user manual. The one page of features, limitations, and installation instructions is useful, though scant compared to Blazer and Xiino.
Eudora Internet Suite comes with a 106-page manual, but only about 16 pages deal specifically with the EudoraWeb application. Those pages act exclusively as a user manual with almost no technical information. A little technical capability and compliance information is available on the product’s Web page. As a result, I largely based the technical assessment of EudoraWeb on trial and experience. There are an additional five pages of documentation addressing the EudoraWeb Conduit, but this adds little value to the core browsing application.
.H1 Proxy Servers
Although all of the products support connection through a proxy server, such as your corporate caching proxy, EudoraWeb and PocketLink do not require a proxy server to operate. I don’t necessarily see this as an advantage. In fact, given the ways in which Xiino and Blazer user their proxy servers, they gain some advantages.
Xiino uses a proxy server only for images. The default proxy server is Ilinx’s server in Japan, which raises questions of performance for non-Japanese browsing. My spot checks during relatively light Internet usage hours indicate a measurable latency, although you may not notice over dial-up lines as part of a page. The Ilinx proxy server scales images to fit the handheld screen and reduces the color depth to the Web safe 256-color palette.
Blazer uses the proxy server even more aggressively. In addition to image scaling, image color depth is determined by the browser settings. Blazer also adapts the HTML content, such as tables, to the display size of the handheld.
In general, the proxy-based approach will lead to faster page response through image reduction, content adjustment, and possibly caching. On the other hand, it introduces another element in the communications chain that could fail and impede your browsing. Although I haven’t experienced proxy failures, I don’t feel that my usage has been sufficient to be an authoritative indicator.
.H1 Standards support
Even at a high level, there are clear differences between the four browsers. EudoraWeb doesn’t specify the versions of HTML supported. The other three support at least HTML 3.2. PocketLink and Blazer also both support the cHTML standard. Further, Blazer supports xHTML, WML 1.2, and HDML 3.0.
Image support is another major differentiator. EudoraWeb doesn’t support images at all. PocketLink only supports .GIF images, but that covers a lot of ground. Xiino adds converted .GIF and .JPEG, covering even more ground. Blazer has the most extensive support, adding .BMP, .WBMP, and .PNG to the mix. None of the browsers support animated .GIFs or rich content like Flash, QuickTime, or audio.
All four browsers support both cookies and secure connections. Typically, secure socket support includes SSL 2.0, SSL 3.0, and TLS 1.0.
Only Xiino supports any form of client-side scripting, with considerable support for JavaScript. On the one hand, there are a number of sites that use JavaScript for dynamic menus and rollover images. On the other hand, a lack of JavaScript lets you avoid pop-ups and pop-unders.
None of the browsers will handle Java applets, WMLScript, or plug-ins. However, both PocketLink and Xiino can download and install .PRC and .PDB files directly from the Internet.
The other major feature that the browsers differ in is the handling of tables. All of them handle tables to some extent, but not necessarily in ways that you would find useful. EudoraWeb only displays the leftmost portion of the table that fits on the display, omitting any form of horizontal scroll bar. This is particularly limiting at many news sites. PocketLink has limited table support, wrapping the table if there are more than four columns and treating embedded tables as part of the parent table. Xiino has a scaling algorithm for tables that sometimes works well and other times results in illegible formatting. Blazer has a different approach to reformatting tables for the display.
The complete details of the browsers’ HTML support can be found in their respective technical documentation. An interesting contrast is that EudoraWeb support font colors while Blazer does not support font size or color. As might be expected, none of the browsers supports style sheets.
.H1 Other applications and protocols
Another significant feature is support for other applications. For example, one of the strengths of EudoraWeb is its tight integration with the Eudora mail reader. This allows HTML links in mail to be followed in the browser and links in HTML to bring up the mail reader. PocketLink has no provisions for this type of link.
Blazer takes and entirely different approach. Using the fact of their proxy server, mailto links bring up a Web form for sending mail. Although it’s not integrated with any Palm OS mail applications, I feel this is a clever solution to the problem.
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However, Xiino has the best solution in concept with a generic handler capability in which you can specify the application to invoke based on the URL type. By default, Xiino handles http, https, ftp, and res links, but you can easily set up a handler for mailto links to your favorite mail application. Unfortunately, in the 1.0E version I evaluated, the user interface has a bug that prevents adding new URL types.
.H1 Looking ahead
The ultimate proof of an application’s utility is how well it works in real life. To that end, I chose four of my favorite Web sites with different stressing characteristics to sample the browsers’ capabilities. In part two of this browser survey, you’ll see the results of this test. Stay tuned!
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Handspring’s Blazer, visit http://www.handspring.com/software/blazer_overview.jhtml.
For more information on Eudora Internet Suite, visit http://www.eudora.com/internetsuite/.
For more information on PocketLink, visit http://www.mdevelop.com/product_PL.jsp.
For more information on Xiino, visit http://www.ilinx.co.jp/en/.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
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