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HackerJax wrote:

olbooker wrote:

http://labs.live.com/Deepfish/videos.aspx

Looks like MS is at it again. A really lame attempt to one up Apple and the vastly superior iPhone browser.

They must be at it again considering MS has been offering a mobile browser on CE since 1996.

Not the mobile browser, but what they are doing with the zooming in feature is more like what Apple is doing with the iPhone's browser.

olbooker wrote:

HackerJax wrote:

olbooker wrote:

http://labs.live.com/Deepfish/videos.aspx

Looks like MS is at it again. A really lame attempt to one up Apple and the vastly superior iPhone browser.

They must be at it again considering MS has been offering a mobile browser on CE since 1996.

Not the mobile browser, but what they are doing with the zooming in feature is more like what Apple is doing with the iPhone's browser.

Personally I think they are both copying Opera when it comes to mobile browsers.

I'm sorry but I have to call BS on those that have responded to this thread thus far.

I don't care if MS has had a mobile browser for many years, so have many other people.

It doesn't matter if there have been articles about this in the ACM journals.

The smooth zooming that Apple is doing is far better than even that browser demo that is still in the lab stages. Did you read that they are converting the pages into png files on the server side before sending them to the phone? This would meant either that each web developer would have to include this code on their server or you are accessing pages through a MS portal where the pages are converted before being sent to you.

Current limitations: Currently, the technology preview does not support ActiveX controls, AJAX, cookies, Javascript, and HTTP POST.

It is obvious that you would have these limitations since you are viewing an image and not having the code converted by an application on your device.

Finally, Apple is not doing thumbnail browsing. They have an actual version of the Safari web browser and the associated web API files as part of the OS installed on the iPhone. That means that you are actually getting a desktop browsing experience, enabled by the smooth zooming features of the iPhone.

I'm sorry, Apple may be late to the party but they are leapfrogging MS on this one and the response I have seen in this thread thus far sound like either you haven't looked at each of these technologies closely enough or you are in denial. I think it is probably the former because the people responding usually give reasoned, thoughtful responses.

Later,
Frank

HackerJax wrote:

frankly wrote:

Finally, Apple is not doing thumbnail browsing. They have an actual version of the Safari web browser and the associated web API files as part of the OS installed on the iPhone. That means that you are actually getting a desktop browsing experience, enabled by the smooth zooming features of the iPhone.

Been using mobile version(s) of Opera that do just this, full blown browser with smooth scrolling in either direction.

Apple may be offering something new over MS but its hardly *new* to the world of browsing on portable devices.

It gets a big *shrug* from me.

1) What Opera is doing is completely different from what is being done on the iPhone. Opera is making a decision as to how to render the page based on the width of the phone screen. The iPhone is displaying the entire page in its original dimensions on a smaller scale and allowing you to quickly and easily zoom in on the area of the screen that interests you. Have you ever actually tried to view a page that has been rendered in an optimized format to fit on a cell phone screen? Some pages look ok, others look like crap, and others don't work at all unless you display them in regular wide screen mode.

2) It appears that you haven't taken a close look at what Apple is offering as a browser on the iPhone. It is new. I have not seen an implementation like this on ANY device or from ANY browser. Please point me to the browser that does something similar.

Later,
Frank

frankly wrote:

HackerJax wrote:

frankly wrote:

Finally, Apple is not doing thumbnail browsing. They have an actual version of the Safari web browser and the associated web API files as part of the OS installed on the iPhone. That means that you are actually getting a desktop browsing experience, enabled by the smooth zooming features of the iPhone.

Been using mobile version(s) of Opera that do just this, full blown browser with smooth scrolling in either direction.

Apple may be offering something new over MS but its hardly *new* to the world of browsing on portable devices.

It gets a big *shrug* from me.

1) What Opera is doing is completely different from what is being done on the iPhone. Opera is making a decision as to how to render the page based on the width of the phone screen. The iPhone is displaying the entire page in its original dimensions on a smaller scale and allowing you to quickly and easily zoom in on the area of the screen that interests you. Have you ever actually tried to view a page that has been rendered in an optimized format to fit on a cell phone screen? Some pages look ok, others look like crap, and others don't work at all unless you display them in regular wide screen mode.

2) It appears that you haven't taken a close look at what Apple is offering as a browser on the iPhone. It is new. I have not seen an implementation like this on ANY device or from ANY browser. Please point me to the browser that does something similar.

Later,
Frank

This was the same for the touch-screen issue!

frankly wrote:

1) What Opera is doing is completely different from what is being done on the iPhone. Opera is making a decision as to how to render the page based on the width of the phone screen. The iPhone is displaying the entire page in its original dimensions on a smaller scale and allowing you to quickly and easily zoom in on the area of the screen that interests you. Have you ever actually tried to view a page that has been rendered in an optimized format to fit on a cell phone screen? Some pages look ok, others look like crap, and others don't work at all unless you display them in regular wide screen mode.

I had a hacked up version of IE portable that did this same thing. Dig around on some of the CE developer forums and you'll find all sorts of examples of this.

2) It appears that you haven't taken a close look at what Apple is offering as a browser on the iPhone. It is new. I have not seen an implementation like this on ANY device or from ANY browser. Please point me to the browser that does something similar.

As someone else pointed out, its exactly how Opera on the Wii runs and I've seen demos of this on symbian devices.

Aqua OS X wrote:

Well, that's nice that you don't care about the previous work in this field. Yet the point of bringing that up is to note that zooming mobile content is not a new idea. It may seem like a new idea to consumers, but it's something interaction designers have been kicking around for a while in various incarnations. So don't be surprised to see stuff like this trickling into the consumer space from companies that are not Apple.

I reread what I wrote and I wasn't clear. I did not mean to imply that I did not care about what was being done in the journals and in the research realm. I care a great deal about research. What I should have said is that from the consumer perspective it doesn't matter how many journals this is discussed in unless someone brings it to market. Now, obviously the work in the research realm is often what leads to the consumer implementation. In fact, the original Mac OS is a case in point of this. Xerox PARC was doing the research, let Apple check it out, and Apple brought it to the consumer world. My point was that if it stays in research mode and in journals then it really doesn't matter to the consumer.

The point of my response is that Apple is again leading the way with a great new way to interact with a mobile browser. And to the person that mentioned the Wii, that is a similar way of interacting but it is not a mobile device. When I said ANY device again it is my fault that I was not clear enough. I meant ANY mobile device. Another example of English being an imperfect communication medium.

Later,
Frank