So the TouchBrowser from Makayama hit the news this week, promising a finger friendly iPhone like browser experience, and has been received with mixed reactions. So what is it? Something that has been overlooked by most is that it is not a browser in it’s own right, but an app that piggy backs on Pocket Internet Explorer. From the user manual

TouchBrowser uses the Pocket Internet Explorer to render HTML pages. It’s a new user interface on top of an existing browser. TouchBrowser renders pages exactly the same as Pocket Internet Explorer. Pages that Pocket Internet Explorer can’t handle correctly (like websites with Flash, or with complex layouts) are also rendered incorrectly by TouchBrowser. If you’re looking for a browser that can handle these websites correctly, TouchBrowser is not the thing you’re looking for, but we advise Opera or a similar browser based on a more modern rendering engine.

So there you have it, it’s PIE dependent, and a first release so how does it perform?

So to set the mood, I’ve installed TouchBrowser on my Axim x51v, running Windows Mobile 6.1, a version documented by Menniesyys here. Yes it’s not a legal version for the Axim but it is much more stable than the Football A03 Windows Mobile 6, that  I had installed previously.

Installation

Installing TouchBrowser was as simple as downloading a 5 Mb file and unzipping, then choosing the file for your version of win mobile. The versions for WM5 and WinCE2003 also include a .cab for the latest version of the .Net compact framework, that you’ll need to install, to get this running on any thing less than WM6. I would recommend that you install .Net CF to a storage card if you can because it takes up some real estate.

You also have to be online with your device, to complete the registration process, not always convenient but that’s how it is.

Overview

So what do you get for your money? One of the advantages of having WinMo 6.1, is the task manager, let’s have a look at what TouchBrowser does to your ram, It uses quite a bit, and while trying to write this it has shut down as a non essential app a couple of times. I’m using pocket controller to do the screen shots, so there’s quite a bit running, but as you can see it’s eating about 3.5 Mb of ram, which is a lot if you’ve only got 64 Mb to play with. As a program file it only takes up about 460 Kb.

Let’s away from the purely technical now, how about the flick or throw scrolling? After loading, which is still reliant on PIE, and your connection speed, the finger friendly panning is great and really fluid, but not sensitive enough.

There are a few different navigation options the Dpad being one.

The general menu being the other, So from left to right you have the back button, search button, URL button, close button, options button and the last toggles between desktop and mobile view.

Obviously the back button takes you back one step, or one page in your recent sites visited. Both the search (?) and URL buttons open in a similair screen, a large keyboard
arranged alphabetically, in the options you can choose to have the vowels displayed on top. Pretty self explanatory, the search accesses Google by default. Now the close button wont work for me, and I’m not sure why, a little glitch. The User Options button opens a very simple screen, there’s not really a lot you can configure here. Even though I’ve set JAMM as the homepage it always opens to MSN, really frustrating.

Now the Desktop/Mobile toggle is last and the best thing I can do here is show you how TouchBrowser renders the same page in both modes. The squeezed up version on the right is the attempt to render a full sized page into something a bit more browseable on the small screen.
     
The final navigation option is the good old Tap and Hold, a windows mobile favourite, and the only way to access your favourites, and some other basic PIE settings, like zoom, refresh and select text.
  

Conclusion

Well how did it really perform? Being built on PIE, gives the TouchBrowser no advantage, it loads pages really slowly, and I’ve found quite a few times that all I get is a white screen as nothing loads at all. When that happens the only option is to use tap and hold to navigate somewhere else. Also with the close button not working, using the tap and hold method to be able to access Pocket Plus close button was essential.

As for the scrolling, it is not as responsive as I would have hoped, and useless on a search page like the one above, where there’s virtually no space to put a finger down, let alone swipe up and down.

I have to admit I was disappointed, taken in by the release hype and video, but as this is a first release I won’t can it. I actually think it’s a great idea and something Windows Mobile users are screaming for. It’s just in need of some tweaking. I’ll be waiting for updates on this one!

Unfortunately there is no trial for TouchBrowser, hopefully Makayama will remedy that soon so more people can have a try, it may be right up there alley. Thanks to Vincent at Makayama for supplying the software.

Available from Makayama Software for $14.95

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