Browse the Web, online or off, with Microsofts's full-featured Web browser optimized for the small screen and pen-entry environment
The Pocket PC's predecessor, the
Palm-size PC, was designed strictly as a companion to the desktop
computer and did not include a Web browser. It was thought that the user
would do all of his or her browsing on the desktop PC and perhaps
download some content to the Palm-size PC for offline viewing. For that,
an offline viewer called Mobile Channels was included with Palm-size
PCs.
Palm-size PC users were not completely satisfied with this
arrangement -- they wanted to be able to browse the Web directly.
Quickly, independent vendors developed online browsers for the Palm-size
PC. Noting their popularity, Microsoft decided to include a browser for
the new Pocket PC -- Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE).
PIE is a full-featured Web browser optimized for the small screen,
pen-entry environment of the Pocket PC (Screen 1). PIE can be used in
two ways, either online connected to an Internet Service Provider or by
downloading Web pages through ActiveSync synchronization.

Screen 1: Pocket Internet
Explorer's opening screen.
Connecting up directly to the Internet can be done by
using a CompactFlash modem card like Pretec's 56K CompactModem (www.pretec.com)
or by using LAN cards (www.socketcom.com
and www.xircom.com), cellular phone or
even wireless cards. You can browse the Web via the network and it also
includes support for Web browsing via a proxy server. This works great and
at speeds typically much faster than a dial up connection.
PIE supports HTML 3.2, framesets, tables, Jscript 1.1 (Not
full-blown Java applets though), SSL for access to secure sites, and even
ActiveX. That means that you can use Pocket Internet Explorer to view
almost any Web page that exists today. PIE also supports XML/XSL, enabling
browser-based enterprise and business-to-business applications.
Online browsing capability is nice, but it's not always
easy to find a phone jack or some other way to connect to an Internet
Service Provider. The older Palm-size PC had an application called Mobile
Channels that let you view Web content downloaded from your desktop PC.
Offline browsing was still a necessary feature for the Pocket PC. Mobile
Channels was dropped and its capability was integrated into PIE and
Microsoft's desktop browser, Internet Explorer 5.0.
When you install the latest version of ActiveSync (the
desktop PC synchronization program that comes with all Pocket PCs) a
"Mobile Favorites" icon is added to Internet Explorer 5.0 on
your desktop PC. When you're browsing the Web on your desktop PC and you
see a site you like, you can click on this icon to add that particular
site to your Mobile Favorites list. Internet Explorer will automatically
save content from the sites in this list on a regular basis. Every time
you synchronize your Pocket PC with your desktop PC, the Mobile Favorites
web content is downloaded to your P/PC for offline browsing using PIE. For
example, you could schedule Mobile Favorites to download your favorite
news sites every morning. Synchronize your Pocket PC and you have the
day's news with you, to read when you've got a spare minute or two.
When you add a site to your Mobile Favorites list a
configuration "Wizard" pops up, letting you schedule the times
you want PIE to download content from this site. It also lets you limit
the amount of Web content you download from any particular site.