Great Alternative Web Browser, NetFront 3.3 TP 1.02 is Out! A Comparative Review & Bug Report

http://nfppc.access.co.jp/english/about_v33.html

NetFront, winner of the Internet/Browsers and Web Utilities category of the Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards 2005, is probably the most important alternative to the built-in Web browser, Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE for short). It has several features that PIE doesn't have or only has with third-party add-ons (flash player, Java Virtual Machine and other plug-ins). Also, its rendering engine is definitely better and more standards-compliant than that of PIE. Access Corporation, developer of Netfont, is constantly upgrading the browser. It's not being developed by leaps and bounds (unlike, say, Minimo, the most important alternative and, what is even more important, free browser); still, (some) bugs are corrected and new features added steadily. The new, freely downloadable (restricted - it's still a Technical Preview) build, 1.02, has really been enhanced over the previous, 1.01 build, which itself has been enhanced over 1.0. I've described build 1.0 here (a Pocket PC Thoughts frontpage-referred article); later, I've also posted the 1.01 vs 1.0 comparison in the same thread. Therefore, do check it out to see what version 3.3 build 1.0 / 1.01 has to offer over the previous major version, 3.2. Note that the current article is not a full introduction to using NetFront and its capabilities. To have a complete picture of them (and to be able to compare NetFront to the other Pocket PC browsers), check out the Bible of Pocket PC Web Browsers (alternatives: iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FL, BrightHand). What's new? 1. As with 1.01, it has a much nicer tab closer icon: , as opposed to 2. in 1.01, you couldn't save linked content explicitly. In 1.02, it's already possible (tap and hold a link, Save/Link target): click for screenshot click for screenshot Please see Downloading binary files off the Web on the Pocket PC - tips and tricks (alternatives: PPCT, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand) on the importance of this. Note that, just like MultiIE (the excellent PIE plug-in), it can parse a page and download all the related resources (CSS/image files) of a Web page. Unlike MultiIE, it puts all the resources in a standard .MHT file (and not in a separate subdirectory); therefore, it's easier to transfer/handle full pages saved with NetFront than with MultiIE. Furthermore, the gzip bug (please see the article "Ever wondered why some of the Web pages saved with MultiIE, PIEPlus or Spb Pocket Plus are completely unreadable?" (alternatives: PPCT, AximSite, PPC Magazine, iPAQ HQ, FirstLoox ) for more information on this), as it's only plaguing PIE, won't cause any problems with NetFront. 3. Tools/ Browser Setting has a completely new tab, Dialog. It contains a lot of new settings checboxes to enable/disable a confirmation dialog box for window creation (both with and without JavaScript), HTTP/ HTTPS page transitions, starting the Messaging and other external applications. This means you can much better fine-tune what dialogs should be displayed than in 1.01. Also, the Popup drop-down list has been relocated here from the Security tab: click for screenshot 4. The Misc tab/Advanced Settings dialog has also been enhanced: click for screenshot What is interesing here is the new "Select link (scroll)" option. An explanation for this option: in version 3.2 / previous 3.3 builds, you only had the choice of setting one, global scrolling percentage. For example, with the default 90% and with Misc/Curor Key/Mode: click for screenshot set to the default Scroll, when you navigate down/up with the D-pad or with the jog dial (if the latter is present), the contents of the page is always scrolled by 90%. In Misc/Curor Key/Mode set to Select link (scroll), if there aren't links not already highlighted in the visible page view (and in the set percentage of the next one), the contents of the page will be scrolled by the percentage (by default, 10%) set in here (using both the D-pad and the jog dial if present). That is, now, you can set an entirely different scroll rate for the Scroll and the Select link (scroll) modes, unlike in previous versions. Note that you can also choose a third scroll mode in Misc/Curor Key/Mode, namely, Select link (jump). You won't necessarily want to use it unless you only want to quickly navigate between the links in the current page without explicitly searching them in the markup. This scroll mode isn't meant for reading an entire page because it'll jump over (and won't display) a lot of HTML markup if it doesn't contain any link. It's, therefore, only useful if you only want to navigate over links. 5. The third really important addition, "Copy Shortcut", is the ability to copy the active link: click for screenshot It's a really welcome addition to NetFront. You no longer need to actually load a page (and copy its URL from the address bar) to copy the highlighted URL to the clipboard. It's of extreme importance for example to me because when I answer questions on Pocket PC boards as quickly and effectively as possible on my PDA, I link in a lot of other pages in most of my answers. As I mostly copy these links from link directory of my homepage or from my PPCMag Expert Blog, this new feature makes this process much-much easier than before, using NetFront. Also take the unique feature of NetFront into account, the ability to search for any text inside the page (which is painfully missing from PIE, including all of the PIE add-ons), and you have a killer tool. 6. The Misc tab also has an "Enable Smart Frame Operation" checkbox. Now, for the bad Most importantly, the full screen mode is still plagued by the scrollbars and the tabs (if there're several); these can't be eliminated, unlike in MultiIE/PIEPlus: click for screenshot (Note that in this screenshot there's also the Address Bar. You can, of course, disable it in View/Tool Bars/Location). In addition, unlike 1.01, this build has severe problems with the Yahoo Mail login page which may also mean it won't work with a lot of similar pages either which have similar scripts/HTML markup. The "Remember my ID on this computer" checkbox can't be toggled; what is even worse, the "Sign in" button can't be clicked either. I've tested this in several configurations, on several PPC's: 1.01 has always worked while 1.02 never. Unfortunately, the Daylight Saving Time (DST for short; see this for more explanation of the term)-related bug I've reported and described at, say, Pocket PC Thoughts is still present. Now that it's the southern hemisphere that uses DST and not the northern one, it's people that live in the southern hemisphere that may have problems because of this bug. People in the northern hemisphere will encounter the problems resulting from the bug from next Spring till next Autumn (and so on). (If you live in the northern hemisphere and would like to reproduce the bug now, in addition to what I've said in the linked article, set your PDA and server clock back to, say, June so that the DST will be in effect. Otherwise, you won't be able to reproduce it.) Summary Bottom line: despite the bugs, really promising - hopefully, the commercial, final version of NetFront 3.3 will follow soon! What is better, as opposed to build 1.01: - Save/Link target (even if it's pretty buggy) - Settable separate Select link (scroll) percentage - Copy link to clipboard - Better dialog configuration options Still present problems - The DST-related bug still hasn't been fixed - The inability to hide scrollbars/tabs in fullscreen mode - No (explicit) PPC2k2/PPC2k support (version 3.0 was the last version to support PPC2k and there's no PPC2k2-specific TP download as yet) - As far as WM2003 users are concerned: no built-in landscape toggling (which wouldn't be hard to implement, as opposed to PIE plug-ins, as the engine doesn't depend on PIE) A generic tip on using NetFront Many people complain about the fonts in NetFront. Unfortunately, by default, a non-proportional font is used by the browser. To fix this problem, go to Tools/Browser Setting/View/Advanced Settings and click Font/Change. Here, enable 'Use proportional font': click for screenshot EDIT on Dec-16-2005: TP 1.03 is out; read the review HERE EDIT (Feb 2, 2006): TP 1.04 is out; please read this blog entry