Version 2.0 of Webby, a free, alternative Pocket Internet Explorer plug-in, is out! A review

http://www.users.tpg.com.au/lordf/anoriginalidea/webby.htm

The built-in browser in the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile operating system (OS), Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) (renamed to Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM) in Windows Mobile 5 (WM5)), severely lacks multi-tabbing (multi-window) capabilities and other advanced features (like a progress bar or image saving capabilities in pre-WM5 OS'es and source viewing / page saving in all OS'es). This is why several so-called "plug-ins" have been developed: MultiIE, PIEPlus, Spb Pocket Plus and ftxPBrowser. Webby is the latest browser plug-in on the scene. The new, 2.0 version, has just been released. In this article, I elaborate on the real-world capabilities of Webby, comparing it to the alternatives. (A more technical remark: Webby and ftxPBrowser aren't technically real plug-ins but rather shells because they must be started as stand-alone applications. This has both advantages and disadvantges over the plug-in approach of MultiIE, PIEPlus and Spb Pocket Plus. The advantage is that they work under all operating systems, even the, in this respect, problematic WM5 (two of the three "real" plug-ins don't work under WM5). The disadvantage is that these shells lack, by default, a lot of features PIE/IEM would otherwise have. This is because shells don't have access to the full capabilities of the underlying PIE/IEM, unlike plug-ins.) Installation, running If your PDA already has the .NET CF2, just get the installer from here and install it on your PDA. If you don't have .NET CF2, download it from Microsoft. Make sure you install it in the main memory. For people that prefer installing CAB's, you will only need c:\Program Files\ Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\ v2.0\WindowsCE\wce500\armv4i\NETCFv2.wm.armv4i.cab for WM5 and c:\Program Files\ Microsoft.NET\SDK\CompactFramework\ v2.0\WindowsCE\wce400\ armv4\NETCFv2.ppc.armv4.cab for WM2003(SE). If you want to avoid having to download the 24 Mbyte-long MSI installer, you can also download the CAB files themselves from here (WM5 version) and here (WM2003(SE) version). After installing (under WM5, you may also need to reset your Pocket PC), you can start Webby by tapping Start/Programs/Webby. Main menus The Go menu: Click for screenshot As can be seen, it's here ("Address...") that you can enter the address of a new page. Entering the URL is done, as opposed to all the other solutions (even to the most powerful MultiIE), on a full-screen dialog: Click for screenshot The View main menu: Click for screenshot This has a lot more menu items than the Go menu; for example, Save to File, which (would) make(s) it possible to save links. Note that several menu items here sometimes not work as they should – see the section "The Bad" for more information. Real-world tests and benchmarks - The Good

• It's free!
• Unlike MultiIE, PIEPlus and, to a certain degree, ftxPBrowser (but not Spb Pocket Plus), it does work under WM5! (Please read this article for more information on the WM5 compliance of PIE/IEM plug-ins.)
• It's VGA-compliant – unlike with ftxPBrowser, you don't need to explicitly force it on VGA devices to VGA so that the rendered pages doesn't use pixel doubling.
• Tabs that really work!
• It, just like MultiIE, supports pre-defined prefixes and suffixes while entering URL's. (MultiIE is still better because you can redefine these suffixes/prefixes in it. Please see my Pocket PC Browser Roundup linked from the Recommended Links section for more information on this.)
• It supports invoking PIE/IEM on a given page; that way, you'll have access to all the features (for example, the one-column view mode of WM2003SE+, the full screen mode of WM5, the unrestricted favorite management capabilities etc) of PIE/IEM.
• It has a progress bar (when run under WM5, the WM5 one is also visible): Click for screenshot Note that this progress bar is in no way as good as that of, say, the IEM under WM5. For example, with the PPCMag 600 kbyte test page, the progress bar stays at between 20 and 30% for most of the time and only in the last fraction of second does it go further – right to 95-100%. With other pages and on pre-WM5 operating systems, it behaved much better.

The Bad

• Speed issues: the plug-in (further) decreases the already pretty mediocre page loading/rendering speed of PIE/IEM. For example, I measured the following results with the traditional 600 Kbyte test page I use for download/speed test bechmarking:

  Browser:	Plain PIE/IEM	Webby
  Dell Axim x51v	0:39	1:05
  iPAQ 2210	0:45	1:14
  HTC Wizard (2.16.9.1 i-mate ROM)	0:38	1:07

  (All results are in minutes:seconds; the bigger, the worse.) As can be seen, Webby introduces a really considerable speed hit! PIE/IEM has never been on the quick side (on the contrary); with this plug-in, it becomes even slower. This is pretty close to unacceptable.
• Unlike with all the four alternatives, opening a link in a new window is impossible. As there is no "Open in new window" context menu item (there're absolutely no new context menu items at all!) and, unlike with the New Window icon, , of ftxPBrowser, you can't instruct the browser to open every tapped link in a new window, it's very complicated to open anything in new tabs to avoid (the lengthy - don't forget this is not the blazingly fast Opera!) reloading of pages when you go back to he current one. There're no "Copy link" functionality either to ease this task, unlike in all PIE plug-ins and the latest NetFront Technical Preview versions. This problem should be fixed - if there's no way of adding anything to the context menus (which I really doubt - Spb Pocket Plus is able to do this, even under WM5!), even ftxPBrowser's approach would be much better than the current one.
• As with the other notable "shell" around PIE, ftxPBrowser, Webby can't access the built-in rendering capabilities of the underlying PIE either. This means there's no One Column mode – you'll end up having to scroll a lot if you browse pages with a lot of tables (for example, forums like the PPCMag forum on the screenshots) on pages not mobile/PDA-optimized. To offer the one-column mode, it passes the URL of the current page to external services (it has two built-in: Skweezer and Google Mobile; this list can't be extended to have, say, the technically, compared to Skweezer, much more advanced MobileLeap; please read the article linked from this blog entry for more information on these services), which is far worse a solution than having a built-in One Column mode.
• Under WM5, the "Full Screen" option in the generic context menu doesn't work. (Other, newly intruduced, WM5-specific menu items do work, including Save Image).
• It doesn't add its own context menu items to any of the context menus (image/link/generic), unlike ftxPBrowser (under pre-WM5 OS'es) or the other PIE plug-ins.
• "Save to file" doesn't work with some pages - the list is empty. (With other pages, it does.)
• D-pad-based scrolling may be buggy/strange: for example, without explicitly tapping the screen somewhere / choosing some text, on the x51v, it scrolled two pages when the D-pad was pressed down and didn't scroll at all upwards. On the HTC Wizard, it behaved much better: downward, it scrolled one page by a press (but upwards, it used jump-by-link scrolling). On pre-WM5 devices, it scrolled flawlessly. (A side note: the jog dial-based scrolling (when it's available) uses the traditional jump-by-link approach.)
• Favs/Organise Favourites takes you to the file system, inside \Windows\Favorites. That is, there's no in-application way of organizing the favourites – just as with ftxPBrowser and unlike all the three "real" PIE plug-ins, which just use the built-in organizer in PIE/IEM.
• The Delete Files button in Options doesn't delete the PIE cache files. You need to explicitly delete the contents of the cache from inside PIE/IEM itself.
• On VGA devices, the icons on the command bar are too small (a Pocket Loox 720 screenshot here; also check out the VGA x51v screenshots in this review), unlike on QVGA ones. An example screenshot of the latter is here.
• As CF2 is only available for WM2003+, you can't run the application on pre-WM2003 devices. In addition, CF2 occupies some 5 Mbytes of the central (storage) memory as it can't be installed in alternative storage - too bad Webby can't be run on previous CF versions.
• It doesn't support the WM5 software keys. You can't use the D-pad to scroll, for example, on the dialog screens either (like the address entering screen).
• Sometimes, View/View Source doesn't work; in other cases, it does (example screenshot).
• Sometimes, the frame containing the Web page is shifted upwards and, this way, it reduces the screen estate used. You can easily grab the lower frame edge, however, and just pull it down.

Verdict Unfortunately, CF2 (managed code) isn't very fast and such applications should not be written using it – only in native C++. The speed benchmark results clearly show this. I really miss opening links in new windows. This is the second most important problem with Webby. The lack of the One Column (or similar) view mode (in post-WM2003 operating systems) and the inability to use the built-in full screen capabilities (under WM5) are a big letdown too. The sometimes lacking functionality (see the sometimes non-working menu items in the View menu) is also problematic. All in all, there is still a lot to be done. If page loading speed is important for you, avoid this shell. If you have a pre-WM5 device (as has already been pointed out, ftxPBrowser is pretty restricted under WM5) and want to go for a free solution, stick (for the time being) to the much faster ftxPBrowser. Also, if being commercial is not a problem, MultiIE, PIEPlus and, under WM5 too, Spb Pocket Plus are (currently) much faster and, as far as opening links in new windows is concerned, much better alternatives. It's only under WM5 that Webby has one alternative, Spb Pocket Plus. If, for some reason, Spb Pocket Plus isn't acceptable for you because of its being commercial or its high program memory consumption even with the Today plug-in disabled and even without actively using PIE/IEM, which can be an issue on 32Mbyte WM5 devices like the rx1950 or the Treo 700w, you may want to give Webby a try. Alternatively (under WM5 too), you can always consider switching to a really superior browser if you get fed up with the lack of capabilities/speed/good rendering engine of PIE/IEM – Opera or, to a lesser degree, NetFront. Opera delivers orders of magnitude better browsing experiences than PIE/IEM, regardless of the plug-in you use with the latter. Recommended links Roundup of Web Browsers (alternatives: MobilitySite, AximSite, FirstLoox, PPC Magazine, BrightHand). Please make sure you also follow the links in these threads to my newer, more up-to-date articles, reviews. My Pocket PC Magazine Expert Blog, full of additional niceties. The homepage of Webby. ADDITION (7:56AM CET, the next day): this AximSite thread on the application (and my review) is worth reading.