REVIEW: Brand new, 2.0 version of great Internet Explorer plug-in PIEPlus

http://www.reensoft.com/PIEPlus/

The built-in Web browser that comes with all Pocket PC's, Pocket Internet Explorer (or, as is known starting with Windows Mobile 5, Internet Explorer Mobile; note that, in this article - for the sake of clarity - I only use PIE to refer to the browser. Don't forget, however, that its official name is IEM starting with the new operating system), has never been a fully-fledged application, compared to the alternative solutions. It severely lacks a lot of features; for example, being able to show more than one webpage at a time (that is, being multi-tabbed). As a lot of Pocket PC users have always requested a much better browsers, several alternative solutions have been released, which may be grouped into two distinct groups. One of them is a stand-alone browser, totally independent of PIE/IEM. The most important alternatives are NetFront, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Thunderhawk and Minimo. The other group are no standalone browsers but so-called ‘plug-ins' that enhance the functionality of PIE. PIEPlus is one of these applications. Its brand new, 2.0 version was released yesterday; of course, I've jumped on it right away to find out whether it's any good. This application certainly deserves a detailed review and comparison full of screenshots to both the previous version and the alternate apps (most importantly, MultiIE and alternate multitabbed Pocket PC browsers like Opera and NetFront), mostly because the homepage of PIEPlus doesn't even list a lot of welcome enhancements and the online FAQ isn't verbose either. In addition, a decent, unbiased comparison to the alternative solutions is indeed welcome. 1. (Executive) summary Actually, I was pretty skeptical before starting to test the new version. The 1.x series had pretty annoying bugs (especially with VGA devices) and, feature-wise, was clearly inferior to the most important alternative PIE plug-in, MultiIE. I was very happy to see the new version certainly deserved a new, major version number increase. It is incomparably better than the previous version. All the bugs and shortcomings pointed out in my reviews have been fixed and, now, the application is even more capable than the current version of MultiIE and much more capable than the PIE plug-in of Spb Pocket Plus, the other WM5-compliant, not very capable PIE plug-in. The only really big problem with PIEPlus is the unability to save Web pages. It should be stressed that the new PIEPlus version is Windows Mobile 5-compliant, unlike MultiIE (or, for that matter, ftxPBrowser, the fourth, decent alternative). I can only recommend giving this app a try - it's really worth it! 2. Brand new, groundbreaking additions 2.1 URL Alias and Service If you've read the Bible of Web Browsers (alternates: MobilitySite, AximSite, FirstLoox, PPC Magazine, BrightHand), you may remember the excellent macroing capabilities of PIEPlus' biggest competitor, MultiIE, which I explained in that article in depth. Now, PIEPlus offers something really similar in URL Service. It's the exact equivalent of the "Options/Misc/Address bar macros" feature in MultiIE with the difference that it's a bit easier to edit for a casual user. In addition, it offers a lot of cool, pre-defined online services that you may want to use a lot . This list is really up to date; for example, MobileLeap (my favourite web compression/content stripper service), which has been often relocated in the past, has the latest, current URL - example screenshot here of a stripped page). The most important difference between the macros in MultiIE's and URL Services in PIEPlus is that you can group "children" URL macros into groups in the latter plug-in. In this regard, PIEPlus is really-really better than MultiIE because, this way, you can have orders of magnitude more URL macros than with MultiIE. An example screenshot of this can be found here showing a parent-child relationship. In this case, the first child, www.|.com of the URL Builder top-level group is highlighted. Note the enabled "child" flag (the enabled checkbox and the "C" letter in the Flag column) of the highlighted element. URL Aliases aren't included in the link collection but are accessed by keyboard shortcuts (for example, ‘g' for Google , ‘gm' for Google Mobile, as far as built-in aliases are concerned). They also accept one parameter (just as with URL Services or MultiIE's macros). They also offer additional capabilities like expansion (see the E flag) and a settable default ('D'; one for the entire category). In this screenshot, it's easy to see that, for example, if you don't enter any leading character ('c' in this case, standing for ‘com'), because the given entry has the ‘default' flag switched in, it will still expand its contents into the http://www.<just entered text>.com form. This is also very-very useful. 2.2 Forward/back Menu The other, never-before-seen feature of PIEPlus is the history list attached to the back/forward icons, which can be configured in Options/Menu. When you click the back (or forward, if you've already gone back (some pages)) icon, you'll be presented a list already displayed in a list as can be seen in here. It's pretty similar to how Opera Mini's history works and is really nice. The only difference between it and Opera Mini is that the latter also keeps the last 30 pages in-memory so that they are rendered instantly after going back to them; PIEPlus needs to fetch them again from the server. (This is, of course, understandable if you take into account that a rendered page can take up even Megabytes under PIEPlus because of PIE's internal memory usage, while only some kilobytes in Opera Mini.) 2.3 Reopen closed tabs Another unique feature (no alternate browsers/ PIE plug-ins are capable of this, except for if you turn to their History) of the new PIEPlus is its saving the URL of all the closed tabs as can be seen in, for example, here. This means if you close a tab/page, you will still find it in this list and you don't need to hunt for them in the standard, PIE-level page history (if the latter still contains it at all) drop-down menu. 3. Other additions / generic stuff There are a lot of welcome additions in the Tools/Options menu not even mentioned on the homepage of PIEPlus. In this section, I elaborate on all these; in the subsections, I list the tabs of the previous, 1.31 version and compare them to the same/similar/related tabs in the new one. 3.1 Options/General The General tab in the old version no longer exists in the new one ; its controls are distributed through Tab 1 and Tab 2. The former (the latter, Tab 2, has nothing new), in addition to the visible tab count and tab height settings, while moving the "Double tap to close window" checkbox to the "Action" group at the bottom (renaming it to the more understandable "Double tap to close tab"), also has a really welcome "Hide tab if there is only one bar" checkbox. The introduction of this is really welcome and long-awaited - alternate, multitabbed browsers like NetFront, Minimo and, as of lately, Opera Mobile b2, have all supported this for ages. Still speaking of Tab 1, it also has a brand new group, Position, which makes it possible to fine-tune where the new tab should be displayed: next to the current tab or at the end of the tab-bar. Also, it's here that you can instruct PIEPlus to choose from the left- or the right-side tabs to be switched to after you close a tab. 3.2 Options/Screen The new version is the same as with the old version. It sets the full screen parameters (for example, whether the scrollbars should be hidden in full screen mode, which is unique to PIEPlus and MultiIE - unfortunately, other solutions don't support this. This is a very bad problem of, say, even the latest, trial version of NetFront 3.3!) 3.3 Options/Buttons Thee are slight differences between the old and the new version:

1. The new version allows for setting the amount to scroll by line. Up to now, only NetFront knew this trick.
2. The two checkboxes (navigate link by D-pad and Jog-dial based line/page scroll toggling) have been left out; now, they are accessible via both (configurable) hardware buttons (see next bullet) and from the main menu
3. The PIEPlus operations assignable to hardware buttons have been greatly enhanced. In the previous version (screenshot here - only the "Menu" item is missing from it), you couldn't create new (blank/current/home) tabs by a button press, couldn't iterate (previous/next tab) between tabs (which is a really missing feature), couldn't scroll up/down by a page/line (which is a very good news for anyone with a PDA that lacks a Jog Dial and has a D-pad that is very hard to use for scrolling - for example, the touchpad of the hx4700) and couldn't quickly, using a hardware button, toggle between the D-Pad/Jog dial scroll mode. In the new version, you can do all this. (See this and this screenshot of this all.) (Note that the standard PIE functions have remained the same as can be seen in this (old) and this (new) screenshots.)

As with the previous version, the PIEPlus has built-in support for custom-implemented tap-and-hold button functionality. Unfortunately, it still doesn't take into account that there already are devices with built-in hold functionality. This is why it also doubles already-hold buttons. On a Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox 720 (which also has built-in Hold functionality), two example screenshots showing this in effect can be found here and here, showing that the Hold functionality of the Speed button was ignored and considered a completely separate button. On devices like these, naturally, you can only use two of these four button combinations. 3.4 Options/View This dialog has also been heavily enhanced. The old version only let the user set for forced line splitting in PIEPlus' own, unique Pocket view mode. The new version also offers the capability of switching off the default combining all the table cell in a row into just one cell, which was always on up to now, as can be seen in this screenshot (old version). Now, if you switch off this feature, the individual cells in a row will be put in a separate cell as can be seen in this screenshot of the new version. Note that these screenshots have been taken using the HTML-handcoded, clean table here. A Word-created and, therefore, non-clean table will always be rendered with cells in different rows as can be seen for example in here (using this Word-generated table). Unfortunately, PIEPlus still doesn't support grouping cells belonging to the same row into visible groups. In this screenshot, Misc: Price starts a new row, while Battle Cake 1.1 ends the previous. There are no visible signs of the first being closed. This could definitely be addressed in forthcoming PIEPlus versions. 3.5 Options/PIE It's the same as in the old version; the list of the User-Agent spoof clients is also the same (PIE / desktop IE 5.5 / desktop IE 6.0; there is no way of adding new ones/modifying these, unlike with, say, NetFront or ThunderHawk). 4. Context and other menus 4.1 Context menus They haven't changed at all from the previous version. In the link context menu, unfortunately, there's still no file download/save in the link menu - this certainly should be fixed. (Also see for example this article on the importance of this.) The picture context menu is exactly the same as in the previous version. The generic (non-picture/non-link) context menu no longer has the Screen Drag boolean switch - it has been given an icon on its own,, on the command bar. 4.2 Command bar; main menu While version 1.31 only put two icons on the command bar of PIE (in addition to the full screen icon), the new one has put three (and the full screen icon). (Note that you can also enable the WM5 softkey menubar; then, the main menu becomes as can be seen in here.) The first,, is similar to the one in older versions - it brings up the main menu of PIEPlus, as can be seen in here. Apart from being much more populated than the main menu of previous versions, there isn't much news in here. The second icon,, on the other hand, is brand new and brings up the tab (window) manager as can be seen in here. It's in here that you can start new windows; see the first three menu items. More interesting (and, up to know, unknown for Pocket PC users) are the two other menu items in here: New from Closed and Current from Closed. These menu items make it possible to reopen a closed tab in either a new tab or in the current one as described in section 2.3 ("Reopen closed tabs"). 5. What do I really miss? The ability to save Web pages. I just can't understand why the author of PIEPlus doesn't implement this highly important (and, from the programmer's viewpoint, easy to implement) feature present in some of the alternative browsers (NetFront) and PIE plug-ins (Spb Pocket Plus and, more importantly - it not only downloads HTML files, but also all the resources referenced by it - MultiIE). Please note that even in this case you'll be able to save Web pages with some manual work. Please read the article Ever wondered why some of the Web pages saved with MultiIE or Spb Pocket Plus are completely unreadable? (alternatives: PPCT, AximSite, PPC Magazine, MobilitySite, FirstLoox) - it, in addition to explaining the GZIP problem, also contains a complete tutorial on manual page/resource finding and saving. Verdict Veni, vidi, vici - as Julius Caesar put it. If the lack of the dedicated page saving mode isn't a problem, I can only recommend the new PIEPlus version if you need a decent PIE/IEM plug-in; particularly if you own a WM5 device, where MultiIE is not available. It is indeed a BIG step forward since the 1.x versions. Recommended links The Bible of Web Browsers (alternates: MobilitySite, AximSite, FirstLoox, PPC Magazine, BrightHand).