As my beloved PIEPlus doesn't work with the new IE cooked into the latest 6.5 ROMs, I am on the search for a browser that fits my needs.
I do the vast majority of my browsing using my phone (>95%) and most of that is reading forums.
I need a browser that renders pages in a readable format straight away, without the need to zoom in and/or horizontal scroll.
It must have a vertical scrollbar, or some other method of fast scrolling long pages of text without getting thumbswipe RSI !!
It needs to have multiple tabs/instances.
I have played about with Opera/Iris/Netfront/skyfire but always seem to be messing about zooming/scrolling to get the forum posts readable. If these browsers can do what I need, how do I persuade them to do it?
Are there any tweaks in Opera:config that will help me? It mentions scrollbars in there, but I'm bug***ed if I can make 'em appear!
They're all rubbish.
What's most frustrating is that each browser has one or two strengths.. but there are none that tick all the boxes.
Ideally you would have a browser that is as fast and stable as opera mini, user friendly as opera mobile and plays flash and video like skyfire or iris.
But as I don't need flash or video... ??
I just need to render forums laid out in table format (like this one) in a useful manner.
Opera mini, then.
It's fast and it's the one I use for forums.. the lack of tabs is annoying, and the lack of copy/paste but it's good for reading and ok for entering text.
It's also fast enough to not be a pain switching back and forth between threads... not as good as tabs - but useable.
Related
hello,
i was wondering what's the best internet application apart from internet explorer, i know there's opera - is there anything else that is easy on the eyes and makes the internet experience like the desktop - in other words zooms to the size of the screen? please help, thanks.
any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
can someone just suggest an app, please?
Opera Mobile works well.
http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/products/
thanks for the prompt reply.
I would have answered but internet App is a loose term. Any application that connects to the internet would be an internet app. If you would have said browser I would have told you Opera, DeepFish, or JB5.
oops, you're right - sorry i meant internet browser, lol. what was i thinking?
BTW, this is another kind of thread that should be posted to the Smartphone General forum.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=323651
deepfish?? jb5? are they good??
can someone post some links.. plz..
Deepfish is a microsoft browser that certain users who signed up for the beta have. It's currently still being developed and registration numbers aren't being handed out at this time. If you google JB5, it's the first link.
Deep fish is comparable to Opera Mini, & iPhones Safari. Same concept. True webpage that you can access and zoom in on.
i like using opera mini 4 beta the best. the full page browsing is really cool. the two downsides though is that it zaps your battery and it doesnt keep you logged into web pages
hey thanks for the reply, but when you mean it doesn't keep you logged in?
MiniMo
There's a new browser on the block that I'm surprised no one has mentioned: MiniMo. The MiniMo project is an attempt to make a Windows Mobile version of Mozilla (as in the underlying technologies used in FireFox, such as the Gecko rendering engine). So far, it's at version 0.2, but has major flaws. It grinds my Dash to a halt very often, it has too many on screen buttons, navigation is a pain in the neck without a touch screen, and it has major stability issues (ranging from the program just not starting to locking up the entire device).
While this won't help you now, it's something to look forward to, and at least its current progress is accessible, unlike JB5 and DeepFish, and at least it's free, unlike Opera Mobile.
Not really digging the default android browser interface so what would you the xda-developers community (who know much more about phones than me lol) say is the best replacement browser. I have only tried Opera mobile so far and i think its brilliant but im sure their is something better. fyi Just wanting it for general browsing.
Dolphin Browser and Skyfire are very good alternatives.
Seem quite nice but cant download them atm , The market isnt letting me download anything :O
Opera mobile is my fav.
Likely since I got used to it on winmo, but I still think it is a good browser.
Note: Mobile, not mini...two different things even though they look similar.
I'm a huge xscope fan.
uZard, anyone?
I have not received my Defy yet (it is on its way), but I often run uZardWebP on my current WM6.1 phone. It can be found here. Not sure it it will work correctly, since the Defy' screen is 854x480 pixels, and uZard seems to be suitable for up to 800x480 only.
Anyone here to give it a try?
Cheers!
Carlos
Dolphin HD. I loves me it! I have a ton of bookmarks, and it's the only browser that remembers the last position when I go to the next bookmark after viewing a page. All the other ones go back to the top, and I have to scroll all the way back down the list.
One thing I really liked about my Nexus One was when I was on a web page and I zoomed text, it would autofit it (left to right) on the screen.
That way if I needed to make the text a little bigger I could in order to easily read it.
This didn't work 100%, it was more like when the text was in it's own table cell. But that's still 90% of the text out there.
With WP7, I notice this feature does not exist. Some pages are quite hard to read (even landscaped) when they fit.. and shifting left to right for each line is a bugger.
Anyone heard if this is going to be added to the browser functionality?
android is the unique os that does this. even on iOS, it performs the same as WP. if you want this feature, i'd suggest recommending it to windowsphone via twitter, or on social.microsoft.com, but i doubt you'll get much response about it apart from "we will pass it on".
Text reflow, nope haven't heard a word about it.
The Gate Keeper said:
android is the unique os that does this.
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What? WM6.5 did this just fine on my HD2 also.
I'm not entirely sure if it's something we want brought over though. Sure, it is a great feature for some webpages, but IMO the majority displays fine (and readable) as is. I feel text reflow may cause more problems than it's worth in terms of browser performance. WP7 may not seem to load as fast as e.g. Android but if you are looking for information buried half way down the page I often find you get to it faster on WP7 anyhow - it doesn't seem to suffer from the same rendering lag as the droids. If this is directly connected to reflow or not I don't know, but I have a feeling it may be.
you would of had it on your wm6.5 through opera? i was more referring to natively.
but yea i agree with you, most of the time reflow isn't needed.
PLEASE HELP - - -Is anyone else experiencing these display problems? &/or have possible solution(s)??
The over the air update seems to have completely cured my data connectivity problems : - }
But my unstable display problems persist and are driving me nuts - Considering a return.
(ON A SIDE QUESTION - - - Has anyone found an alternative browser, such as opera mini, which works on the N L 900? Opera Mini was very adequate on the old WM 6.5 Tilt 2)
(I) In Internet Explorer all pages seem to default to a really tiny type - Absolutly unreadable.
While the type can be enlarged with a 2 finger spread, the increase is very jerky / uncontrolable, and worse yet, moves / recenters the display unpredictibly. Then, with any movement of the phone (even without finger touches on the screen) it resizes, usually reverting back to tiny. Changing the page also resets to unreadable / tiny, and recenters it. So the problem is the web pages are not readable, and any luck in getting it re-sized is almost immediately defeated.
Another aspect of the problem is that with any faint or slight movement, the display page rotates almost at random between portrait & landscape. This also messes up zooming, etc. as mentioned above . . .
This problem also makes it impossible to use the phone to read a newspaper (such as NYTimes.com) because the dynamic resizing does not allow me to easily scan parts of the page to get where I want, and then achieve / maintain adequate zooming to get the whole "column" visible at once.
(II) in Microsoft Excel, a similar problem occurs with viewing & editing spreadsheets. But in Excel the random rotate problem is much more severe. Another aspect is that the zooming / sizing of the spreadsheet page is not stable when moving / panning from one part of the sheet to another.
Together these drive me nuts. Any ideas as to a systemic solution, or do you guys think it is just a fluke of some bad hardware??
Comments appreciated,
Thanks,
Artzznyzz
When reading web pages, double tap to zoom on the text block. A lot of times that's good enough so you don't have to manually zoom.
Sent from my Lumia 900 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
It almost sounds like you have a hardware problem. My screen is pretty stable. The issue I run into is that certain pages, xda included, will sometimes break apart and be unreadable. parts of the screen start to duplicate over and over all over the screen... I've already re-flashed the stock ROM, and applied the 12084 update, but it's still happening. It never happened on my Samsung Focus.
Yea I have the same problem, its like the browser is having problem rendering/displaying the content, I usually have to reboot the phone to fix it. Anyone else having the same problem? Is it ie9 on WP? Its really annoying, I get it mostly w xda pages.
But my Focus with Mango and IE9 doesn't do it. I notice it most on XDA, just because this is my most visited page on my phone, but it happens on other pages too.
I feel like I had this problem once on xda but I can't seem to replicate it. I have noticed a couple of other sites that render really weirdly though, for example shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale renders the page titles between the header image and the body in absolutely gigantic font. IE9 on the desktop renders it correctly too, which is what makes this even stranger.
Helps, although not enough.
There was that setting in previous versions, something about Overview. Unchecking it allowed the text to show up much larger....not available in this version...
romeo0119 said:
Yea I have the same problem, its like the browser is having problem rendering/displaying the content, I usually have to reboot the phone to fix it. Anyone else having the same problem? Is it ie9 on WP? Its really annoying, I get it mostly w xda pages.
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I can third or fourth the screen fragmentation, duplication issue. It seemed not to occur very early on in the firmware life of the phone, but has since made browsing an obnoxious chore. Might it have something to do with cache management on IE9 part with these more difficult to render sites? Ive loaded sites properly upon first visit, only to experience the issue on most subsequent visits.
Also, to comment on the OP's problem, I have read from multiple sources that IE9 for Windows Phone 7 will convert some sites' text size data to pixel values, which causes certain page issues when zooming.
I just reread this OP. I didn't realize we had an over the air update. Hope I didn't miss mine...
Concur ran into a problem yesterday browsing XDA forums on a wifi connection. Screen went 'white'. Scroll bars were still there but no visible text. Selecting other web sites turned up the same result -- clearly the pages loaded (background color changed, scroll bars, loading progress bar complete). Turning the device completely off was the only cure. Have only run into the problem once... unable to reproduce. Browses XDA just fine now.
Cheers
I'm having some really bad issues which are making the forums not usable. I haven't really changed anything so am not sure what the issue is.
1) The fonts and spacing is very odd, with sometimes larger or smaller font than expected and sometimes it's all scrunched in on one side.
2) Ads will often overlay on top of the forums, the sidebar on the right will sometimes be right in the middle of the forum page blocking my view, I don't see any way to move it.
3) Very jerky scrolling, sometimes scrolling jumps an entire page, other times it is just kind of ratchety, I turn my mouse wheel and it seems like every scroll takes a half second to catch up. My mouse is set to scroll 3 lines, but I've tried it with 1 line and it's the same. It's the same with smooth scrolling turned on or off.
4) The forums in general are very very slow, I mean unusable slow. A forum page may take upwards of 10 seconds to load, it seems like the ads are what's slowing it down because I can see the page stall, then the ad loads and everything works.
5) Most of the elements on the forum webpage seem to overlap each other, and many elements don't show up, or don't show a graphic but you can still mouse hover and see it's there.
I'm using Internet Explorer 11 on windows 10 on a surface pro 3 (i5/8gm RAM). Any help or suggestions for streamlining would be appreciated. Included a screen shot of the odd fonts and spacing. Zooming, or CTRL+ +/- doesn't help.
spinedoc said:
I'm having some really bad issues which are making the forums not usable. I haven't really changed anything so am not sure what the issue is.
1) The fonts and spacing is very odd, with sometimes larger or smaller font than expected and sometimes it's all scrunched in on one side.
2) Ads will often overlay on top of the forums, the sidebar on the right will sometimes be right in the middle of the forum page blocking my view, I don't see any way to move it.
3) Very jerky scrolling, sometimes scrolling jumps an entire page, other times it is just kind of ratchety, I turn my mouse wheel and it seems like every scroll takes a half second to catch up. My mouse is set to scroll 3 lines, but I've tried it with 1 line and it's the same. It's the same with smooth scrolling turned on or off.
4) The forums in general are very very slow, I mean unusable slow. A forum page may take upwards of 10 seconds to load, it seems like the ads are what's slowing it down because I can see the page stall, then the ad loads and everything works.
5) Most of the elements on the forum webpage seem to overlap each other, and many elements don't show up, or don't show a graphic but you can still mouse hover and see it's there.
I'm using Internet Explorer 11 on windows 10 on a surface pro 3 (i5/8gm RAM). Any help or suggestions for streamlining would be appreciated. Included a screen shot of the odd fonts and spacing. Zooming, or CTRL+ +/- doesn't help.
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First let me say that I'm moving this thread to About xda-developers since that's where site issues and discussion belong.
About your issue specifically: I haven't seen anyone making this complaint, but I do have a suggestion. Internet Explorer is terrible at rendering websites. The worst bar none. Since you are on Windows 10, I'd switch to the Edge browser (even Microsoft wants you to). Or you could switch to Firefox (my personal favorite), Chrome, or any other derivative of those. Microsoft only included IE in Windows 10 for backward compatibility and so I'd quit using it. I even got my 70 year old father in law to give up his beloved Internet Explorer. If he can do it, you can too! :highfive:
Thanks, hopefully someone here can offer a solution. I'm kind of stuck on IE11 until Edge gets extensions, but the reality is that millions of people still use IE11 and it should be supported.
I stopped using IE because I was having a lot of the problems you describe, especially the sticking and locking up ones. I switched to Chrome and have not looked back. Edge is too plain and like you said, lacks extensions. You are not stuck on IE though. Other browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, Maxthon, Opera, etc use the same extensions IE does. Have you tried opening up the XDA page in another browser just to troubleshoot? If you want to stay on IE, you can try deleting your IE cache and junk files, reset it to default settings, or even try putting the XDA webpage in compatibility mode and see if that helps. Try opening up IE with all plug-ins disabled, again, just for troubleshooting . Another note about IE. Microsoft just dropped support for versions 10 and below, and I will bet version 11 will be the last of it.
I had this problem recently. It's good to see it wasn't just my usual bad luck!
I do most of my modding at work (sshh..) and our IT department has recently moved everybody over to IE from Chrome. It is noticeably worse at displaying this forum and is, to be honest, a horrible program to use. I even miss Navigator..
Good to see I'm not the only one suffering, though!
I also have a lot of trouble using IE11 on XDA.
For the past few months I have had all the problems listed in the original post.
Now it seems like the page layout problems has been fixed, but for now I can not load a single page on XDA without IE11 locking up.
I have had more problems loading pages on XDA the past few months, than I have had on all other websites combined for the past 10 years - nothing but trouble on XDA..
It must be possible to make this site compatible with IE11, right?
(FYI: I am not using IE11 to write this post - it would be impossible)
gruntyoldbag said:
I also have a lot of trouble using IE11 on XDA.
For the past few months I have had all the problems listed in the original post.
Now it seems like the page layout problems has been fixed, but for now I can not load a single page on XDA without IE11 locking up.
I have had more problems loading pages on XDA the past few months, than I have had on all other websites combined for the past 10 years - nothing but trouble on XDA..
It must be possible to make this site compatible with IE11, right?
(FYI: I am not using IE11 to write this post - it would be impossible)
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I'm getting that as well. It's very depressing...but it's good to know that it's not just me.