Comments on: New Skyfire Browser for Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile Treo owners certainly are spoiled for choice when it comes to browsers nowadays, what with Pocket IE and Deepfish and Opera (plus Mini), not to mention the soon-to-come mobile Firefox. That's not going to stop tech newcomer Skyfire from wading into the crowded waters, though, with Monday's announcement of their new web browser that's designed to give a desktop-like experience on the small screen and put paid to the iPhone.

The self-titled Skyfire browser uses a proxy rendering technology similar to that of the aforementioned Deepfish and Opera Mini, transcoding pages into a proprietary format that is then squirted to your device. Unlike those browsers, however, Skyfire brings full Flash support along with AJAX and Java.

 interesting

nybble @ 1/30/2008 9:10:18 AM #

Looks interesting and well done - nice to see java and flash in the browser - although I wonder what will happen to browsing if connectivity isn't great. The zooming looks fixed, not column sensitive, which isn't perfect either. Still for a beta it looks really promising.

My main issue is the whole proxy thing. It ties the browser to the well being of the company, pushes all your usage patterns into their logs and for what? The iPhone's already proven you can get good performance and functionality without it. What's the win with the proxy?

<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.

 RE: interesting

SeldomVisitor @ 1/30/2008 9:14:51 AM #

The iPhone does not use a proxy?

[question based off the fact that Visual Voicemail is server-based]

 RE: interesting

freakout @ 1/30/2008 6:47:00 PM #

^^ Nope, it's all on-board rendering - uses the Safari engine. Webkit, I think.

I wonder how they do the Flash video. Have they developed some kind of WinMob plugin or are they transcoded as well?

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

 RE: interesting

SeldomVisitor @ 1/30/2008 6:53:19 PM #

No, what I meant is the actual surfing, not rendering, could easily go through a proxy server since, for example, Visual Voicemail already has to "go through" a server (thus logs could be kept about etc etc etc).

 RE: interesting

freakout @ 1/30/2008 7:55:00 PM #

Mobile web surfing goes via the telco's internet proxy, regardless of device, methinks.