DailyTech - Skyfire 1.5 Brings Full Ajax, Flash, and Silverlight Support to WinMo Phones

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Gadgets Skyfire 1.5 Brings Full Ajax, Flash, and Silverlight Support to WinMo Phones
Jason Mick (Blog) - December 10, 2009 3:05 PM

19 comment(s) - last by aqaq55.. on Dec 15 at 7:51 AM

Skyfire 1.5 puts the current edition of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Mobile to shame. It offers full editions of Silverlight and Flash, while Microsoft's browser only offers Flash Lite. (Source: CNET Asia)

Third party browser offers a compelling alternative to IE Mobile

Windows Mobile, may not be the biggest player in the smart phone market, but current estimates indicate that it is still clinging to a 8-9 percent marketshare. That's a lot of smart phones. For those lucky WinMo users, a new edition of a third party browser has landed which provides a compelling alternative to Internet Explorer Mobile 6, the latest IE Mobile edition, which accompanied the release of Windows Mobile 6.5.

Where as IE Mobile 6 provides only support for Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, the new browser, Skyfire 1.5, offers full Flash 10. It also supports Microsoft's Flash-competitor Silverlight -- something IE Mobile itself ironically still doesn't support. Like IE Mobile 6, it also provides support for Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), an important web applications standard used to display changing information in web apps like Gmail without triggering a page refresh.

The new browser edition also offers better touchscreen support. Full screen scaling with no UI elements visible is provided, to make viewing pages on the small screens easier. Also included is support for higher-resolution VGA and WVGA screens.

The browser is free. Skyfire is working to try arrange advertising revenue sharing arrangements with companies like Google and Microsoft/Yahoo, though it hasn't yet named any definite partners or potential partners.

Skyfire 1.5 will soon be available for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th Edition handsets as well. For those on WinMo, if you don't want to download the free browser, you'll have to wait to get a new phone to enjoy Silverlight and full Flash. Those features are expected to be delivered with the release of Windows Mobile 7 in 2010.

You can grab the new browser here.

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Battery life

By amanojaku on 12/10/2009 3:21:15 PM , Rating: 2

I think IE doesn't include Silverlight because it is not as widely adopted as Flash, and it only supports Flash Lite in an attempt to save battery life. Here are some comments on Skyfire and battery life, with regards to the media features. In general, Skyfire attempts to save as much battery as possible, but you can't limit Flash and Silverlight and have a great user experience.

http://support.skyfire.com/forums/lofiversion/inde...

RE: Battery life

By bug77 on 12/10/2009 4:15:23 PM , Rating: 4

I'm sure some execs at M$ got together and had a little chat.

-Let's add Silverlight to IE Mobile.
-Oh wait, Silverlight has only 5% marketshare.
-Then let's promote it.
-Eh, let's just wait until it gain traction by itself and add support to IE Mobile after that.

Seriously now, if you care about battery life, do what flashblock does: disable auto play so the thing plays only when you want to. But do add support. The only reason you don't get Silverlight support is M$ couldn't do it. Yet. And if you want insight about how M$ can't navigate the mess of their own code, look up articles on MinWin project.

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RE: Battery life

By Moishe on 12/11/2009 1:41:54 PM , Rating: 2

Microsoft is perfectly capable, but is a huge company with a large number of products. Some of the products are not well managed, which adds to the lack of features.

They need a browser dev team that does IE and IE Mobile. It's a free product, so they won't get the same resources as Office or Windows, but they *should* be able to make two versions of the same browser and have it able to run on Windows, WinMo, Palm, BB, Mac, and Linux. If Opera and Mozilla can do it for free, so can MS.

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RE: Battery life

By epobirs on 12/11/2009 2:06:23 PM , Rating: 2

It's very doubtful that the issue MinWin seeks to resolve are a big factor for WinMo developers at Microsoft. It is a completely separate code base that started from scratch in the mid-90s, While it shares many of the APIs, the implementation is not shared and need not replicate any of the problems in the desktop Windows code base. As an OS specifically targeting embedded applications, with high modularity a priority, it seems unlikely the same problems would have been replicated.

Which isn't to say the WinCe code base doesn't have its own issues, only that they are distinct from desktop Windows.

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RE: Battery life

By Sanchez1986 on 12/10/09, Rating: -1

RE: Battery life

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Opera Mobile

By Yawgm0th on 12/10/2009 3:22:58 PM , Rating: 2

I tried Skyfire and Opera Mobile AT&T Tilt (HTC Kaiser), and I have to say that it was no comparison. It's not even an issue of content. Skyfire was so slow and hard to use compared to Opera that it wasn't worth bothering. Opera, conversely, was one of the best mobile browsers I've ever used. If the Tilt were faster and had multi-touch, I probably wouldn't have switched to BlackBerry.

Mobile IE is a joke, though, so I welcome all the competition on the WinMo platform. The iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones are going to dominate more and more until Microsoft/providers start bundling a half-decent web browser.

RE: Opera Mobile

By ZoZo on 12/10/2009 6:21:27 PM , Rating: 2

Perhaps the 2 year old 400Mhz processor of your AT&T Kaiser/HTC Kaiser/TyTN II/P4550 (how many names does it have?) is just too weak for a modern web browser supporting desktop features?
I wonder how SkyFire runs on the 1Ghz Qualcomm SnapDragon that the HTC HD2 has.

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RE: Opera Mobile

By Moishe on 12/11/2009 1:55:32 PM , Rating: 2

That's probably what it is. As always, more features require more power.

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RE: Opera Mobile

By Chapbass on 12/11/2009 2:00:21 PM , Rating: 2

I honestly had much less issues with skyfire than opera running on my 6800 mogul. With only a 400mhz proc and 64mb of ram, IE drags (especially the new IE on my winmo 6.5 cooked rom).

Maybe ill give opera another shot, but i installed skyfire last night and it was glorious.

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RE: Opera Mobile

By Locutus465 on 12/11/2009 7:48:22 PM , Rating: 1

My experience is the opposite, I prefer this browser to my purchased opera browser. This thing is relitivly fast, though I'll admit it can be on the slow side moving the page all around. All in all though, it's fast enough and way more functional than Opera. Sky wins.

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Impressive compatibility, but too slow for interaction

By ET on 12/10/2009 4:56:27 PM , Rating: 2

I'm testing it now, and I'm impressed by how it shows the sites I go to. The user interface isn't bad, either. However, it's very slow (since it loads page parts on demand), and I'm having trouble interacting with input fields. Still, it looks like a useful tool for when you just want to browse websites and see them like you'd expect.

Still, I'm looking forward to what Firefox will bring to the table. The latest Opera betas haven't impressed me greatly. 8.65 is still the best version IMO.

RE: Impressive compatibility, but too slow for interaction

By Flunk on 12/11/2009 8:39:04 AM , Rating: 2

Windows Mobile is an open platform, if your performance is poor you might just need a faster phone. Unless you're running a phone with a Cortex A8 processor your poor performance doesn't necessarily mean anything for anyone else.

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HTC Touch Pro

By InternetGeek on 12/10/2009 8:40:43 PM , Rating: 2

I'm running it on my HTC Touch pro and it runs quite well. I'm impressed actually. Not of the speed, but that everything does work as intended.

Android?

By Souka on 12/11/2009 7:26:05 PM , Rating: 2

Will it run on the Android?

Or does the Android already offer these features..?

Decent Browser

By Locutus465 on 12/11/2009 7:46:54 PM , Rating: 2

Just installed it on my WinMo 6x device, pretty decent browser. Kind of wish this was released before I had purchased opera, oh well. It's not as smooth as say, the Zune HD browser, but it's pretty decent. And I can use it everywhere since it's on my phone.