A few weeks ago at CTIA Microsoft announced the release of Windows Mobile 6.1 for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms touting easier management of wifi and bluetooth connections, threaded text messaging and a full desktop browsing experience in Pocket IE (PIE). Since I’ve already lamented the poor wifi capability of every Windows Mobile release, I’m going to take a closer look at their browsing support and, more specifically, AJAX support in the latest release of Pocket IE on Windows Mobile 6.1. One caveat is that I’m not using an officially supported Pocket IE install, so it’s possible that it’s pre-release and still buggy. It also does not yet include the Flash or Silverlight plugins, so I’ll test those later.
So aside from claiming a, “fell desktop browsing experience,” during their release, the MSDN site claims AJAX support in Pocket IE for Windows Mobile 6.0 as well. However, for a long time they did not support the Javascript “GetElementsByID,” which is essential for parsing large amounts of information to display in applications like maps, email and feed readers. So let’s look at how PIE fairs in displaying Yahoo Mail’s desktop rendering, the number 1 email in terms of users around the globe.
When accessing Yahoo Mail’s desktop view using Pocket IE on Windows Mobile 6.0, my browser crashed under the load of javascript errors. So in surfing to Yahoo Mail on Windows Mobile 6.1, I was relieved to see that they had better error handling for unsupported Javascript calls. I received three error messages and the Yahoo Mail logo popped up. I waited for my Mail information to pop up in tidy little rows, but they never came.
So what happened here? I would suspect that 6.1 is probably designed to work within the Atlas Microsoft-specific AJAX toolkit. Since Yahoo, Google nor AOL develop using Microsoft technologies, this unfortunately won’t do you much good for your primary email applications or feed readers. The good news is that they have provided better Javascript
Unfortunately this is just another case of Internet Explorer providing poor or limited support for open standards.
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I'm Dave and I like to share news about gadgets, gear, careers and design for a mobile world.
theregoesdave
The ripped version of PIE from WM 6.1 is not the “full desktop browsing” version they demoed at CTIA. That version will only be released at the end of the year. That version follows the recent trend of using desktop rendering engines on mobile devices, as the Opera mobile and mobile safari browsers do.
The version you tested is just a mildly tarted up version of the usual PIE browser.
BTW if you want to see full desktop browsing on Windows Mobile, give the ripped version of Opera Mobile 9.5 beta a test over at XDA-Developers.com. Its better at Safari, even at Acid 2.
Hopefully you’re right and they’re not just waiting for the Flash and Silverlight plugins to make it ‘official.’ I’m downloading Opera as we speak- thanks for the hot tip on the Opera Beta.
[...] will go on supporting AJAX and not Flash. Pocket IE is moving quickly to support Flash, but seems disinterested in enabling full the javascript support needed for Rich Internet Applications using AJAX for their [...]
I can not able to open javascript / java enable web sites for trading and internet banking account sites over my Tytan II WM 6.1 mobile phone. I have bluetooth connection for internet. how it is possible?
@CR
There aren’t any browsers that natively support JavaScript or more especially Java for Windows Mobile yet. The closest you can get is Skyfire, which works via a proxy. You should be able to run Flash and JavaScript, but that’s if you don’t mind sharing your banking details with their proxy.