TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog

The first part of Sebastian Sell’s review looked at the Opera Mobile browser in general. Part 2 focuses on tabbed browsing and resource consumption - read on to find out how much memory you will need for comfortable tabbed browsing!

tabbed browsing
Tabbed browsing is one of the main reasons, why you will prefer Opera Mobile. It’s possible to have several pages opened at the same time, to toggle between them just tap onto the title of the tab you want to open.

Also, I thought the resource consumption with more tabs opened would be interesting. Read the details in “Opera resource consumption”.

Opera settings
The settings of Opera Mobile can be found under Menu –> Tools –> Settings. In the first tap “General” it is possible to change the home page which should load up every time the browser is started. The “Identify as” option can be set to “Desktop computer” or “Handheld device”. To see the difference, try to visit “www.pdassi.de” in “Handheld device” mode first, then in “Desktop computer” mode. In the first case, the version which is optimized for mobile devices will be displayed, in the second you get the default, for desktop computer optimized page.

Opera comes with a build-in pop-up blocker, which can be either enabled or disabled in the settings. To clear the browsing history, cookies or cache, just navigate to the “History”-tab in the settings and hit the desired button. The cache size can be set here too, by default, it’s 8000 KB. The security protocols (SSL2, SSL3, TLS1) can be disabled in the “Security”-tab, they are by default enabled (recommended).

In the misc. settings tab, JavaScript, Plug-Ins, animations and cookies can be disabled. If Opera should be your default browser for opening web pages, just check the “Set Opera as default browser” checkbox if it isn’t already. Grab and scroll can either be enabled here or on any page, through the context menu (long tap onto the web site).

Opera resource consumption
I measured the RAM consumption with DinarSofts MemMaid:

note: this test was done with DSL 2000 KBit/s and the following settings: PIE: One Column, Text Size = Medium, High Resolution *not* enabled; Opera: Desktop Mode, High Resolution enabled, Zoom = 90%

Startup time Opera: 15.87 sec.
Startup time PIE: 04.75 sec.

Security
Opera supports the security protocols SSL 2, SSL 3 and TLS 1. I had no problems with any web site which requires SSL like Google Mail, or Avant Go. Unfortunately, the Opera Password Manager “WAND” is not included in the mobile version of Opera. Maybe they will add this feature in upcoming versions.

pros and cons
+ good CSS support
+ Flash Player compatible
+ “grab and scroll” feature
+ tabbed browsing
+ PIE Favorite Importer
+ full screen mode
- sometimes slow page rendering

Opera Browser for Pocket PC

Many of you might use the Opera Browser on the desktop PC. This review will show some features of the version 8.65 for Windows Mobile Devices.

Test system:
Dell Axim x51v

• 624 MHz Intel XScale PXA 270 processor
• 64 MB RAM
• 256 MB ROM
• Windows Mobile 6 Classic
• VGA Screen

page layouts
The Opera browser for Pocket PC can display web pages in two different modes: desktop mode and fit to screen mode.

In desktop mode, the web browser doesn’t change anything at the web site and the layout should be the same as on a desktop computer. Anyway, there are many pages which can’t be displayed, because the mobile browser’s CSS support isn’t by far as advanced as on a desktop.
The second display mode is called “Fit to screen”, and I would recommend this one for most of the sites. The browser resizes every site to fit to the screen of a Pocket PC, so that you only have to scroll up and down, but not left and right.

In every of these modes, it’s possible to zoom in and out in a range from 25% to 200 % zoom, as well as disable image loading for a lower traffic consumption. There is a full screen mode too, which hides the upper windows bar and the menu bar to have more room to display the webpage. The display can be rotated right out of the browser, just tap “Menu” –> “Display” –> “Landscape” to toggle between landscape and portrait mode. I have no idea if this works only for the WM5/WM6 version or for the WM 2003 version too. If you are owner of a WM2003 device, please try it out and post the result as a comment!

browser compatibility
For this, I visited http://aadmm.de and tried several things. According to this page, Opera handles CSS 1, 2.1 without problems (the basic things), but I wasn’t sure at CSS 3. Opera had trouble with JavaScript on a site, which could be handled without problems in PIE. Anyway, except the flash player, opera can not handle any other plug-ins like QuickTime, RealPlayer or Java (as far as I know). The flash player plug-in can be downloaded at the Adobe Homepage. After installing it, make sure “Enable Plug-Ins” under “Menu” –> “Tools” –> “Settings” –> “Misc.” is checked and restart the browser to enable the Flash Player. Opera Browser can even handle YouTube if you install it and set “Identify as” to “Desktop computer” - but don’t expect too much, it runs very slow and by far not every video is loading:

MyVideo doesn’t work at all. Compared to the Pocket Internet Explorer, Opera can display many sites correctly where the PIE failed, especially if CSS is used. Some pages, like Google Mail (the desktop PC HTML version) look ugly and become unusable because of text overlapping and other things (in both Opera and PIE).
(Opera Mobile)(Internet Explorer Mobile)

Downloads are handled different than in the PIE. When a download is started, the Opera download manager will open up where you can get an overview over the current downloads. You have the possibility to stop, resume or delete them. The download manager can be find under “Menu” –> “Tools” –> “Show Downloads”

An other interesting feature is the Favorite importer, which can be accessed under “Menu” –> “Tools” –> “Manage Bookmarks” –> “Menu” –> “Import IE Favorites”

Please tune in soon for Part 2 of the review - it will look at resource consumption, tabbed browsing and a variety of other fun topics!

WM5torage is a free application for PDAs and smartphone with Windows Mobile / MS Smartphone 5.0 and 6.0. Using this application, your PDA acts as a USB mass storage device and you computer will detect it as an external drive (like USB sticks, card readers, MP3 player and so on).

You just have to connect your device to a computer (via USB connection), start WM5torage and activate it. Then your computer should detect a USB mass storage device and will mount it as an own drive. While WM5torage is connected to the computer, your memory card / flash memory is unavailible on the PDA because it needs to be unmounted.

There are different additional options, for example whether your computer may write or only read on it. Also, LED and vibration can show read / write activity. Multiple cards are supported, but only  one can be choosen at a time. You can even mount your Flash memory and data memory, but this can be problematic: When these memories are mounted at PC (= unmounted on PDA), your PDA may crash.

The application worked fine on my MDA III running Windows Mobile 6. I could mount my data memory and memory card; mounting my flash memory crashed the device. While mounting my memory card worked fine (4,1 MBs are transfered in ~ 8 seconds), mounting the data memory was very slow and almost crashed my computer.

Use the code CHEAPRECORDER to get 20% off Resco Audio recorder at the TamsShop

Handhelds have had audio recording capabilities for quite some time. However, they all were limited to recording audio in formats that either required loads of storage space or were impossible to use on the desktop. Resco’s Audio recorder can record MP3 and OGG files…can it stack up?

The program has very clean interface. The list shows all the files on the machine, the buttons are used for starting the recording process. The bar on the left side of the button serves as a ‘volume indicator’, showing the volume of the incoming audio signal:

The format of the output data can be chosen easily in the menu(5 presets):

If more control is needed, the presets can also be customized(format and audio encoding). The images below show a few of the possible formats:

Resco Audio recorder can record to both internal memory and an external memory card. The program can also turn the PocketPC’s screen off while recording:

Most audio recorders fail when a variety of speakers must be recorded, as their voices are differently loud. Resco audio Recorder contains a “Gain control” mode that guarantees more-less constant volume under such circumstances…altough it can slightly increase noise:

This review looked at version 4.0.0 of Resco Audio recorder on a hp ipaq rx4240. The program was very stable in the reviewing period and showed no weird behavior whatsoever even when run from a memory card.

Overall, if you record voice with your PocketPC, get this program by all means. The direct MP3 export alone is such a time saver that the 20$ are well invested. Resco Audio Recorder’s additional features make this an almost-perfect voice recorder that you definitely don’t want to miss!