The UIQ Evangelist

The moment of truth is finally here. After our exclusive @Web coverage and interview with the team who developed @Web, we now present you with the screenshots tour for your eyes’ feast. I will also present my initial thoughts on the first public beta of @Web.

This is NOT a REVIEW but a walkthrough of the new @Web browser developed by Digia. For your guys’ information, Digia is a long time Symbian veteran and have contributed a lot in the Symbian universe. And Digia was the ORIGINAL INVENTOR of what is now known as S60, which Nokia bought over. But that is not suitable to be discussed here.

Click on for more…

Digia @Web, as we all already know, is still in it’s infancy and this first beta is the result of months of hardwork by the developers. And it is too early to say anything about it. I will only show screenshots and the rest, you guys have to experience yourself…

Screenshot Group 01

The above screenshots showed the multiple zooms available in @Web. There are 4 levels of zoom (50%, 75%, 100% and 125%) which can be activated by dragging finger or stylus from top right to center (zoom out) and from bottom left to center (zoom in). In my opinion, this should work pretty well but sometimes, when you tap on the screen, the elements (links, images etc) are selected and instead of zooming, you get redirected to the element’s page. But a nice and innovative concept overall.

Screenshot Group 02

The above screens showed how @Web handled AJAX when it is used to view my Google Picasa Web Album. In my opinion, the Webkit engine used in @Web does give @Web some edges over other internet browsers available for UIQ 3 (Opera Mini and Opera Mobile - the default browser). When viewing pages optimised for Safari (also used in iPhone and S60 Browser), Digia @Web will render pages that are designed for those. And it is really nice to be able to use AJAX as long as you have fast internet connection (WiFi 0r 3G). It is not perfect, there are some niggles but we are not going to talk about that. This is a beta app, a very early beta version which is not going to perform as good as a fully developed app.

Screenshot Group 03

One of the most important Web apps out there is our webmail. And I can say that @Web can be used comfortably to view webmails. However, this version DOES NOT store cookies, hence, you need to type your login details every time you want to access your webmail. For GMail, you can view the HTML version or the XHTML version (not the WML, but the iPhone [again!!!] optimised version). And those who uses Yahoo! Mail can happily use the service which looks exactly like the desktop version.

Screenshot Group 04

One of the cool characteristiccs of @Web compared to the other 2 browsers for UIQ 3 is the simple setting window. Infact, in my opinion, the options are too simple and didnt provide options for users to further maximise the usage. For example, there is no option to switch off image display (to load faster) or to control the UA profile. Because almost 90% of the time, when you visit websites, you will be redirected automatically to the Mobile Optimised page of the site. There is no option to view the default desktop version. I hope the developer can add these functions in the next version due to be made available in a few months (but I am really not sure what will happen, a lot of uncertainties are in the cloud these days, especially after the announcement of the Symbian Foundation). The setting page can be accessed by tapping and holding anywhere on the screen for a few seconds. That one is cool!

Screenshot Group 05

Another usage of the internet is accessing information from websites like Wikipedia, Google, and so on. @Web is able to display information from these websites without problem. Except search resultst from Google are not displayed if Javascript is enabled. To view Google search’s results, switch off Javascript. The above screens show the Wikipedia pages with multiple zooms and images displayed. As long as the pages are not embedded with heavy multimedia (audio and video, flash etc), @Web is able to render them quite nicely. If you dont mind scrolling left, right, up, down, @Web can be very versatile for light browsing and accessing information.

Looking at how @Web perform right now, it is refreshing to be able to use an alternative browser which complements the outdated Opera 8.65 (default UIQ 3 browser). It is not perfect, and in order to make it a usable browser, us users must support the development by giving them feedbacks. I am not going to complain or criticise @Web openly because it is a beta but I do have some suggestions and opinion about it. Here are my topmost concerns :

- Need statusbar. percentage of pages being loaded. maybe can put the status in the browser bar like safari desktop. or at the bottom of the page

- Page scrollbar needed. We want to know where we are on the screen

- the speed is acceptable. considering the amount of things being processed

- RAM usage is kept to minimum. which is very-very good

- Javascript handling is better than Opera 8.65. Good

- Stability is good. More stable than what I expected.

I think the developer could use some design reference from an old and abandoned little internet browser called “Doris Browser” which was available for S60 1st Edition a few years ago. It has a small dot on the  edge of the screen which moves up and down to indicate the whereabouts of the page. Simple but useful.

At the moment,  for my daily usage, I dont like to browse heavy pages (audio & video)  which surely takes time to load and requires heavy processing. What @Web does at the moment is acceptable and I can  only hope it will be improved continuously in the near future.

If you are a UIQ 3 user and have not tested @Web, why not give it a try and report to the developers of your findings. Maybe your comments will improve @Web in the long run. Sign up (free) at the developer’s website and download the beta NOW!

Asri al-Baker, June 26th 2008 for UIQBlog.Com

Categories: Apps, Comments
Tags: Apps, Digia @Web, UIQ 3