I had just about figured that browsing the web using Palm’s Tungsten C was impossible. It comes with a browser, but that was never usable as far as I could tell. I tried numerous other options, and finally found one that worked much better than I had dared to hope.
I tried using Xiino. This browser just looks ugly to start (with decidedly low-resolution graphics), and has completely incomprehensible icons. It wasn’t usable at all; most pages would result in a blank screen. It also uses a proxy server for images (though it doesn’t call it that): the “DataServer” – pds.mobirus.com – no longer exists, which means that you can’t display anything at all unless that setting is cleared. There’s no way to set or unset it; just clear the name entirely.
I tried using Opera Mini. This requires using the old IBM Websphere Everyplace Micro Edition (WEME) – which in reality is the J9 Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The word is that IBM WEME 5.7.1 is much more stable than IBM WEME 5.7.2 (neither of which are supported or available any longer). No matter – Opera Mini v4 (the current) did not work at all, but froze during initial operation; Opera Mini v3 works but crashes reliably and frequently.
I even tried something called TeaShark; that didn’t get past the startup stage (which was buggy at the outset). This wasn’t too surprising since it was running on IBM’s J9 JVM like Opera; word has it that the IBM JVM was crippled on PalmOS in some way.
I love Opera Mini, and used it on my Nokia 6265i (and later the 6165i) – and missed it. However, running it on the J9 JVM gave a completely different experience (I never did try using Sun’s Java Manager – but that was for MIDP 1.0 only) I started thinking to myself: the NetFront browser on my Samsung Caliber is ever so much better…
Then imagine my surprise when I found that there is a NetFront browser for PalmOS. It turns out that the Sony Clie (a PalmOS device) used NetFront for their default browser, and that it would work on a Palm device as well. There are copies of it available on the web, but the one I saw came with something called MaxX to make it work with a different screen resolution than the original browser expected to find (on the Tungsten T I think).
After downloading and installing via HotSync – using Linux (with GNOME’s gpilotd) – the browser crashed when run. However, running on the Tungsten C, MaxX is unneeded; removing it solved the problems entirely.
Running with the NetFront browser has been a delightful (and unexpected) experience. The only problem seems to be a connection-related problem; for some reason, the WiFi connection seems to “age” and loses connectivity even though the device doesn’t think so. Reconnecting seems to fix this.
For more details on using the NetFront browser – and people’s experiences with it – check out this forum thread over at 1src.com.
If you use Google for RSS or for news, try m.google.com in NetFront; it’s the best experience I’ve had yet. You can also use Google’s mobile gateway directly by going to www.google.com/gwt/n and entering the URL that you wish to go to.
UNIX Administratosphere 