Database Users

Deepfish, anyone has tried it?

The Deepfish Technology Preview enhances existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. Our zoom-able interface and cue map allow you to quickly access the information you care about over the web without ever losing track of where you are.
Note : Deepfish is currently only available by invite only to a small number of beta users. Please visit http://labs.live.com/deepfish page to keep informed of future updates and availability.

Deepfish has been MIA for some time now. They released a limited quantity for beta testing a while back. Id also like to try it.
Dont bother looking for it online. Even if u find it with a key, it wont work. because once u log onto the internet it does a key validation check, and wont let u go any further.
Another good browser is picsel 1.0.5. But it has its limitations.

I managed luckily to get an invite for the deepfish beta a while back. While i was impressed with it initially, I believe it has too many flaws in it's current state. Opera Mobile 4 is way, way better and does everything that deepfish is trying to do and more. So much so that I have removed deepfish from my device!
The flaws that I have noticed with it are that while it allows you to browse a full web page and zoom in, it does this by rendering the page as an image file on a central server, then you download the image. When you then zoom in to a part of the page you want to read, it is like zooming in on a (low quality) image. the images and text especially are blurred and difficult to read on a pda's screen. Opera mini doe snot have this problem as it renders text as actual text. This alone made me switch to Opera.
As you are browsing an image, it is difficult or most time impossible to enter text into boxes, such as entering a login or password. For the few times that you can enter your information, you cannot click the login button!!! (facebook is an example).
With your web page being an image, there is no flash support whatsoever.
The last frustrating thing is that most times it does not download the entire page of a website. So imagine browsing your favorite web blog, you read the first page of info, but the last 3 inches of the page is missing, meaning you cannot click "next" to go to the next page!. This happens on MOST of the pages you browse, sometimes even more than a few inches are missing from the bottom.
So while deepfish is a good idea in theory , it has so many issues i reckon Microsoft labs team have given up as it probably will require way more resources than they have available to turn it into a viable application.
If you are looking for a similar browser that works, get Opera Mini4. If you are already using that, you are not missing anything by not having deepfish.

My biggest annoyance with Android's web browser

Android comes with a seriously awesome web browser. It can easily browse regular desktop versions of web pages even over EDGE with no major problems. I'm so glad to leave crippled mobile versions of web pages behind me forever.
EXCEPT
Google, of all places, seems to have some kind of lock preventing the Android browser from gaining access to the desktop versions of their websites. They come up with the mobile versions by default, and even if you click the button to switch it to the desktop version, it doesn't. It takes you to yet another mobile version that is just styled a little closer to the desktop version, but it's by no means identical.
Google built this browser, they know that it can handle desktop webpages, why won't they let us do that with their own sites? I find it really annoying to deal with crippled versions of Google's web pages. In Gmail I can't edit my contacts, in YouTube... I don't know what the hell's going on... all I see is large ugly text, in Google Search I don't have the convenient switch to image search while viewing web results. It's FRUSTRATING.

chefgon said:
Android comes with a seriously awesome web browser. It can easily browse regular desktop versions of web pages even over EDGE with no major problems. I'm so glad to leave crippled mobile versions of web pages behind me forever.
EXCEPT
Google, of all places, seems to have some kind of lock preventing the Android browser from gaining access to the desktop versions of their websites. They come up with the mobile versions by default, and even if you click the button to switch it to the desktop version, it doesn't. It takes you to yet another mobile version that is just styled a little closer to the desktop version, but it's by no means identical.
Google built this browser, they know that it can handle desktop webpages, why won't they let us do that with their own sites? I find it really annoying to deal with crippled versions of Google's web pages. In Gmail I can't edit my contacts, in YouTube... I don't know what the hell's going on... all I see is large ugly text, in Google Search I don't have the convenient switch to image search while viewing web results. It's FRUSTRATING.
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I really dont know why your browser does that, but I have access to the regular google.com classic view page. I can pic between web, images, local, news.. etc.. I can also log to igoogle.com

I can aswell

Most mobile sites have a link to view the regular site. Google has this.
go to www.google.com then you see on the bottom Mobile is default choice, click on CLASSIC to view the regular website version

Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.

quedijo said:
Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.
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Yes I've had that problem as well as not being able to get into market have no clue why. Frustrating!!!

I keep having this problem too. The only thing that seems to solve the problem is a restart. I dont know if it has anything to do with me clearing the cache but it IS verry annoying.

Yeah, even killing the browser process doesn't do it either.

quedijo said:
Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats network issues with thew the 3g when i disable 3g it worked but sometimes it wont

i think it has to do with your cache i wish they come out with a new firmware that lets you save programs to sdcard or cache to sd card

I'm having the same issues. It was working when I first got the phone, but now it only gives me the option for mobile view.

I found a solution to the most annoying, biggest mistake from Google. For those who loved iGoogle and cant find it, here it is:
www.google.com/ig/i?source=mofe
And here is an alternate BETA site from Yahoo as backup:
http://beta.m.yahoo.com/

brooklynite said:
I found a solution to the most annoying, biggest mistake from Google. For those who loved iGoogle and cant find it, here it is:
www.google.com/ig/i?source=mofe
And here is an alternate BETA site from Yahoo as backup:
http://beta.m.yahoo.com/
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Click to collapse
I guess Google found out the shut down the site.
Yahoo's Beta sucks.

Why Facebook Apps when Opera looks same as Real internet?

I was wondering why do people use Facebook Apps if opera can access facebook.com and deliver the same exact content (minus viewing videos) in the same exact form as if you were using any computer browser?
Just a though...

an app is a better interface for a portable screen the full facebook page isnt too friendly.
too bad the winmo facebook app is a steaming pile

I stopped using facebook app on any devices I've come to own.
As you said, Browser delivers it much better.

lbhocky19 said:
an app is a better interface for a portable screen the full facebook page isnt too friendly.
too bad the winmo facebook app is a steaming pile
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actually, for the HD2, its negligible to use a facebook app since webpages on opera looks the same as a computer's browser.

I use touch.facebook.com with Opera Mobile 9.7
It's much better than the dedicated app, as far as speed anyway.
dwizzy130

I use either touch.facebook.com or the full website. More and more the full website as the touch version somehow chooses to display only what it feels like in the feeds/updates, and in random order. Sometimes I'll have old stuff at the top, and find latest updates in the middle/bottom of page, with no apparent sorting, and if I fire up the full website I'll see twice as many. I've often had duplicate entries show up as well, particularly when "showing older updates".
Same with the facebook app, fim, facebook mobile... it seems anytime I try them all in a row no 2 show the same things and/or in the same order. So full site it is, so I can see what I'm supposed to see. And it's convenient anyway plus I get full functionality when uploading photos or such... with the app either you put a text update without photo or a photo but without text, so that you can't simply upload a photo with a little comment... on the full site you can put a text update and join a photo.
One reason for not using the full site is that it's heavy and thus can be slow if you don't have a good connection/uses a lot of data which isn't fun if your data plan is very limited.

Why does Google on the sense tab work differently than on the Opera browser?

I don't know if anyone else has tried this, but the google box that you can bring up on the Sense tab (the one for internet) is different than the one when you open the Opera Browser that is right under the address bar. The difference between the two is the one on the Sense tab gives you the results of the search, but anytime you click on any of the links for your results its TEXT ONLY. The one on the Opera Browser has links that takes you to the site, but still lets it stay as a "desktop" looking site. Anyone know why it does that? Is it a glitch? Can it be fixed?

I agree. I would like to know as well.
In the tab: you can change it in registry to the following and it will do every google search in desktop version :
google.com/search?hl=en-US&output=html&q=%s
however, if you are in the browser already, and did a google search, it will come up in mobile search results.
How can we change the one in browser to desktop searchers?

Hmm never noticed this before,might be a good idea to
change it to give proper search results

The search bar that you refer to invokes Google's specilaized mobile view rendering service. Essentially what Google does is to take all the websites out there and convert them to a mobile friendly version before diplaying it on your screen.
That's why it is different from the Desktop View and even the Opera Mobile View because Google is dong the conversion, not the browser.
It's quite handy if you want quick access to text information.

lemonspeakers said:
How can we change the one in browser to desktop searchers?
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custom user agent.
as you are now opera is telling google it is a mobile browser. spoof for example the FireFox desktop use agent and you will see desktop google.
as for the search tab, as mentioned above you can force the results and even use a different search engine if you like.
more details here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=656897

Big Browser Test Plan

I want to make a (more recent) comparison of web browsers available to us on the ASUS TF101 and TF201 tablets, something that is useful. In my experience we don't have all that many threads that are Really Good on this subject, that don't get bogged down with noise and opinion drowning out the signal after a while.
The browsers, web sites, and procedures I will use for testing are being collected HERE as they are written.
I am open to suggestions of things to test as long as they don't cost me $$$, are legit, and hopefully widely used by communities of people in general. If it has issues with the stock browser in HC/ICS/GB/Froyo in fast/simple usage, like crashy crashy! Then I am more likely to test a suggestion.
Note for mods: this is cross posted in the forum for both tablets.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

One test i would like to see is which browsers you can put into desktop mode and fool HULU with.

Neither. Hulu knows it's an android because you're running an android version of flash.

Joey563 said:
One test i would like to see is which browsers you can put into desktop mode and fool HULU with.
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Yep, its the Flash version that matters.
In the Apps forum there's a hacked Flash plugin that works with Hulu.
@topic
Great idea. Looking forward for the results.
The things that i'd like to see reviewed are the rendering speed and image quality while browsing.

Speed will be noted somehow but I really don't know how to scientifically do image quality, past "Looks ...." to me, lol.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

Lifehacker is a good website to test. See if any browser can reproduce the two different scrollable objects properly, like it would be on a browser in Windows or Mac. A lot of browsers will simply choose to lock the two scrollable columns into the page, such that if you try to scroll one, the other follows.
I'd suggest testing a website like Verizonwireless.com, specifically the Explore, Shop, My Verizon, and Support buttons. On a computer, a mouse-over shows a drop-down menu, and a click takes you to the next page. The iPad does this very smart where tapping once on "Shop" for instance will bring down the dropdown menu, tapping it once more will take you to the webpage it links to. So far, the Android browsers I've tried have an awkward execution for this mouse-over effect where you have to hold the button like "Shop" for around half a second and then swipe away your finger to avoid going to the link it points to. See if you can find a browser that works mouse-over in a similar fashion to Safari.

+1 for lifehacker/deadspin/gizmodo sometimes (usually) first load is a blank screen and I have to hit reload. After reload its marginally functional, but not 100%
Also try facebook in desktop or iPad mode... Some stuff works well... Other stuff is total fail, like inviting people to events.
I'll post more as I remember them. I've actually been thinking of making a list like this, but you beat me to it.
Edit: thought of one more: google docs... Word processor, spreadsheets, the whole lot of them...

Spidey,
One thing I find very helpful in web browsing on my Transformer is the ability of a browser to scroll using the scroll wheel on a bluetooth mouse. I've noticed some browsers will scroll with the mouse, and some will not.
If possible, during your testing, you might want to add that as a yes/no feature, it would only take moments to test and include in your results.
Thanks for taking this on, I'm looking forward to your results/conclusions, and the inevitable "discussions" that will follow, either agreeing or disagreeing with your results.

Hi!
Can you test logmein.com as well? In stock and Dolphin it is not working.
I know there is .apk for Android, but it's costly.

@ERamseth gdocs is on my list and whenever possible I'll be testing desktop versions of sites. Can't say that I use Facebook very deeply though so a grain of salt may be needed..
@dm36415 Sorry, don't have any bluetooth mice to test with but great suggestion!] If the Windows box doesn't get pissy maybe I can try yanking my wired one off the desktop, but I can only test that on the TF101 as my Prime won't be getting a dock for a while :-(.
@stenc55 my word that site pissed off the stock browser, just trying to scroll the front page. Not sure how much I can test it but I'll try. Out side of Opera/Firefox, everything will probably barf at it though, and those two might as well lol.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

Are you just planning on testing rendering quality/performance, or are you going to sum up some of the other UI features that get mentioned (how tabs work, gesture support, how fluid/laggy scrolling down the page is, is there an incognito mode, etc)

How easy/difficult to import bookmarks from a PC browser, with or without folders.

Most browsers use the same back end as the stock browser, i.e. they do about as much work as Maxthon used to do. So the most use on quality/performance I can give versus the stock, I'm sure will usually be load times and usability. Opera & Firefox are the only two that I know of who bring their own magic for the back end. Unless I get something like native libs in the app data to suggest they included their own rendering engine, I'm marking it as "Stock".
I've been testing the Prime's stock browser, Angel, and Boat for part of the day in between taking care of my mother. Current data that I've recorded:
App name (in launcher, usually), market page, version tested, demographic (mobile, tablet, ...), rendering engine, approximate start time and page load times, exit method (menu, closing last tab, etc), available user agent settings, bookmark storage, sync, and folder support, gesture support, quick control support, plugin support, password remembered, speed dial support, max # of tabs, and "Editorial Remarks" like what I've written for Angel Browser:
My remarks on Angel Browser said:
Has a handy sidebar on the left, similar to what you can do in Opera Desktop; quick controls interfere with sidebar.
You can configure what toolbars are visible.
You can configure by pattern, what app handles what URL.
You can configure by pattern, what UA is given for what URL
You can configure the heck out of what clicking stuff does.
You can configure where most data is stored.
You can configure quick controls, UI, and most everything.
Bookmarks UI can have ads unless you purchase the Angel Browser License app.
Handy scroll down button (by default).
Has "Notes" and "Read Later" features.
Good alternative to the stock browsers UX.
Click to expand...
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For websites tested, App/Site/Load Time/Rendering/Date and Editorial remarks are also being made for websites, like this one for the stock ICS browser on the Prime:
Prone to crashing and input lag
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For rendering, it's mostly focused on does it look/work like the desktop site and is it usable? For example, mail.google.com is gitchy in Boat browser and may give you a seizure.

Try editing a document in Google Docs (right now in every browser I tested it's almost impossible and does really strange things).

Note well: I no longer have a TF101 available so tests off TF201 by me are scrapped. People seem to have settled down post Chrome on ICS enough that I may just scrap it totally. If someone would like to pick up on TF101, PM me with your Google Docs address.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

Zooming, text reflowing and hardware acceleration.
The most important aspects of a browser, and the only browser that does these properly on mobile, is Opera.