Database Develop

Will browsing with Skyfire be smooth?

Skyfire.com shows the HTC Kaiser as a device browsing with the new skyfire browser...allowing imbedded flash and video! (on the product page)
I find it hard to believe that the kaiser could graphically handle this. Anyone else? I really hope so though, looks like the best browser hands down!!!

It's probably a thin client browser, hence the 100% compatabilty, and full site rendering as opposed to a "mobile" version.
Stolen from Engadet Readers' Comments on SkyFire.....
"I believe (and this is pure guess-work) that this program is working like the PSP-PS3 browser, ie. that the browser is actually running remotely and that the Phone is more a VNC interface, otherwise I can't figure out how it could do so much, also that would explain the long privacy disclaimer. I (unfortunately) can't believe that such a browser could be built ground-up natively on the WM platform, when even Safari, Opera, Minimo haven't been able to include such functionality. Again, this is how you get Flash support on the PSP's optimized browser, so it makes sense imho."
The disclaimer, if you hadn't read it explains that every site is logged, which would make sense - as it's their server actually browsing the web -Great idea, looking forward to a UK beta.

This is what I've heard - everything is rendered and compressed by their servers, and the "browser" just displays content they've produced, complete with their own inserted advertising. Naturally they'll sell off your browsing history too.
It's not quite the solution I'm hoping for. There's no good reason why PIE can't be improved by MS, or a proper Safari based browser can't be developed for Windows Mobile.

Hmm...sort of perfecting the Opera Mini idea.
cool, because I really enjoy opera mini. I can't see how streaming youtube will be usable though with this idea...

I dont know how its usable either but it works, :: shrug:: I dont bog myself down with the technical details,

Best Internet browser + high quality mediaplayer

Hey folks,
i got 2 questions for my tytn2.
1. Which is the best internetbrowser at the moment to use? Most stable and fastest? And why?
2. is it possible to hack/tweak the resolution of for example mediaplayer? If i run youtube movies or whatsoever the resolution is just crap, also in fullscreen mode. What is the best tweak to get much better resolution?
Thanks in advance!
(using hypdragon 3 rom=wm6.1)

Answers
1. Skyfire It's stable and it's fast because they cache pages on thier server so you don't have to download all that crap.
2. Not that I know of so just use Skyfire. It plays videos right on the webpages so there is no need for a sperate app like the youtube player.
PS I do not work for Skyfire, it's just the best browser that I've used.

As far as mobile web browsers go, I find that Opera mobille 9.5 is the best for speed and options. But if your going to be visiting sites that have embedded video and such, then Skyfire is hands down the best. Skyfire is definitely the browser to use if you want a desktop experience. But I find myself using Opera more often since you can open multiple tabs, use bookmarks, and you can download files/long press on pictures and then save them. I also think Opera loads pages a tad bit faster and I like how when you flick and scroll it will continue to scroll and come to a gradual stop (like when you flick through icontact).
Now about the whole image quality of movies I have read several threads suggesting ways on how to improve movie quality, but when you boil it down, nothing will make a huge difference cuz our screen resolution is only 240x320 at only 65,000 colors. So no matter what software you install, its not gonna give you more pixels. If you want to watch high quality movies on your phone then iPhone would be your best bet at 320x480 with 16 million colors.

Ok, thanks for answers.
seems i might install latest skyfire browser..
is there any thread about skyfire and latest versions?
are people using other browsers with excellent performance?
i guess internet explorer is just standard crap then..
about my second question, the movie quality in for example youtube, im pretty disappointed about my device then (compared to iphone, ofcorz kaiser can do a lot more then iphone, but just this aspect then).
i get that u cant get the resolution better, its just a ''phone-handicap', but im surprised there are no tweaks/drivers for it as well..
maybe other ppl still have solutions?

I like Skyfire ( I have Beta version 0.85.0.7927), but I HATE the small view EACH page. Once I set it to the size, I prefer it to STAY there! Too much having to manipulate each page so that I can READ the thing!
Next, I notice that Skyfire is able to bring up images that IE and Opera cannot. I log into an online study website for my securities license. With IE and Opera, I cannot view the study material, but with Skyfire I CAN. BUT... It's too small! And I have to resize it for EVERY study question.
Does anyone know what it is in Skyfire that allows me to view things that IE and Opera don't? And... is there ANOTHER browser that can do that? (In Opera, I have the JAVA SCRIPT enabled) but it's not indicative of my not being able to view the study site.
Thanks for the help everyone...

I use multiple browsers depending on what I need.
I use Opera Mini most of the time because it is blazing fast. In my experience, it smokes skyfire and Opera Mobile in pure speed, and it does a decent job rendering the page. However, it is pretty bare bones - no tabs, no java, etc. But it gets the job done if you just want to read the news or look at a website.
The rest of the time I go back and forth between skyfire and opera mobile. Skyfire is pretty quick, and it is a full on browser. You can even watch videos on hulu - they are pretty rough, but they are viewable. I think Opera has a better user experience, but it is not as fast.

bbc iplayer on android

is it comeing to android ? i think i read somewhere is was like 2 weeks ago cant remember exactly where is this true?
and is there any tv sreaming apps for android?

Search Marketplace for "Beebplayer"
Works well over WiFi - No download and its not offical.

Has anyone got this working on 3G in the UK? Or anywhere for that matter?
I keep getting "Cannot play this video" which apparently means the carrier does not support iPlayer (?)
Does this mean that T-Mobile UK block the iplayer ports? Could we get this to work with an ssh tunnel or something?

It doesnt seem to be in the market anymore????
Anyone have the apk?
Cheers

estecman said:
It doesnt seem to be in the market anymore????
Anyone have the apk?
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is still in the market, just a bit hard to find. You need to search for 'beebplayer'
Attached the apk (zipped) anyway.

Cheers for the zip!!!
Thats totally weird I did of course carefully search for beebplayer and I never got a hit?!
Anyway I'll try the apk, thanks.

for any who can't get it to work, it needs 1.5 firmware.

This is an impressive implementation, and the only choice to hand, however as the owner of both an iPhone 3g and a white G1 i have to say the the comparison between the two shows up just how much better the iPhone h.264 streams are to the mobile streams used via the mobile iPlayer portals.
It's a shame these streams can't be utilised by the developer, but I imagine the G1 just doesn't have good enough graphics acceleration to cope with it

leoni1980 said:
This is an impressive implementation, and the only choice to hand, however as the owner of both an iPhone 3g and a white G1 i have to say the the comparison between the two shows up just how much better the iPhone h.264 streams are to the mobile streams used via the mobile iPlayer portals.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Getting the iPhone streams on there was my first choice - in fact all the code to resolve the streams is in beebPlayer but unused. The problem is that the G1 can't play the iPhone streams.
leoni1980 said:
It's a shame these streams can't be utilised by the developer, but I imagine the G1 just doesn't have good enough graphics acceleration to cope with it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, the G1 is more than powerful enough. The problem is that the iPhone streams are in a .MOV container that the G1 video player can't decode. It's annoying - it's SO close to being MP4 which would be perfect, but of course Apple had to ruin the party!

Does that mean if the streams weren't in a .mov container we'd be able to use the direct iPhone iplayer page using the Steel browser and the iPhone user agent spoof option?
That would be pretty cool.
Impressed as I am with this app the mobile streams are just too poor for me.

Hi DaveJ!
Is there any chance you could put server/port options in beebplayer (or release source code) so that I can play around with getting it to work through a proxy? I'd love to be able to use this app over 3G...
Thanks for making a great app! (and great maps )

leoni1980 said:
Does that mean if the streams weren't in a .mov container we'd be able to use the direct iPhone iplayer page using the Steel browser and the iPhone user agent spoof option?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nearly... the next issue there would be to deal with the media player spoofing, as iPlayer checks the HTTP request and expects it to be exactly the same request and behaviour as the QuickTime player on the iPhone, and is actually the trickiest bit to copy.
In Python, this was fairly easy to forge. On Android's Java however, it likes to make forging this very difficult and is what gave me most of my problems when I last tried it.
Billthe4th said:
Is there any chance you could put server/port options in beebplayer (or release source code) so that I can play around with getting it to work through a proxy? I'd love to be able to use this app over 3G...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is theoretically possible, but is actually pretty similar to the iPhone media player problem - it would need a custom video player app, rather than the one built-in to Android that beebPlayer currently uses (beebPlayer never touches the video streams itself.)
I'm already toying with the idea of a custom video player which would deal more pleasantly with errors (particularly "Video cannot be played" could use a better description!) but it's not my priority right now unfortunately.

Have you seen the Windows Mobile implementation of iPlayer done by a guy here at XDA-Devs? (It's called myPlayer)
That can use VLC on a desktop PC to re-encode the BBC streams to more suitable sizes for mobile devices, this also gives the option of viewing live tv channels (which the BBC now broadcast online) as the mobile app uses telnet to command VLC to open the BBC stream, convert it on the fly.. then streams it to the phone.
Would be great to have something like that on android, and may help with the quality issue of using mobile streams?

Any chance we can make use of get_iplayer?

i like this app. im only really able to run it over 3g when i use adrenalin

since running JACs hero roms beebplayer is working for me on 3g as well as wifi with t-mobile UK.
I don't know if this is a change in T-mobile's blocks on streaming or because of the hero rom. but shhhhhhh keep it quiet, I don't want TMob to switch it off again...

MyPlayer
Any chance you could get together with the developer of Myplayer for Windows Mobile? I really like Beebplayer, works a treat on my Hero ... but I'd really really like to be able to listen to Radio 5, which Myplayer lets you.
Cheers

what a great (not previously found) app.... thank you.
Been watching the wifi stream over 3G without a problem couldnt ask for anything more.
t-mobile UK
JF ADP1 1.5

great app,
this app is great!, couldnt find it with a search on the market place, if you have trouble, view all applications in the marketplace and keep scrolling till you see it, i couldnt find it with a search for some reason,
this app works like a charm over wifi, really fast and great quality,
i have a g1 and on the network "three". I have no problems with using beebplayer over 3g, the app also tells you the download size just in case your on a limited data plan.
this is a must have application, just wish thier was on for demand 5, and channel 4od.

[Q] [CM7] Adobe Flash v. Browser v. Youtube

Hi folks. I've got the last nightly CM7 before it went Stable, and most things are working great. (Running off microSD via single-card installation at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1022786 )
But I'm having a little bit of trouble deciding on the best way to configure Flash (v. 10.2) and the Browser in light of Youtube.
I'd prefer not to have to run the separate Youtube app all the time, but:
1. It seems Youtube.com detects Android regardless of the browser's User Agent setting, and won't display the standard Flash interfaces in the browser. (Goes to m.youtube.com instead)
2. It seems that using any User Agent besides "Android" keeps Youtube videos from playing when launched from the browser. They attempt to load and then throw up an error.
3. I would prefer to keep the User Agent set at "iPad" or "IE6", because many web sites load their simplified uglier Mobile version when Android is detected -- NYTimes, NPR, etc.
4. So if I leave the User Agent at "Android", Youtube videos play but I get the mobile web version at many sites. If I leave the User Agent at "iPad" I have to use the separate Youtube app.
5. Is there a "right" way to do this?
6. Is there any way to fool Youtube into displaying its standard Flash interface?
7. Is there any way to feed the "Android" user agent when visiting Youtube but the "iPad" user agent to most other sites?
Thanks in advance for any advice you can share with this humble noob.

Are you using the stock browser? If so try a different browser. I prefer Dolphin HD.

TheValk said:
Are you using the stock browser? If so try a different browser. I prefer Dolphin HD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dolphin HD is still the stock browser, really, with just some add ons. Your better bet is Opera 11 Mobile - flash works quite well, and with a changed user agent string, does not get shoehorned into using mobile only sites...

Yes, stock browser. But I recently read that Dolphin is a skin or reimplementation of the same WebKit engine, so I wonder whether it would help? (I've used it under NookieFroyo and it seemed to have similar available user agents.) I guess I'll give it a shot later, thanks.
Edit: Thanks, Divine_Madcat. I'm not a big Opera fan (I've never liked it on Windows or BlackBerry) but I'll try it -- any particular user agent setting you recommend?

If you use Dolphin HD you can download a program called "Desktop toggles" that will allow you to toggle between mobile and desktop versions of the website.

xdabr said:
Yes, stock browser. But I recently read that Dolphin is a skin or reimplementation of the same WebKit engine, so I wonder whether it would help? (I've used it under NookieFroyo and it seemed to have similar available user agents.) I guess I'll give it a shot later, thanks.
Edit: Thanks, Divine_Madcat. I'm not a big Opera fan (I've never liked it on Windows or BlackBerry) but I'll try it -- any particular user agent setting you recommend?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, i hate Opera on the desktop, but the experience on the Nook is amazing - its like using a full desktop browser (and with our res, that is a good thing). One thing that sets it apart, is that it is using the GPU (instead of the CPU) for page rendering, which makes the scrolling and zooming seamless. It also supports flash quite well, and the entire experience is very well polished.
As for user agent; i am using the Firefox 4 windows agent, but really, any FF3/4 or IE7-9 should work just fine.

Thank you! Sounds quite nice. Interesting that it's such a mess on the BlackBerry; it seems to get hung staring at its own overworked graphics UI reflection and often won't even exit.
I thought it was odd that stock browser doesn't have a FF (or Chrome?) user agent, though I'm sure one could be hacked into place. Thanks again.

[Q] is there any good internet browser othen than ****ty internet explorer

Question,
so is there any, i downladed opera from market place but it doesn't work..
INternet explorer doesn't open half of the sites i try to open....videos don't run other then youtube on the most of streaming videos sites

Internet Explorer 9 (the desktop version) with html 5 will come with Mango update soon, that sould help with those issues, dont understand why your not using either the HTC Youtube app or the Youtube's own for your flash video needs.
Its adobe that are not currently releasing Flash for WP7, its not Microsoft or Internet Explorers fault...

oh wow
so its for sure then that my hd7 will internet explorer 9 desktop version in the next update

PoisonOmnia said:
Internet Explorer 9 (the desktop version) with html 5 will come with Mango update soon, that sould help with those issues, dont understand why your not using either the HTC Youtube app or the Youtube's own for your flash video needs.
Its adobe that are not currently releasing Flash for WP7, its not Microsoft or Internet Explorers fault...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Soon? I don't know about that.

I like surf cube its a nice browser but it costs money and in mango everyone will probably switch to ie9 for hardware accelerated html5 and hopefully flash 10.1/2
Sent from my T8788 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

I'm pretty sure Opera hasn't made a browser for WP7... So that opera links app isn't a browser. Another thing... Opera hasn't made a browser because, if I'm not mistaken, Microsoft doesn't allow other browsers on WP7, only browser shells, so the rendering engine is the same as IE Mobile, but the shells or "browser apps" in the marketplace just present it to you with a different UI. Mango, although not "soon" (an objectionable point of view) will be bringing that killer IE9 to WP7. At this point all we would "need" is flash and we'd have the best mobile browser. I honestly don't need flash on a mobile browser, ads piss me off and YouTube is viewable via app. What else is flash good at? games? Please just play on a real console or PC when your at home, and when your on the go, WP7 Xbox Live games are really cool... So in my point of view once IE9 comes out, with or without flash, its gonna kick ass.

PoisonOmnia said:
Internet Explorer 9 (the desktop version) with html 5 will come with Mango update soon, that sould help with those issues, dont understand why your not using either the HTC Youtube app or the Youtube's own for your flash video needs.
Its adobe that are not currently releasing Flash for WP7, its not Microsoft or Internet Explorers fault...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought another factor was that the current IE doesnt support plugins....

morpheus1982 said:
I thought another factor was that the current IE doesnt support plugins....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is also true and from the Mango unveiling yesterday they also stated that IE9 Mobile will not support plugins either.

I've been using Metro Browser since almost day one. Does a pretty nice job overall.