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BlackBerry OS 4.5 Screenshots – Part VII – Browser

by Ronen Halevy on Mar 31st, 2008 at 2:38 pm EST
4 Comments »
 

I know quite a few of you have been wondering how the browser in OS 4.5 stacks up. While I did see some improvements RIM has quite a way to go before I will truly be happy.

The first thing you will notice about the browser is the new start screen. Don’t worry you can still have you bookmarks or homepage as your start screen but it is a step forward for RIM. This new start screen has replaced the old “Go To” menu. When you select “Go To” it will now show this menu.

Bb0s45browser[13]Bb0s45browser[12]

The addresses auto-complete as you type which is nice. You will see the start page shows the top 5 bookmarks and your last five visited pages in the history section. If you click on the Bookmarks and History titlebars you will see each page respectively. Sadly RIM did not think that the inclusion of a Google/Yahoo Search box would be helpful…

The new page view is 10 times better than the original. It is more opera-like with the ability to zoom in and out.

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You can even click on links from the zoomed in view. Did any of you notice the FaveIcon near the title of the website. I am not sure if that was in OS 4.2.

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The menu is more or less the same as the older menu

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The page view does not always work so well. Below you can see what I mean from RIM’s BlackBerry.com website.

Bb0s45browser[7]Bb0s45browser[8]

It also still cannot open CNN.com. It does open the New York Times but it does not look right. As I said work in progress.

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The main browser options menu still has the same 3 main option categories

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The submenus are where things get interesting. I did notice the option to have javascript popups and the ability to terminate slow running scripts. Not sure if those were there before. RIM has also kept the same 6 emulation modes.

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Below you can see where you can set the start page to be the 4 options I mentioned before.

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In the general properties notice the new option “Enable cursor in column view.” From now on you can use the mouse in the column view! Pretty cool stuff. Also notice the enable Javascript Location Support option. Not sure what that does. There is also a new option that I did not see before in the Default View choice called Auto. This auto sets the page or column view based on some unknown factor. (at least to my knowledge )

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The cache operations still seem to be the same. As you can see the cache gets ridiculously large in page view. I wish there was a way to limit it.

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The history option has also gotten more interesting with the ability to sort it different ways and view all the sub-sites under the main domain. I am not 100% sure if this is new.

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Thats it for the browser… Stay tuned for more

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 and is filed under News.
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4 Comments to “BlackBerry OS 4.5 Screenshots – Part VII – Browser”

  1. Posted by: David
    March 31, 2008 at 7:02 pm EST

    Much of what you posted is in 4.3 so it’s not new to 4.5

    The start page with bookmarks/history and autofill for previous URLs is in 4.3.

    Favicon is in 4.3 already.

    All the browser options you mentioned also exist already in 4.3 – javascript popups, terminate slow scripts, selecting your start page (same options), etc.

    On 4.3, I can open cnn.com but it auto-opens the mobile version. I have emulation mode set to Blackberry.

  2. Posted by: Luciano ES
    March 31, 2008 at 7:35 pm EST

    I wish we could not only set up all these configuration options for all sites, but also have alternative sets of options for specific sites. For example, automatically disable tables, images and CSS whenever I visit somesite.com or enable Javascript whenever I visit someelse.com, or emulate Netscape when viewing so-such.com. That would be smart, not trying to fool us into believing that the Internet can be dealt with in a one-size-fits-all manner.
    .
    But the main problem in 4.2 is link navigation. Some links are impossible to reach. I often make them accessible by going into Desktop View mode (which I hate) then going back into Mobile View mode. That seems to fix the problem almost every time. But that workaround is a major annoyance.

  3. Posted by: john
    April 29, 2009 at 1:08 am EST

    Hey im using the new OS now, and I’ve noticed or havnt been able to find the desktop view. I use my phone to look up guitar tabs and chords on the road. And when in column view it crams everything together and makes it useless… Any ideas on how to fix, and/or use desktop mode?