Last week there was quite a bit of hype around a new browser concept coming out of Microsoft Research, Deepfish. I was luck enough to be included in the beta so I thought I’d share some comments.
Before we look at Deepfish I thought I’d test out Windows Mobile 6 to see what the [Intilecta] website looks like. One area where Microsoft have made signficant improvements with WM6 is with the web browser – this is clearly evident if you take a look at the following screen shot:
WM6
Next we look at Deepfish: As with most other mobile applications you install Deepfish on the desktop, then the next time you connect your device it will be installed via ActiveSync/WMDC. The following screen shots are how the website looks after navigating to the website using Deepfish.
Deepfish – Initial page load, Zoom square, Zoomed in with Cuemap
The initial screen shows the website rendered as it would be on the desktop. Despite being quite small it is easy to determine where everything is and get an appreciation of what part of the site you want to read. In order to read the text you need to zoom in – clearly this part of Deepfish has been designed for the smartphone as it SUX for the pocket pc. To zoom in you press the Enter key, then use the stylus/direction pad to move the zoom square around. IMHO I think this would be much better if you could use the stylus to select a rectangular region on the screen to zoom in on.
Once zoomed in, the experience for the pocket pc user isn’t much better. An ideal experience would be for the user to be able to drag the stylus around the cuemap and for the screen to follow – instead you have to select a new spot on the map and then the screen moves there; similar but not the same.
First impressions: great start, but a long long long way to go!