Today at Tech-Ed EMEA Microsoft announced the availability of Internet Explorer Mobile 6. What does this mean? Well now you will get a better mobile browsing experience on Windows Mobile devices. IE Mobile 6 features include:
- Improved fidelity (support for full fidelity desktop rendering), with rendering engine from Internet Explorer 6 on PC
- Layout fixes for mobile screen (e.g. text wrap)
- Enhanced Script and AJAX support – Jscript v5.7 from Internet Explorer 8
- Multimedia – Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 for Adobe Flash content
- Optional royalty-free component for OEMs
- Deeper integration with search – Address bar and homepage.
- Improved user experience
- Enhanced cursor navigation model
- Touch and gesture support – pan support
- Multiple zoom levels
- Easy switching between mobile / desktop view
Why is this important? Well previously, IE Mobile was a built separately from the desktop and focused on mobile optimised sites. Now with the desktop IE 6 engine included with IE Mobile, Windows Mobile users will have the best of both worlds with the ability to view mobile optimised sites and the ability to view full desktop web sites right on their device..
Compared with other popular mobile browsers, I'm told IE Mobile 6 matches in comparison. I have not verified this for myself but if someone does please let me know.
And here is a screen shot of IE Mobile running within the new Windows Mobile 6.1.4 emulator
Here is CNBC running within the emulator in 'Mobile View':
and switching to 'Desktop View' renders the desktop version:
You'll notice the menu popup which is the exact same functionality as the desktop browsing experience.
What about video? Here is a screen shot of Dirty Money series promo video playing in the emulator without issues.
Overall I think this is a good move from Microsoft to bring the IE 6 rendering engine over to Windows Mobile. It allows us developers to develop applications using web standards or using .NET Compact Framework and has made browsing on your Windows Mobile device a lot faster and easier. Only drawback on this is it's not a separate download, I'm hoping this will change but we'll have to wait and see.