New IE Windows Mobile Browser Leaked

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	29th Sep 2008

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There was a rather amusing incident back in May at the launch of the HTC Touch Diamond where the company said it had installed Opera 9 because it wanted "the best mobile browsing experience". Naturally, this all occurred in front of a rather perturbed Microsoft Marketing Rep. Quite simply however Microsoft - despite having just launched Windows Mobile 6.1 - didn't have its new mobile IE browser ready (the deadline was missed, can you believe it?!) so it had no choice but to give in.

All these months later however, this is what you were missing out on...

'6 On 6' is the codename being given to the new Internet Explorer mobile browser and leaked shots have just revealed what we all knew: we weren't missing out on much.

Sure, the enhancements are welcome: scaled 'desktop' or customised 'mobile' display modes, but the same age old problems exist such as permanent vertical and horizontal scroll bars that look like they came straight out of Windows 95 and a UI which eats up far too much of the phone screen.

As for other basics such as tabbed browsing, RSS feeds and integrated search engines, Unwired reports they are all worryingly absent at this stage. Furthermore, rather than building a dedicated browser from the ground up, this is simply IE6 stuffed onto a phone - hence the '(IE) 6 on (WM) 6' name. Oh dear.

Come on Microsoft, we know you can do better. What's more you're going to have too....

Link:
via Unwired

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Gordon said on 29th September 2008

Me too. Fingers crossed.

After all a world where we have a decent choice of browsers across a range of mobile OSes will make the market far more competitive. And be... more