Friday, November 7, 2003
Tired of the Ol' Horizontal Scroll? Give PIEPlus a Try
Posted by Doug Rausch in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM
Tired of moving that horizontal scroll bar from side to side as you try to read the latest Web offering? Eyes about to pop out of your head from trying to focus on the back and forth sliding text? If you’ve been thinking about an add-on to Pocket Internet Explorer to reformat Web pages to something more suitable to your Pocket PC screen, but you're unsure about using a subscription service, you may want to take a serious look at ReenSoft’s PIEPlus. I did and I was very pleased.
ReenSoft’s PIEPlus v1.1 offers many additions to the basic functionality of Pocket Internet Explorer. The ability to open multiple browser windows, view in a full screen mode, and to identify Pocket Internet Explorer as either IE5.5 or IE6.0 are needed tools but admittedly available in several free packages as well. Where PIEPlus shines is in its ability to optimize Web page content to fit nicely in the confines of your Pocket PC screen, all but eliminating the need to horizontally scroll. If you use your Pocket PC for more than occasional Web browsing I would recommend giving this program a try.
Easy Access
The features of PIEPlus are accessed through the plus menu that is added to the bottom of your Pocket Internet Explorer screen. In Figure 1 you’ll see that I currently have three browser windows open with CNN selected and that I am using the Pocket View to look at this Web page. Before we go any farther let’s look at the configurable options offered by PIEPlus.
Figure 1: The Main Menu of PIEPlus
Simple Configuration
PIEPlus offers basically four configuration options as shown in Figures 2, 3 and 4. These options allow you to select what you see when you open a new browser window, what elements are visible in full screen mode, how text is split when using the pocket view, and some registry hacks for configuring Pocket Internet Explorer.
Figure 2: General Options
Figure 3: Defining When to Split Text
Figure 4: Pocket Internet Explorer Settings
The Screen, the Whole Screen, and Nothing But the Screen
PIEPlus supports a full screen mode which, depending upon the elements you've selected to hide in the program options, gives you a little bit more screen real estate. The full screen option is nice but PIEPlus lacks any way to switch browser windows without first reverting back to the normal screen so that you can access the PIEPlus menu. Adding a window option in the context menu or allowing the user to set a button to tab through windows would make this feature much more usable.
I also noticed that PIEPlus seems to start another instance of Pocket Internet Explorer for each window that it opens. If I opened three windows in ftxPBrowser I would see one instance in my running programs list. When I opened the same three Web sites in PIEPlus I had three instances of Pocket Internet Explorer running. Probably not a big deal except that it seemed that PIEPlus used about 250k more memory to open those same three windows.
Figure 5: Full Screen Mode
Figure 5 also gives an indication of how PIEPlus's strongest feature, its ability to optimize Web pages for the Pocket PC's smaller screen, formats the Amazon.com home page.
Say Bye-Bye to the Slide
If you're like me you'll sometimes find an interesting article you want to read while browsing the Web on your Pocket PC only to quickly get tired of scrolling back and forth, so you make a note of the link so you can read it later, back at your desktop machine. Some programs do a decent job of formatting the page to fit the screen such as ftxPBrowser and there are also subscription services are such as Skweezer available. This reformatting functionality is definitely PIEPlus's strong point and I was impressed by the job it did. I now found I was reading those articles on my Pocket PC rather than waiting until later.
Figures 6 and 7 below are the two halves of an article that would require frequent horizontal scrolling to read.
Figure 6: Non-Optimized Web Page - Left Side
Figure 7: Non-Optimized Web Page - Right Side
By using the Pocket View feature of PIEPlus the Web page is reformatted into a form that requires no side scrolling. The result is actually quite readable. Often using the Simply View feature in ftxPBrowser I would notice that the elements were all present but they would often by stuck together almost like one long run-on sentence. PIEPlus does a very nice job of placing the contents of the Web page into a readable, and navigable form. Figures 8 and 9 show the same article reformatted by PIEPlus. Notice the photo from the right margin of the original article now has slid under the article byline.
Figure 8: Reformatted Web Page - Note Picture Placement
Figure 9: Article Text
PIEPlus also offers extended context menus giving you access to needed functions when activating links or for navigating a Web page. Notable omissions though were the ability to save the target of a link or to save an image. As stated earlier this would have also been a great place to allow the user to switch browser windows. A necessity in full screen mode.
Figure 10: Link Context Menu
Figure 11: Page Context Menu
Gotchas
Although a solid program I've listed a few areas I found lacking.
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $14.95 (affiliate link).
Specifications
This program will work on any color Pocket PC running Pocket PC 2000, 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003. The program takes up 108k of RAM on the device.
Conclusions
If it were only for the support of multiple browser windows, full screen browsing, or some of the Pocket Internet Explorer registry hacks I would not be recommending this program as there are other programs that do the same things better and some such as ftxPBrowser, that do it for free. ReenSoft, however, has done a very nice job of developing a package that reformats Web pages into a form that's easy on the eyes and on the horizontal scroll bar. As it is, this program is well a worth a look and if the next version incorporates a few of the shortfalls I've noted here it will be a very strong package indeed.
ReenSoft’s PIEPlus v1.1 offers many additions to the basic functionality of Pocket Internet Explorer. The ability to open multiple browser windows, view in a full screen mode, and to identify Pocket Internet Explorer as either IE5.5 or IE6.0 are needed tools but admittedly available in several free packages as well. Where PIEPlus shines is in its ability to optimize Web page content to fit nicely in the confines of your Pocket PC screen, all but eliminating the need to horizontally scroll. If you use your Pocket PC for more than occasional Web browsing I would recommend giving this program a try.
Easy Access
The features of PIEPlus are accessed through the plus menu that is added to the bottom of your Pocket Internet Explorer screen. In Figure 1 you’ll see that I currently have three browser windows open with CNN selected and that I am using the Pocket View to look at this Web page. Before we go any farther let’s look at the configurable options offered by PIEPlus.
Figure 1: The Main Menu of PIEPlus
Simple Configuration
PIEPlus offers basically four configuration options as shown in Figures 2, 3 and 4. These options allow you to select what you see when you open a new browser window, what elements are visible in full screen mode, how text is split when using the pocket view, and some registry hacks for configuring Pocket Internet Explorer.
Figure 2: General Options
Figure 3: Defining When to Split Text
Figure 4: Pocket Internet Explorer Settings
The Screen, the Whole Screen, and Nothing But the Screen
PIEPlus supports a full screen mode which, depending upon the elements you've selected to hide in the program options, gives you a little bit more screen real estate. The full screen option is nice but PIEPlus lacks any way to switch browser windows without first reverting back to the normal screen so that you can access the PIEPlus menu. Adding a window option in the context menu or allowing the user to set a button to tab through windows would make this feature much more usable.
I also noticed that PIEPlus seems to start another instance of Pocket Internet Explorer for each window that it opens. If I opened three windows in ftxPBrowser I would see one instance in my running programs list. When I opened the same three Web sites in PIEPlus I had three instances of Pocket Internet Explorer running. Probably not a big deal except that it seemed that PIEPlus used about 250k more memory to open those same three windows.
Figure 5: Full Screen Mode
Figure 5 also gives an indication of how PIEPlus's strongest feature, its ability to optimize Web pages for the Pocket PC's smaller screen, formats the Amazon.com home page.
Say Bye-Bye to the Slide
If you're like me you'll sometimes find an interesting article you want to read while browsing the Web on your Pocket PC only to quickly get tired of scrolling back and forth, so you make a note of the link so you can read it later, back at your desktop machine. Some programs do a decent job of formatting the page to fit the screen such as ftxPBrowser and there are also subscription services are such as Skweezer available. This reformatting functionality is definitely PIEPlus's strong point and I was impressed by the job it did. I now found I was reading those articles on my Pocket PC rather than waiting until later.
Figures 6 and 7 below are the two halves of an article that would require frequent horizontal scrolling to read.
Figure 6: Non-Optimized Web Page - Left Side
Figure 7: Non-Optimized Web Page - Right Side
By using the Pocket View feature of PIEPlus the Web page is reformatted into a form that requires no side scrolling. The result is actually quite readable. Often using the Simply View feature in ftxPBrowser I would notice that the elements were all present but they would often by stuck together almost like one long run-on sentence. PIEPlus does a very nice job of placing the contents of the Web page into a readable, and navigable form. Figures 8 and 9 show the same article reformatted by PIEPlus. Notice the photo from the right margin of the original article now has slid under the article byline.
Figure 8: Reformatted Web Page - Note Picture Placement
Figure 9: Article Text
PIEPlus also offers extended context menus giving you access to needed functions when activating links or for navigating a Web page. Notable omissions though were the ability to save the target of a link or to save an image. As stated earlier this would have also been a great place to allow the user to switch browser windows. A necessity in full screen mode.
Figure 10: Link Context Menu
Figure 11: Page Context Menu
Gotchas
Although a solid program I've listed a few areas I found lacking.
- No ability to save the target of a link or to save images;
- No way to switch browser windows in full screen mode.
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $14.95 (affiliate link).
Specifications
This program will work on any color Pocket PC running Pocket PC 2000, 2002 or Windows Mobile 2003. The program takes up 108k of RAM on the device.
Conclusions
If it were only for the support of multiple browser windows, full screen browsing, or some of the Pocket Internet Explorer registry hacks I would not be recommending this program as there are other programs that do the same things better and some such as ftxPBrowser, that do it for free. ReenSoft, however, has done a very nice job of developing a package that reformats Web pages into a form that's easy on the eyes and on the horizontal scroll bar. As it is, this program is well a worth a look and if the next version incorporates a few of the shortfalls I've noted here it will be a very strong package indeed.
