Nokia Mobility Conference 2005
S60 Third Edition comes with Nokia's new web browser software for viewing full web pages on phones. The browser was first announced in June, when it was revealed that it would be based on Apple's WebCore and JavaScriptCore rendering engines, which are part of the KHTML open-source project. It's the same software that powers Apple's Safari web browser, and it can render nearly any standards-compliant full web page perfectly, including relatively exotic dynamic HTML such as pop-up menus.
Although the new browser will eventually include WAP support and replace Nokia's existing browser completely, that won't happen until the next version of S60, dubbed "S60 Third Edition Feature Pack 1". For now, the new browser is strictly for viewing full web pages, not WAP sites, so the old browser is still included for viewing that type of content.
Unlike many newer mobile browsers that try to re-format web pages vertically to avoid horizontal scrolling, Nokia's new browser takes the opposite approach and preserves the original layout of the page as much as possible, fully embracing 4-way scrolling. To do this, the browser has a traditional mouse cursor, just like a desktop PC. When you scroll to the edge of the screen, a unique semi-transparent overlay appears called "minimap" that shows an overview of the page and a red box highlighting where you are.
The one place where the browser does modify the layout is with columns of text. It re-flows text so that no one block of text is wider than the screen. So once you scroll to a piece of text you want to read, you can simply scroll down to read all of it. Without this feature, you might have to scroll left and right to read each and every line of text, which would obviously be unacceptable. (You can see this in action in the fourth and last screen shots above.) Other than that, the browser tries to preserve the page layout as faithfully as possible.
The new browser also has a page overview function, shown above, which shows an overview of the page so you can quickly jump to the part you want. Pressing the "Back" soft-key brings up the slick history navigator, which lets you visually scroll back to any previous page. There are also controls for image and text size, to adapt to your eyesight or preferences, or compensate for pages with unusually large or small elements. An RSS tool is also provided, although I didn't have time to test it out.
To make it even easier to navigate large pages, there is a "Find" function that lets you jump instantly to any part of the page by simply typing the first few letters of a word. As you type, it jumps to matching text, and simply pressing the down key scrolls instantly to the next match.
The new browser will be included on all S60 Third Edition devices, including the N91, 3250, Eseries, and the new Nseries phones just announced. (The screenshots above were captured using an E61.)
This new browser is a very interesting alternative to the "smart rendering" technology everyone else in the industry seems to be pushing. For most quick mobile Internet usage, a web or WAP site optimized for mobile phones is generally the best option whenever it is available. But when really need to use a full web site on the run, Nokia's new browser may very well be the best way to do that.
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