Palm Updates Browser for OS 5

PalmSource, maker of the popular Palm OS handheld operating system, Tuesday released to manufacturers a new Web browser that is specifically tuned for Palm OS Version 5.

Device makers that license Palm OS, which include Palm, Handspring, and Sony, have yet to release hardware running version 5 of the operating system. When they do, they will have the option to include the new browser software, which adds new support for industry standards, according to David Creemer, director of product marketing at PalmSource.

Palm OS 5 is the first operating system from the Santa Clara, California, company designed to run on devices that use a variety of chips based on ARM's core design. That new architecture is designed to improve the speed of Palm OS-powered devices.

New and Improved

PalmSource, a subsidiary of handheld vendor Palm, in March released its own Web browser software, which was made available to users of several Palm handhelds, including its i705 wireless model.

The new browser, which the company said improves on the original design, was built in conjunction with Japanese software maker Access and is based on that company's Netfront Browser version 3.0 software.

PalmSource's original browser required Web sites to filter through a proxy server before they could reach a users' display. The proxy server, which was operated by Palm, translated Web pages so they could be viewed on the small screens of handheld devices. For example, if a user navigated to Yahoo.com, the proxy server would resize the page to fit on the small handheld display or convert images to meet color requirements before finally delivering it to a device.

Direct Request

"If the Web page they visited had JavaScript or cascading style sheets, all that information was just stripped out or delivered [in a limited way]," Creemer says. "The new browser, assuming you have not configured it to use a proxy, will directly request the Web content from the site."

The Palm OS 5 version of the browser has additional support for a number of Internet standards that makes this interoperability possible, Palm says. The standards supported include HTML 4.01, Compact HTML, and Dynamic HTML.

The result is that when a user accesses a Web site, "what you see is essentially a clone of what you would expect to see on the desktop," Creemer says.