My biggest complaint so far has been Windows Mobile 5’s browser. It (seemingly) has the html and javascript support of Internet Explorer 3. But what other options are there?

Existing alternatives

About a year and a half ago, a group in Microsoft Research created a Windows Mobile browser with advanced rendering and zooming functionality presumably similar to the features in iPhone’s Safari.

After making a closed beta of their browser a year and a half ago, the internet has heard exactly nothing from them, leading me to speculate that Silverfish has been rolled into a future version of Windows Mobile, especially since the next versions are said to heavily feature multi-touch.

A fancy new browser built into the next OS would be a compelling reason for users that haven’t already sprung for a shiny new iPhone to get a new phone with the next version of Windows Mobile.

Rendering

The best feature of Opera Mobile is something that desktop users have been taking for granted for a long, long time: proper rendering of web pages. Handsets are (apparently) just now overcoming the processor and memory limitations, although pages are still somewhat slow to render.

Zoom

A feature that goes hand-in-hand with desktop-style page rendering is the ability to zoom in on a page. This is a little clunky compared to the multi-touch interface I’m used to using on newer handheld devices, and is somewhat slow to load.

Feel

While the ‘modern’ features of the browser were nice, I experienced many ‘out of memory’ errors on my device, even when viewing relatively simple pages, and even when Opera was the only program running on the device.

Opera doesn’t respect the traditional Windows Mobile interface; instead, it implements its own non-client area, something probably confusing for most users of the program. This is the same problem that Quicktime had on Windows, where it ignored the usual Windows non-client area in favor of the Mac OS interface, a frankly stupid user interface choice.

Conclusion

For simple browsing (the primary use of mobile web browsing) I found myself gravitating back to the craptastic version of Internet Explorer built into my phone. I found IE’s low memory usage and intuitive interface to be more important than proper page rendering. It’s a good program to have on a device in case it’s needed, but won’t replace IE on Windows Mobile any time soon.

What’s DreamSpark?

Now, there’s this awesome new website where Microsoft is giving away a ton of stuff to college students, including Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005, XNA Creators Studio 2.0, and a one-year subscription to XNA Game Studio Connect. (See also: DreamSpark on Wikipedia)

The only difficulty is that you either need to spend hours figuring out how to actually download and install the stuff, or have a Ph.D in Computer Science and/or Human-Computer Interaction. Sigh…

Verification

The first step is to prove to Microsoft that you’re a student. Go to DreamSpark, and log in with your Windows Live account. Next, select the product of your choice. It’ll most likely be Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2005, or XNA Studio. Click “verify.” If your college is one of the few that’s made some sort of a deal with Microsoft, yours will be on the verification list and you’re home-free. Most likely, it won’t be that easy.

In the likely case that your college wasn’t on the list, click the link below the list to go through the JourneyEd website (creating an account, providing your credentials, etc). It’s free, thankfully. JourneyEd will send you an email with a link back to DreamScape, where you’re magically verified. I noticed that in subsequent sessions, I wasn’t “verified” unless I went through that email link, so keep that email around.

Download

Download and install your product of choice. Surprisingly, this is the easy step. Really, that’s all there is to this part.

XNA Activation

If you’re getting XNA, you’ll also want the free 12-month Creators Club subscription. This one’s a bit complex:

1. On DreamScape, on the XNA download page, click “get key.” You’ll need that.
2. On your Xbox 360, go to the “marketplace” blade. Select “Redeem Code.” Accept your free XNA subscription!
3. Now you actually need to download the XNA software. This one’s a doozy!
   1. On the Marketplace blade, go to “Game Store.”
   2. Select “More…”
   3. Select “Genres.”
   4. Select “Other.”
   5. XNA is at the bottom of the list, so you can get there by hitting up once.
   6. Download away! You might want to grab all of those things while you’re there.

That’s it!