Now that I have a PDA that can do WiFi, I’ve started paying attention to ‘net software for PalmOS. Palm packages a surprisingly good web browser, Blazer, but it has one crucial flaw: it’s too good at rendering a web page! If a page is set up to display at 800×600, Blazer faithfully tries to render it as such. On a screen that’s just a bit above 420×300, that leads to a whole lotta scrolling.
So my first mission was to find a web browser that could actually render a page for the size of screen I was using, as opposed to the size of a screen the developer was aiming for. And I stumbled across Opera Mini. Opera, my second-favorite browser, has a version specifically for devices with small screens, such as PDAs and cell phones. Opera Mini renders for these small screens, but tries not to lose too much from the original document.
And installing Opera Mini on a Palm is amazingly easy:
Step 1) You need to have the correct Java environment on your Palm. You can pick this up from WebSphere. Hotsync this to to your Palm in the usual way. This installs the IBM Java VM app. You also get preferences in the standard ‘preferences’ Palm interface. Install the Java VM via a hot sync.
Step 2) Then go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the download wizard instructions. Direct link for Palm devices.
The end result is a very pleasing browsing experience.
