Web Browsing on a Palm - Picsel Browser review

Introduction

First, Picsel Viewer is one of the best programs for Palm OS. It is not only a browser but a viewer for MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, PDF files, HTML files, images and TXT-files. It is not buyable or downloadable but integrated in some CLIÉs from Sony. This year a Chinese company released a smartphone – with Picsel Browser, it seems to be the same. As it’s Chinese the whole program is Chinese, but there are English language packs availible. Someone put Picsel Browser into the internet – and it worked on PalmOne’s devices !! You have to find both the program and the language packs by yourself – we cannot give any links. It is used as a native PDF viewer – for the moment the only one for Palm OS – but not so often as a web browser. Is that a mistake?

I don’t review Picsel Viewer but Picsel Browser. I don’t know the difference between them. Picsel Viewer was integrated in some Sony CLIÉs, and Picsel Browser was integrated in a Chinese smartphone.

Getting started

It’s not easy to install – you cannot install it via HotSync, not from a card with the launcher, not from a card with Filez, … The only file manager (and launcher) that can copy it into RAM is “ZLauncher”, and perhaps “McFile”. So I copied it with Zlauncher

• BrowserHelpPages
• EnglishLanguage Pack
• PCRP
• PicselBrowser
• PicselBrowserCore
• SMPT

into my RAM. Then I tapped on the “Picsel Browser” icon in the launcher. It showed the startup screen:


and then the menu:


Browsing the web

For browsing the web, you have to tap on the world icon, then you can enter the URL:


With my wireless broadband connection, it isn’t as fast as a desktop browser, but faster than WebPro e.g. After a few seconds it displays the page in “real” layout, like it would look on a “real” browser. But if the whole page shall fit the screen, the font has to be *very* small. To zoom, you must tap twice somewhere on the screen, then hold the stylus und “scratch” up – for zooming in - and down – for zooming out. To follow a link, you have to tap it twice. You can fill in forms, too, but in multiline-text forms, it only supports 80 letters, so there is no use for webmail or boards. Unfortuanely you cannot download any file type – but you can open these files it can display (MS Word, Excel. PowerPoint). Perhaps it is more a viewer than browser (although the name) – it displays the page (viewing) correctly, but browsing capabilities like downloads, forms etc. aren’t very good. Now you see two pictures of 1src.com. One contains almost the whole site (zoom out), another one is zoomed in much:



Like every other browser, Picsel Browser can reload pages (see menu picture), but there is no “Back”-button. Use the “navigation panel” (see menu picture) for getting back.

Most pages are displayed correctly, but on some pages it has problems with tables:


It is the German site “Winfuture”. It should be look like this:

Small screen rendering

It’s nice to see pages like on desktop, but desktop browsers show them in 800 and more pixels width, but a Palm only in 320 or 480 (landscape). That means scrolling left and right, up and down, or the font gets so small that you can’t read anything. So if you switch to small screen rendering, it renders the page that it fits the screen widh – you have only to scroll up and down:

Text without small-screen-rendering

Text with small screen rendering

Offline files

Every file type it “understands” you can read both online and offline – the most important might be PDF and MS Word. For the moment Picsel Browser is the only app for Palm OS that offers you native PDF support (but there might be some other solutions in the future) – and that is very important today in the internet. Files can be both in the RAM and on a flash card. To open an offline file, it shows an open dialog which is very similar to the Windows Explorer:


Most MS Word, Excel and other files are displayed as naturally as HTML files are.

Bookmarks, settings, ...

To create a bookmark, just tap on the icon in the menu (see menu picture above). To open saved bookmarks, there is another icon. Bookmarks can be both online and offline documents. When you open a bookmark it doesn’t jump to the last position but to the beginning.

Possible settings are: turn pictures on / off, font size, homepage, user agent, proxy server, cache clearing, history clearing, cookies on/off.

My results

On the one hand, it isn’t legal to upload, download or use it if you don’t have a device with Picsel Browser in ROM, on the other hand it is a very good browser with singularly features, especially rendering pages and speed. And no other program can display native PDF files, no other browser show non-HTML documents without changing the app (except WebToGo IMHO) – you can return browsing when you’ve read the document. Other browsers would open DocumentsToGo for example and if you start them again they return to the start page and you have to find your last page again.

For me it isn’t the only browser on my Tungsten|C because sometimes I need downloads – and it can’t download ZIP files e. g. – or I need to save the page offline (NetFront can) or writing mails, Picsel Browser can only write 80 letters. So read the next part of “Web Browsing on a Palm” – maybe I’ll review NetFront then – and you know which second browser you need, too.

What do you think about Picsel's work?