Microsoft has canceled the Deepfish [1] research project lab. I was not sure if I would love the Deepfish browser as there was a big lack of missing features like AJAX, JavaScript, Flash/Silverlight. Yesterday I read in the news that Microsoft will port their Internet Explorer 6 render engine to Windows Mobile [2]. Hey, does this mean that Internet Explorer 6 will get a rebirth?
The good thing is definitely that Windows Mobile gets a better Web browser from factory. Today we have Safari running on the iPhone, Opera mini as a Java application, the Nokia browser etc. which offer more HTML and JavaScript support than the very old-styled PIE.
The biggest benefit will be that it is the full IE6 render engine, meaning that any page that renders properly in IE6 on the PC should do just fine on Windows Mobile.
Well, I will believe this when I first view any Web page on a 240x320 small screen but yes, if the page gets zoomed and we get a lens feature like in Deepfish (or Opera mini) it should be fine. The only bad thing is that it is the IE6 render engine which is already very old. Why is it not possible to use the IE8 render engine to support more CSS properties and forget the IE6? Most Web developers will complain this as IE6 usage is going down more and more.
Microsoft, do you plan to offer an update for Windows Mobile 6 (i.e. as AKU3) or will it only be available in next version WM7?