[Superfly_FR]

BlackBerry 10 browser 'beats every desktop browser' - Smartphones & PDA Phones
(Australia positive buzz)

Can a mobile browser be better than the one on your desktop PC? The new BlackBerry 10 browser is, according to its designers at Research In Motion (RIM)
That is, when you're measuring HTML5 compliance.

"We have a more [HTML5] standards-compliant browser than anybody else," said Alec Saunders, RIM's VP for Developer Relations. "It beats every desktop browser, it beats every mobile browser, it beats every tablet browser, when you start to measure the scores."
The scores he referred to are points allocated by the site HTML5test.com, which awards a mark for every measure of compliance that it detects in a browser while running its testing regime. The maximum score is 500, and the new BlackBerry 10 browser scored 484.
"I think Tizen just beat us by one point," Saunders conceded, "But Tizen doesn't really matter, right?"
This high level of compliance has been a major focus for RIM in the development of the new BlackBerry operating system, with Saunders admitting that web browsing in previous BlackBerry devices had been "a very poor experience".
The effects of this effort trickle down throughout the entire system, and not just in the browser. Applications can be written in HTML5, and take advantage of technologies like WebGL, which adds another tool to the app developer's tool belt.
The RIM team demoed HTML5 apps at BlackBerry Jam Asia, Bangkok, showing how these apps can perform with the same functions as apps written natively for the platform. One app shown is for controlling parts of a car using a Bluetooth connection, allowing you to remotely open doors and the boot, and start the engine to warm it up before driving.

[RubberChicken76]

This is well and good, but rendering, speed and stability are more important to me.

• My 8300 couldn't render anything anything right and was excrutiatingly slow
• My Torch uppped the ante substantially in terms of rendering and was quicker - noticeably better than BlackBerrys before it. But still slow compared to the competition out at the time
• My PlayBook could handle just about any site thrown at it, but crashed constantly and would checkerboard while loading certain sites or fail to load them the first time

To be killer, I don't care as much about its HTML5 rendering score. I want a fast, smooth, accurate, stable browsing experience.

Don't even mind if it's not the "#1 browser at everything imaginable". But I do want competitive.

[Superfly_FR]

This is well and good, but rendering, speed and stability are more important to me.

• My 8300 couldn't render anything anything right and was excrutiatingly slow
• My Torch uppped the ante substantially in terms of rendering and was quicker - noticeably better than BlackBerrys before it. But still slow compared to the competition out at the time
• My PlayBook could few just about any site thrown at it, but crashed constantly and would checkerboard while loading certain sites or fail to load them the first time

To be killer, I don't care as much about its HTML5 rendering score. I want a fast, smooth, accurate, stable browsing experience.

Don't even mind if it's not the "#1 browser at everything imaginable". But I do want competitive.

It will. And your PlayBook's going to love it too.

[bk1022]

All fine and good. But are website designers going to test their websites against this browser? They already need to test against IE, chrome, safari, firefox and opera to name just a few...

Every platform has rendering idiosyncracies, no two browsers render complicated items exactly the same.

[Superfly_FR]

No they don't have to. HTML5 compliance doesn't mean HTML 4 uncompliance.
Since the browser is webkit "lastgen" powered, shouldn't have issues with this.

Believe me, it's easier to program for the PB browser (ancestor of BB10 browser) than for ie ! <- see edit reason

[notfanboy]

"We have a more [HTML5] standards-compliant browser than anybody else," said Alec Saunders, RIM's VP for Developer Relations. "It beats every desktop browser, it beats every mobile browser, it beats every tablet browser, when you start to measure the scores."
The scores he referred to are points allocated by the site HTML5test.com, which awards a mark for every measure of compliance that it detects in a browser while running its testing regime. The maximum score is 500, and the new BlackBerry 10 browser scored 484.

What a bold boast. Saunders is being disingenious here, or at best simply misinformed. Maybe at the time of the interview, he didn't know about at least one Android browsers that had a higher score in the html5test. That's understandable because things change very quickly. I would expect though that he knows that having a high score doesn't mean it can actually render real world html sites.

According to html5test.com: "We cannot distinguish between a browser that supports a particular feature and a browser that lies about supporting that feature. " I've been testing against actual html5 testbeds, the Aston Martin one being one of the cooler demos on Microsoft's test suite. While the Playbook browser has the exact same html5test score (including bonus points) as reported for the BB10 browser, it fails on many of the tests, and could not even render the Aston Martin one. All you have to do to get a high score on html5test is for the browser to claim that a feature is supported, regardless of how buggy or incomplete the implementation is.

[Sith_Apprentice]

What a bold boast. Saunders is being disingenious here, or at best simply misinformed. Maybe at the time of the interview, he didn't know about at least one Android browsers that had a higher score in the html5test. That's understandable because things change very quickly. I would expect though that he knows that having a high score doesn't mean it can actually render real world html sites.

According to html5test.com: "We cannot distinguish between a browser that supports a particular feature and a browser that lies about supporting that feature. " I've been testing against actual html5 testbeds, the Aston Martin one being one of the cooler demos on Microsoft's test suite. While the Playbook browser has the exact same html5test score (including bonus points) as reported for the BB10 browser, it fails on many of the tests, and could not even render the Aston Martin one. All you have to do to get a high score on html5test is for the browser to claim that a feature is supported, regardless of how buggy or incomplete the implementation is.

This is very incorrect. Current 2.1 is 411 + 9 bonus points. The HTML5 test - How well does your browser support HTML5?

[Roo Zilla]

No they don't have to. HTML5 compliance doesn't mean HTML 4 uncompliance.
Since the browser is webkit "lastgen" powered, shouldn't have issues with this.

Believe me, it's easier to program for the PB browser (ancestor of BB10 browser) than for ie !

Even if that's the case. Which do you think website owners are going to optimize for? The one with almost a billion users, or the one with less than 2 million?

[Sith_Apprentice]

Even if that's the case. Which do you think website owners are going to optimize for? The one with almost a billion users, or the one with less than 2 million?

Webkit has a TON of users.

List of Webkit based mobile phones and tablets

There are hundreds of millions (maybe topped the 1 billion mark) of webkit based browsers. almost ANYTHING mobile is webkit based. Web developers should very much take webkit into account when designing sites, just as much as your desktop browser.

[dentynefire]

I think what he means is that because IOS is so popular the dev may still opt to develop for the masses even though BB10 can do better. I agree but he has to realize that BB10 will still be able to use those designs. It will just make others look bad when they can't offer the same experience if that's the case.

[peter9477]

What a bold boast. Saunders is being disingenious here, or at best simply misinformed. Maybe at the time of the interview, he didn't know about at least one Android browsers that had a higher score in the html5test. That's understandable because things change very quickly. I would expect though that he knows that having a high score doesn't mean it can actually render real world html sites.

If you read the article in question: "I think Tizen just beat us by one point," Saunders conceded, "But Tizen doesn't really matter, right?"

[Rickroller]

We already had a thread about this..so let's all rehash this again, shall we!

BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

[Superfly_FR]

We already had a thread about this..so let's all rehash this again, shall we!
BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

Therefore the : (Australia positive buzz). It's news and rumors forum; the other thread is from another source and a week old ... Give me a break

[G-bone]

Okay, let's recap : yes,the HTML5 Test is only one benchmark for the capability of a browser. But, it is an important one, particularly from the standpoint of a developer using. WebWorks. I don't think BlackBerry would be lying about the capabilities of their browser : they have too much at stake. If they are saying they will have the best browser, then they either mean ; for devs, or overall.
While I believe devs may be Alecs' #1 priority, BlackBerry wants to prove itself best overall. PlayBook has not had the resources thrown at it that BB 10 has, for obvious reasons.
BB 10 will be thrown at PlayBook, anyway.
PlayBook was never more than a live test.
BB 10 is the goal, the point of departure.
I understand your cynicism, but if you haven't discovered by now that it is a new BlackBerry, then you haven't been paying attention.
Hope this clarifies the optimism and faith that many of us have.
Sincerely...

[Superfly_FR]

Okay, let's recap : [...] But, it is an important one, particularly from the standpoint of a developer using. WebWorks.

Sure it is.

But it is much much much much more : the browser IS HTML5. Yes, you read it perfectly well, don't think native,cascade nor air ... HTML5 that is.
I don't have the count and/or how deep they went on the UI side but the browser is - as of date - not only the most compliant HTML5 browser ever (add Tizen) but also (one of ?) the greatest app ever developed WITH HTML5. So you can call it a "webapp"; can you imagine the gap ?

The new BlackBerry® 10 browser has been built with groundbreaking Web technologies.

JAM56 - The New BlackBerry 10 Browser - Desire2Learn Capture Portal

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

I don't just care about a compliance score mr.saunders. I care when I go to crackberry and the only thing to load for the first three seconds is the rectangle ad banner at the top. Speed matters too. I hope they are in the"experience race" for the browser too...

[borceg]

I'm really sorry but the truth is html5 score means nothing. It still lags on Google page, no ad-blocking or extensions at all, no "Remember my password" option, bad bookmarks management, high memory consumption, slow loading of html5 content (games)... Instead of focusing on beating benchmark scores, focus on real-world performance. And the most important, browser based on html5 code always sucks. Native is native.

+

The HTML5 test does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform.

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

I'm also sick of this on the playbook: you load a site and its showing pretty much everything. You navigate or scroll to what you want. You are about to tap it to select/open that item and *just* before you touch it the browser loads a little bit more of the page and the whole thing shifts. You end up clicking on something you don't want or an ad. If you wait for the page to load completely (when its seemingly visibly loaded) it takes forever for the blue bar to finish.

[kbz1960]

I'm also sick of this on the playbook: you load a site and its showing pretty much everything. You navigate or scroll to what you want. You are about to tap it to select/open that item and *just* before you touch it the browser loads a little bit more of the page and the whole thing shifts. You end up clicking on something you don't want or an ad. If you wait for the page to load completely (when its seemingly visibly loaded) it takes forever for the blue bar to finish.

I think if that isn't fixed it means trouble.

[notfanboy]

Sure it is.

But it is much much much much more : the browser IS HTML5. Yes, you read it perfectly well, don't think native,cascade nor air ... HTML5 that is.
I don't have the count and/or how deep they went on the UI side but the browser is - as of date - not only the most compliant HTML5 browser ever (add Tizen) but also (one of ?) the greatest app ever developed WITH HTML5. So you can call it a "webapp"; can you imagine the gap ?

I've heard this claim repeated so often but I've never seen it challenged, even by those who know this is ridiculous. Only the topmost layer of the browser is written in "HTML5", That's means menus, URL bar, bookmark management, etc. The actual heart of the browser, the part where the internet is rendered, in other words the everything that goes on inside the tabs - that is webkit code. Webkit is the also the code responsible for html5 compliance, which is why other browsers get the benefit as well.

If in fact the webapp was responsible for the whole browser, then it would indeed be the "greatest app ever developed with HTML5". It's just not possible to do what webkit does with a web app.

I'm really sorry but the truth is html5 score means nothing. It still lags on Google page, no ad-blocking or extensions at all, no "Remember my password" option, bad bookmarks management, high memory consumption, slow loading of html5 content (games)... Instead of focusing on beating benchmark scores, focus on real-world performance. And the most important, browser based on html5 code always sucks. Native is native.
+

Based on the September BBJAM video posted above: it won't have ad-blocking or extensions, they still won't have the bookmark management expected by the users, and they also set some expectations regarding checkerboarding.

I predict that somewhere, a Cascades based browser is under development that will blow the stock BB10 browser out of the water.

[borceg]

Based on the September BBJAM video posted above: it won't have ad-blocking or extensions, they still won't have the bookmark management expected by the users, and they also set some expectations regarding checkerboarding.

I predict that somewhere, a Cascades based browser is under development that will blow the stock BB10 browser out of the water.

Dead on start

[Superfly_FR]

I don't just care about a compliance score mr.saunders. I care when I go to crackberry and the only thing to load for the first three seconds is the rectangle ad banner at the top. Speed matters too. I hope they are in the"experience race" for the browser too...

blah. If you go to crackberry.com with a BB10 device (devAlpha), you're redirected to Mobile Blogs | CrackBerry.com and the load is less than 2secs for me (wifi) for the whole page. Obviously you state things you've not tested.

[Superfly_FR]

I'm really sorry but the truth is html5 score means nothing. It still lags on Google page, no ad-blocking or extensions at all, no "Remember my password" option, bad bookmarks management, high memory consumption, slow loading of html5 content (games)... Instead of focusing on beating benchmark scores, focus on real-world performance. And the most important, browser based on html5 code always sucks. Native is native.

+

But WTF are you guys talking about ? The Playbook browser ?
Just tested BB10 devAlpha browser to Google land page : didn't have the time to count mentally "1".
Ok, let's log. Oh, "can't remember my password" ??? REALLY ?!?
IMG_00000015.jpg
Some of you really hit the top score of [self-censored]. If you don't know, listen and byte your tongue.

[Superfly_FR]

I've heard this claim repeated so often but I've never seen it challenged, even by those who know this is ridiculous. Only the topmost layer of the browser is written in "HTML5", That's means menus, URL bar, bookmark management, etc. The actual heart of the browser, the part where the internet is rendered, in other words the everything that goes on inside the tabs - that is webkit code. Webkit is the also the code responsible for html5 compliance, which is why other browsers get the benefit as well.

If in fact the webapp was responsible for the whole browser, then it would indeed be the "greatest app ever developed with HTML5". It's just not possible to do what webkit does with a web app.



Based on the September BBJAM video posted above: it won't have ad-blocking or extensions, they still won't have the bookmark management expected by the users, and they also set some expectations regarding checkerboarding.

I predict that somewhere, a Cascades based browser is under development that will blow the stock BB10 browser out of the water.

Please stop chewing nonsenses, that's Geller's role (lol, back in topic).
Yeah, webkit is all ... no doubt. That's why apple ios6 has a ...

[Superfly_FR]

Based on the September BBJAM video posted above: it won't have ad-blocking or extensions, they still won't have the bookmark management expected by the users, and they also set some expectations regarding checkerboarding.

Another brilliant assumption ...
IMG_00000016.jpg

+ bookmarks with personal tags, different listing modes ...
+ what checkerboarding are you talking about ? I've got instant browsing.

I predict that somewhere, a Cascades based browser is under development that will blow the stock BB10 browser out of the water.

You just don't know much about dev, I believe.

Ok, now I give up. Time for my family.