We
are excited to announce public availability of the Deepfish
technology preview from Microsoft Live Labs. Deepfish is a new type of mobile
information browsing experience, aimed at preserving the rich layout and full form
of documents on mobile devices while providing novel ways of effectively
navigating that content on small screens. Deepfish's unique interface enables
you to zoom in and out of page, quickly getting to the areas you are interested
in without screen length after screen length of scrolling. And because
the layout is preserved, navigation menus, lists of search results or news headlines,
and other elements that might have been bent so thoroughly to fit the usual single
column layout that they were no longer legible can now be browsed simply and easily.
A consequence of Deepfish's multi-resolution approach to browsing pages is that
it loads a thumbnail of pages initially and then only what is needed for
more detail when requested or in the background as you browse the initial the view,
resulting in substantially quicker load times for most pages.
The preview is available for download now for Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices. There are a limited number of slots available, and they will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis. So, give it a try, and don't forget to let us know what you think about Deepfish.
Sound familiar? Deepfish has surfaced briefly before through videos of an earlier build, but now is the first time you can try Deepfish for yourself. As a technology preview, it is important to note that Deepfish is not a complete implementation of what you would expect of a shipping mobile browser--it does not support cookies or javascript for instance--however, it does provide for a great experience on most sites. We have more information on how to use Deepfish and other details in our overview and FAQ.
Thank you,
The Live Labs Team