The Open WebKit Rendering engine is what drives some of the most popular new browsers on the desktop market today. The Mobile market seem to be embracing it as a standard as well, which is why Apple, Nokia, Palm and Google all chose to include WebKit-based browsers in their latest platforms as the default (and sometimes ONLY) option.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is still pushing mobile browsers based on their older Internet Explorer engine, and it doesn’t look like they are ready to adopt any other “standards” anytime soon. But thankfully, there are plenty of alternative mobile browsers available (Opera, SkyFire, MiniMo, Picsel, Thunderhawk, etc), so one would think it only a matter of time before a solid WebKit based one is developed and released.
That’s why I was very excited a couple of years ago to hear about a new startup called Torch Mobile, who claimed to be finally bringing WebKit to Windows Mobile with their new Iris browser.
Iris browser was a solid little app with tons of potential… that sadly never left beta. That’s because back in August of this past year, they were bought up by RIM, and effectively ceased all Windows Mobile development and removed all links and hosting of the beta. The good news is that Blackberries might finally get a decent browser on upcoming devices. The bad news is that the Windows Mobile community is back to square one without a browser based on the same webkit standards as almost every other Smartphone.
Hot on the heels of Torch Mobile’s acquisition, a Korean software outfit called Company 100, is stepping in to fill that gap. Their product, Dorothy browser is currently accepting requests for a beta webkit browser.
I had a moment to sign up for the beta and try it out today… I must say, the rendering is very fast and seems quite good. It still lacks some of the high end features that Opera has, such as kinetic scrolling and flash support, but its extremely promising for a beta.
There’s also rumors in the pipeline for a WM version of the new Dolphin browser which just made a splash on the Moto Droid for utilizing multi-touch support for pinch gestures.
If you’re on Windows Mobile and have been waiting for WebKit, the time is coming…
