Browser, Browser BROWSER Yahoo chooses Novarra Vision for oneSearch
Rating: confused – you should be
By Bena Roberts
OK, I am on holiday at the moment but in true passionate mobile ways – I still have several mobile devices with me and I am testing them as sit on the beach, go the zoo and read books to the children.
I have been doing thousands of tests on browsers and I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject – but what I do realise is that finding out which browser you are using is often not easy and user experience is linked heavily with device.
Now, I am one of the few that have always been a Novarra fan and I realise the value of making Internet sites mobile. But something BIG has happened. What?
Well….
1. Orange has given me a Samsung i600 Windows Mobile device.
2. Sony Ericsson has given me a Walkman W800i device.
Both devices make the GoMo News blog look heavenly. So far on my Nokia device with Vodafone GoMo News has flopped. So I have put a call into Orange and SonyEricsson about which browser is being used but it’s a difficult question. As when I use Google to find a mobile site or when I use Go To web site the experience is vastly different.
This might get only more confusing now that Yahoo! Go has signed up with Novarra. So now everytime I want to view a site I find on Yahoo! Go – it will be pushed or rendered via the Novarra browser. So unlike when on the Internet you know if you are on IE or Firefox – on a mobile its not so simple.
All I know is that Orange has souped up its mobile browser. Two weeks ago when I wrote about Novarrafone I used the Samsung i600 to test the GoMoNews Site. It only rendered the middle column. Yesterday, when I checked it again I got a perfect blog. I couldn’t complain – it was clean simple, easy to read the most relevant information and extremely impressive.
Then when I used the SonyEricsson Walkman; the user experience was even better. The browser seemed to know that it was using a blog and even terms such as technorati links appeared but were not simply copied for mobile. They were linked and if users wanted to navigate or see them they could but the most pertinent information was viewed first.
My immediate thought was do I really need a mobile site now? The banners, the experience the style of GoMo News blog looked heavenly and I doubt a pure mobile only site would look any different.
But my point – be in masked here, is that do and will consumers know which browser they are using? Or will they care? I suppose if the experience is awful they will care but if its great – will they not want to make sure that they are using the same browser at all times.
For example, was Orange behind the new rendering on GoMo News or was it Microsoft (as it’s a Windows Mobile 5.0 device)?
Looking at other sites on the Novarra browser have been great – but GoMo News didn’t come out right at all. Who is to blame? The device, Vodafone or Novarra?
But anyway, back to the point. Yahoo! has chosen the Novarra Vision server version 6.5 to provide web transformation for Yahoo!’s oneSearch service.
From the press release
The Vision platform provides a visually rich, fast and intuitive user experience for Web sites, across mobile phones, browsers and networks.
Novarra’s Vision platform processes Web content to deliver a full, rich Internet experience on mass-market and high-tier handsets. Built on open standards, the platform supports all deployed and new industry handsets and WAP, cHTML, and HTML browsers out of the box.
Commercially tested on hundreds of phones and browsers, web sites are automatically adapted for optimal presentation, usability and speed on handsets, supporting unique capabilities such as screen size, memory, and CPU.
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