Microsoft trials ‘Deepfish’ mobile Internet browser

Microsoft Corp. showcased a new Web browser that customizes Web pages for smartphone screens.
The browser, dubbed Deepfish, delivers small images of Web sites, retrieving detailed information as needed when a user zooms in on part of a page. The technology is designed to replicate desktop browsing and deliver Internet content more quickly than other mobile browsers.
“The majority of today’s (wireless) browsers use a single-column format, which dynamically reformats existing pages by repositioning the content to fit in the limited screen size,” Microsoft executive Gary William Flake said in an interview posted on the company’s Web site. “This essentially ‘crushes’ the page to fit the small screen. This approach, while an improvement in some cases, generally results in a difficult-to-view page that requires excessive scrolling in order to use the portions of the page the person is trying to reach.”
Opera Software ASA and Novarra Inc. have gained traction with browsers that format Internet pages for mobile phones, while Google Inc. and other developers offer transcoding technology for wireless Web surfers.
Microsoft is making Deepfish available for download from the company’s Live Labs site to a limited number of users. The browser runs on Windows Mobile 5.0.
Microsoft currently offers a scaled down version of its Internet Explorer browser to Windows Mobile users.