Let's face it. A PDA does a great job as a computer replacement except for one major thing. The screen size makes it hard to do everything you can on a regular computer. The screen size issue becomes extremely apparent when surfing the internet. Previously we presented you with the Thunderhawk Browser that made surfing easier but was somewhat slow because of the page scrolling. So are there any other options? Well, we found Skweezer and we are quite impressed. Come along as we discuss Skweezer.
So what is Skweezer?
There just aren't a lot of options for browsing the internet on a PDA. Unless a page is optimized for a PDA, you have to do a lot of scrolling to read the page. That's where Skweezer from Greenlight Wireless comes in. Skweezer is a web browsing service somewhat like Thunderhawk with a few differences. To start, there is no download required to use Skweezer, you simply fire up your PDA browser and got to Skweezer.net. Since there is no download, Skweezer is not platform dependent, meaning this service will work with pretty much any mobile device.I keep calling this a service, so let me tell you what happens. When you go to a web page, Skweezer renders the page for your PDA. Here's the cool thing about how Skweezer works. You can easily switch between three different views at any time: Normal, PDA, and Text. Normal mode renders the page as you'd see it on a normal computer screen. The next mode formats the page for your PDA. Basically what happens is everything is "skweezed" into a standard PDA view. The Text mode does the same rendering as the PDA mode but removes the images.
A quick look under the hood
Lets start with the Normal mode. You may ask, "Why do I need the Normal mode when I can use the PDA mode? Well, the main reason is Skweezer works great, but isn't perfect. Some pages may not render properly (although that doesn't happen very often) so you may need to view the page as it was meant to be seen. Here is one of the neat unadvertised features of Skweezer. You can use it as a private web browser on your PC. If you share a computer with someone at work or home, you can use Skweezer as a password protected browser to keep your surfing habits private. Have you ever been somewhere like the library and wanted check sports scores or email on a computer and found the page to be blocked? Simply go to Skweezer.net, log in and you can go to most any page.In the PDA and Text mode you have to get accustomed to the page being reformatted, but once you do, it's not hard to fly through your news and information. The nice thing about Skweezer is that it's fast. Even though you're going through a third party server to get your information, there is no lag in scrolling or navigation of a site. I find for everyday use, Text mode is quite sufficient and fast. The nice thing is you can make any mode your default view at log-in.
