ThunderHawk is a discontinued

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

from

Bitstream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

available for a full range of operating systems in high end (

Windows mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

and

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

browsers) and mass-market (

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

browser) mobile phones and

personal digital assistants A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

. It is basically meant for

mobile operators A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

and original equipment manufacturers and not meant to download for normal users. Unlike most browsers, ThunderHawk does not re-purpose or reformat the content, and provides a similar desktop view of the web page. Data is transmitted to the mobile phone in a compressed transport format, for example, the visible web page regions (text) are received first, while the rest of the images and other data are automatically transferred in the background.

Version history

Bitstream announced the ThunderHawk technology first on June 6, 2001 in Cambridge. The official beta release went off on October 9, 2001 and included enhancements as improved readability, speed, and usability.

Sonera Telia Company AB is a Swedish Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in S ...

, wireless carrier in Finland included the beta release of Bitstream's web browser technology in Sonera Pilot Program to offer hands-on testing of new UI conventions for future mobile applications. Later, in the same year, December 17, 2001 Bitstream announced the Wireless Web browsing solution with HP for its HP Jornada PDA customers. The first full-featured Wireless Web Browser for Pocket PCs was released on May 20, 2002.

Standards Supported

AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...

DHTML Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled the creation of interactiv ...

Level 1, DOM Level 1, DOM Level 2, CSS Level 1, CSS Level 2, Frames,

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

4.01,

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

1.0, HTTP 1.1,

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

128-bit encryption, Feeds (

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

ATOM Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

, RDF), Image formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PJPEG), XHTML Basic, XML 1.0, ECMA Script, WML, WAP 2.0.

Functionality

When a subscriber uses ThunderHawk to access the Web, the ThunderHawk client residing on the handset communicates with the server. The server receives a connection from the client and requests an HTML Web page from the Internet. Upon receiving the requested page, the server renders the content on-the-fly and compresses the graphics. The server sends the requested HTML page in a compact transport format to the subscriber's handset. ThunderHawk can run on any handset that offers MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.0 and/or CLDC 1.1 software. The browser uses Bitstream's patented technologies for mobile browsing. To display digital content on a small screen device, ThunderHawk accesses the Web site, lays out the content at a virtual pixel resolution and then displays a part of the layout at a smaller display resolution. The displayed content is at a scaled-down resolution size and includes text composed from font bitmaps having character shapes, sizes, and pixel alignments selected to improve readability.

Split-Screen Mode

ThunderHawk allows browsing in the combined overview and magnified view of a web page. The split screen magnifier makes it easier to browse the Web pages in their original format on the small screen of a mobile device. The floating magnifier over the overview area, available with both Zoom-In and Zoom-Out mode aids in finding information and navigating the Web sites. Bitstream holds the patent rights for this split-screen technology.

Rendering Modes

ThunderHawk can show the Web page content in various user enable modes including, overview only, magnified only, and a re-flown single column text view.

Features

* Supports viewing of AJAX pages that are written using ECMA-262/JavaScript 1.5 standard. * Supports full HTML browsing on the

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

, Symbian, or Windows Mobile phone. * Includes HTTPS 128-bit encryption, providing a

secure transmission Secure may refer to: * Security, being protected against danger or loss(es) **Physical security, security measures that are designed to deny unauthorized access to facilities, equipment, and resources **Information security, defending information ...

of confidential data. * Customizable options: A "split screen/full screen" feature that eliminates the need of excessive scrolling. The "History" and "favorites" lists provide fast access to your favorite sites. * Offers a choice of viewing the mobile version or the desktop version of a Web page. * Provides image quality control options (low, medium, or high) that reduce the data transferred. The better the quality, higher the color depth and information each image will contain, and more the amount of data transfer. As the quality decreases, the image rendered will have less color depth and information, and hence lesser the download bytes. *

Persistent cookie Persistent may refer to: * Persistent data * Persistent data structure * Persistent identifier * Persistent memory * Persistent organic pollutant Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are organic compounds that are resistant to degradation th ...

support, with cookies stored on the server, which decreases the data transfer time. * Validates certificates for https sites; if there are certificate problems, informs the user and gives the choice to continue browsing the site. * Incremental rendering that sends visible Web page region first, while the rest of the images and other data are automatically transferred in the background. * Support to submit web forms and view drop down menus on a mobile device. * Native character support, ability to view web sites in multiple languages (Western and Eastern European). * Allows choosing the content size with 5 different levels of magnification. * Support to bypass or view popup windows. * Supports playing videos for player-enabled handsets. * Based on platform capability, ability to use smoothened or monochrome fonts. * Supports both landscape and portrait viewing

References

External links

* Stephen Brewster, Mark Dunlop (Eds.). Mobile Human-Computer Interaction - MobileHCL 2004, Pg 230
MobileTechReview.com: ThunderHawk web browser for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile Smartphone review

Bitstream Previews ThunderHawk Java/J2ME Mobile Browser
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{{web browsers, mobile Discontinued mobile web browsers Pocket PC software