Fit websites on your mobile browser with Mowser

Filed under: Internet, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, BlackBerry

Fit websites on your mobile browser with Mowser

by Brad Linder Apr 20th 2007

Web browsers on mobile phones and PDAs are notoriously bad at rendering web pages meant to be viewed on monitors with resolutions of 1024x768 or higher resolutions. Pages can take an incredibly long time to load, and once they do, you're often presented with the least important information first as the browser puts all the navigation links from the left side of the page first, followed by the content.

Mowser is one of the latest web-based solutions for these problems. There's no program to download, just one website to bookmark. You navigate to Mowers.com, and then type in the URL of the page you want to visit. Mowser splits the page up into a series of smaller pages that will load faster. It also strips out most of the graphics.

The site also has a list of popular sites that are already designed for the small screen.

Overall, the idea is great, but the execution is so-so. For example, if you use the link to the New York Times News River, everything looks great on a mobile browser. But if you type www.nytimes.com into Mowser, the first screen you see is a page of navigation links. It's not until halfway through the second page that you start to get articles.

The developer has a video walkthrough on the company blog if you want to get a full look at Mowser's features. For a list of similar resources, check out Download Squad's roundup of mobile start pages.

[via WebWare]

Tags: mobile browser, mobile phone, MobileBrowser, MobilePhone, mowser, web browser, WebBrowser

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kevin Perkins said 7:16AM on 4-21-2007

Beware: Mowser also puts ads into your content while it's mobilizing...

http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/mowing-your-content-down-with-mowser/

Gus O. Davis said 8:55PM on 4-21-2007

I did investigate this app. I already have Skweezer on my cell phone. Mowser is a backward app compared to Skweezer.
I give Mowser a thumbs down and suggest that if you want an app that shrinks websites down to fit your cell phone, Skweezer is all you need.
After loading Mowser and running it through its' paces, I could only chuckle to myself while uninstalling it.

Sverre said 7:17PM on 4-22-2007

Opera Mini does this out-of-the-box. http://www.operamini.com/download/

Kevin Perkins, CEO Greenlight Wireless said 7:29AM on 4-23-2007

To boot, the arrogance about putting ads against your content is remarkable...

http://kevinperkins.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/mowser-arrogant-about-ads/

... I don't think Publishers should put up with this garbage for a second.

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