DeBow's Review is a continuing commentary on our digital world. It's Web Guide

offers a quick look at the many options available in the most visited categories on the

World Wide Web. WebSiteFaves is a review of many of our absolute favorite websites.

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Browsers - Mini, Micro & Mobile

Designed for use with handheld devices such as PDAs or cellular smartphones, these browsers, until recently, were primarily WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) browsers which were ordinary web browsers stripped down to accommodate the small screen sizes, low memory and low bandwidth of wireless handheld devices. That usually meant that surfers had to go to special web sites (WAP Sites) designed for mobile browsing. Today, however, many of the new web browsers are surprisingly robust, and incorporate much of the latest technology.

Right at the moment there are just too many competing products in this category, both factory pre-installed versions and user-installable versions to make meaningful comparisons difficult, if not impossible. As with almost all technologies - and certainly as it happened in the full-featured browser category - this proliferation of products will be whittled down to a few winners.

If we had to guess, certainly Opera and the Safari version on Apple's iPhone and iPad look like winners, but Microsoft's new IE mobile browser (Windows Phone), enjoying Microsofts market dominance, and Google's Android will certainly be players, with Android most likely the ultimate market share winner.

All four of these new browsers allow users to view full-size web pages albeit at very small size. Stay tuned...

Android                                 IE Mobile

Opera Mobile                         Safari