ThunderHawk is a discontinued

web browser A web browser is application software 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 screen. Browsers are used o ...

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 family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

and Symbian browsers) and mass-market (

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

browser) mobile phones and

personal digital assistants A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...

. It is basically meant for mobile operators and

original equipment manufacturers An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

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 telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in F ...

, 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), by the ancient Gree ...

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 interactive ...

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

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

4.01,

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 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 We ...

1.0, HTTP 1.1,

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

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 di ...

ATOM Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...

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

WAP WAP or Wap may refer to: Music * "WAP" (song), a 2020 song by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion Organizations * Weatherization Assistance Program, for US energy costs * Western Australia Party, a political party founded in 2016 * Western A ...

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 portable code for embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, TV set-top ...

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

secure transmission In computer science, secure transmission refers to the transfer of data such as confidential or proprietary information over a secure channel. Many secure transmission methods require a type of encryption. The most common email encryption is called ...

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 HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's ...

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
*

{{web browsers, mobile Mobile web browsers Pocket PC software Discontinued web browsers