Called DeepFish, the new technology is the product of the company’s Microsoft Live Labs unit and is available for download to a limited number of users on a first come, first served basis.
The preview was unveiled at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology (eTech) Conference in San Diego last week.
Microsoft Live Labs founder and director Dr Gary William Flake said the preview released last week was still very much a prototype and should not be considered a beta. He said the company had not formalised any plan for commercial launch.
While most web browsers for mobile phones worked best with specially designed, cut-down versions web sites, DeepFish provides users with a full ‘as-designed’ view of virtually any web site on their mobile device.
“The interface lets users zoom in and out on the parts of a Web page that interest them in an intuitive way, making it easy to use these large-screen formatted pages on a mobile device,” Dr Flake said.
“On current mobile browsers, it can typically take up to a minute or more for a web page to render, however the Deepfish architecture only loads the user-specified portion of the page, providing much quicker page-load times, as detailed information is only retrieved as needed or in the background,” he said.
Dr Flake said Microsoft was providing access to DeepFish at such an early stage because customer feedback was an important way to improve the company’s technology – so that users who download the preview are encouraged to provide feedback.
“The goal of Live Labs is to improve and accelerate the evolution of Microsoft’s internet products and services through applied research, and providing these early prototypes for public testing and feedback is an important part of that ongoing pursuit,” Dr Flake said.
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