I am curious what the community's experience or ideas are about browsers for smartphones and tablets (incl. other N810 browsers such as Tear, Fennec, etc.), compared to MicroB.

Mine is that no other browser beats MicroB despite its slow Javascript engine and slow Flash rendering. Slow, but it works.

Any ideas ?

I find Tear on par if not superior to MicroB, but this is just my opinion based on my personal experience.
I still use both, though, because some websites render better or faster on one or the other browser, and I think it's always useful to have different engines at hand

Perhaps this links offers some info:
http://tech.arantius.com/maemo-brows...ec-midori-tear

I think that microB is a great browser, specially for mobile designed sites... And as far as I know, the tablet will continue being a mobile device, so websites should be designed according with device capabilities...

With microb -- If only they could somehow work out the "no scrolling while loading" thing...

It really is annoying, and for me the disadvantages of the still in-development Tear's lack of features overcomes that, making Tear my preferred browser where pages are heavy lifting, (like amazon.com).

For fast- loading pages, like this site, I use microb, while thanking Bundyo every time I need to go to amazon and pages like it, and wishing I had the technical expertise to help Bundyo in some way.

Joe

Tear's the best of course. Fennec beta 2 is also really promising, but slow on heavy pages.

Help report bugs and issues with software then. Or if anyone haas questions you can answer, answer it for them so they don't have to spend time doing it. Even non programmers and hackers there's lots of ways to help.

In addition to my N810, I have my old Palm TX as well as a work-provided BlackBerry 8800.

The BB has an older OS and my understanding is that the newer browser is pretty decent, but the one I have is pretty lousy. It is, however, highly optimized for mobile browsing. Before I got the N810, I used it all the time. Its biggest problem is that if I leave javascript enabled, it will frequently slow the entire device down, and the only recovery is rebooting (and rebooting a blackberry means removing the battery). It's functional, but not very pretty. Lots of keyboard shortcuts and bookmark management is pretty good. When you open the bookmarks, you can start typing letters and it will narrow your list down to those with the same first letters. Add a space and more letters and it will check another word. For example, I type 'k' and the bookmark tree opens. I hit 's' and I see 'slashdot', 'sun gazette', 'sas global forum', and 'operating status'. I type a space and 'g' and now it's just 'sun gazette' and 'sas global forum'.

The Palm TX has a built-in browser. Eight times out of ten, launching the browser will crash the TX (and another tenth of the time, the browser will start but no text will appear). It is always extremely slow to start (while it clears enough space to run, which is what causes the crashing). It will, usually, start fine after a reboot. So on the occasions where you have the patience for a reboot, it's not a half bad browser-- renders quick enough and mobile friendly. Bookmark handling is actually quite nice (kinda like Tear's dashboard, but nicely optimized for the device).

Since that browser was so hard to work with, I also installed Opera Mini on the TX. The biggest pain with that was that it always used a remote proxy server, which meant I couldn't browse pages inside my VPN. Other than the fact that it crashed less often than the default browser, I never really cared for it. Nothing special about bookmarks, I never bothered setting many up.

In addition to those, I installed the NetFront browser. It would start up fast enough and wasn't inclined to crash, but your choice of fonts were small and tiny. I usually endured the reboot before bothering with NetFront. Bookmark handling was atrocious. By default, you'd just get a long list. You could categorize them, but no trees and no nice interface.

On the N810, I primarily use MicroB, but also have Tear installed for sites that MicroB can't handle. Beyond the fact that I can't really change the default browser from the RSS Reader or claws, I actually find MicroB more mobile friendly. Unless absolutely required, I really hate horizontal scrolling and, with 'Fit width to view' on, MicroB usually accomplishes that rather well. If I zoom in much at all in Tear, I almost always find I have to scroll left-to-right. And while Tear is far more responsive to scrolling, I find if I flick my finger from bottom to top, Tear will often keep going.

MicroB bookmark handling is like a desktop browser, so nothing optimized for the interface, but at least it's familiar.

MicroB's problem is that it can be so slow loading sites (especially sites with complex side navigation. It can usually reformat the page with the main content in full width, but it takes time. As someone else mentioned, it would be nice to be able to scroll while loading.

And that actually brings me to a peeve I have with Maemo in general. With most apps in full screen mode, the right scroll bar is 0 pixels from the edge of the screen. That means I can let my stylus or fingernail run down the lip of the screen and tap the scrollbar. That's guaranteed to perfectly hit the scrollbar and page up or down (unless it decides to repeat, which MicroB sometimes does). (Claws is the big exception since it puts the attachment list right of the scrollbar --- shame on them).

However, in non-full screen mode, every window has something like 8 to 10 pixels between the right scrollbar and the edge of the screen. Dropping down the lip misses the scrollbar, so then I have to take careful aim. Why the dead and wasted space? Why can't non-fullscreen still be flush right?

Oh my gosh, I forgot my biggest cmplaint about MicroB. Why does it always want to jump to the front when it's not ready? I always read RSS feeds in the feed reader and, not surprising, I sometimes want to follow the link. If MicroB isn't already open and I click a link, a new window will open. Now, I know it's going to take a while to load, so I minimize and go back to the feed reader. In about 3 seconds, MicroB will reopen, still blank, and tell me that it's connecting. So I minimize again. Another 3 seconds and it might get a little data (not that I can interact with), so up it pops again. It would be acceptable (although still not preferred) if it opened once, when fully loaded. Popping up repeatedly with nothing just drives me insane.

Yes, MicroB has the bad habit of restoring itself several times (like 3 or 4), very annoying bug and they never fixed it.

Now, now. Three guesses--and the first two don't count--on where it has been fixed worksforme'd.