Posted By: Larry Larsen | Aug 20th @ 1:18 AM
Skyfire delivers, just in time for the Olympics they let fly with Silverlight support on their Windows Mobile browser. If you haven't seen Skyfire, get up to date in this video from co-founder Nitin Bhandari at DEMO 08.

Skyfire gives Windows Mobile users a desktop experience with support for CSS, Ajax, QuickTime, Flash 9, and now Silverlight. The beta is for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones, and only for US phones right now.

And unfortunately Skyfire is a closed beta, but if you are one of the first 50 people to go to the sign-up page and enter the code "channel10" (no quotes) into the beta code field, you'll get to see what it's like. 

Let us know what you think.
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I really do like the skyfire browser idea, and the way it works looks to be very nice indeed- if I were to say anything I think mainly that Microsoft should never have left this gap in the market so long, Microsoft ships a product and they still have this problem of having others make SOLUTIONS to their most simple problems. It's not all about features, SOLUTIONS shouldn't have to exist in the first place for this sort of thing.

 

One other thing, whilst I dislike the iPhone in general I will say that the mobile versions of pages look better, easier to navigate and just better overall- I would prefer that version of Facebook any day of the week, keep the main functionality in there but don't use an interface designed for >800*600 screens for a product with a screen small than my MP3 player.

The simplest rule of interface design- one size NEVER fits all

  • If a company has the resources they should have versions optimised for the purposes it will likely be used for
  • In this case a UMPC is the very smallest screen I can browse the 21st century DESKTOP web on


What skyfire has done which is commendable is the introduction of technologies onto the mobile platform- silverlight, flash etc SHOULD work on mobile, and it's great to see it finally happen, I just wish MS had done it already.


Memo to Steve Ballmer- buy these guys! Please?

Hey, thanks for the beta code. I just downloaded it, it's pretty darn cool. No, actually, it's amazing because it's free! I'm definately gonna be on this instead of the IE browser, which is not good for MS. Microsoft needs to step it up, like it was mentioned before, and needs to cease it's like 2-year update program.
I am surprised you were able to, judging by how poorly I typed up that rant. That's the last time I rant before an exam!

(BTW: Now that somebody who is associated with MS has said he agrees to a post with the idea of MS buying a company you have opened the floodgates for rumors Wink )
I just watched one of our videos using it... not a perfect experience, but I was playing a Silveright video on my phone... nice!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111

This thing roXxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!

Thank you. I never been so happy with my phone.

And guess what??? It's working on a BlackJack II