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Chapter 8: Browsing the Internet Wirelessly

BlackBerry Basics:

• You may have a web browser from your provider, another from your IT staff, or none at all.
• Browsers can be used to view WML or HTML content, though your provider may limit you to one kind.
• If you want to install new ringtones, you must download them through your browser.
• You can clear the local cache your handheld created through the Option menu item.

Web Browsers for the BlackBerry

One of the most versatile tools on your handheld is the web browser, but unfortunately not all handhelds have one. A browser is always installed on your handheld, but it requires a special activation to be seen and used. This activation can come from two places, so it's possible to have none, one, or even multiple browsers on your handheld.

The most common way a browser can be activated is from your carrier. Not all carriers offer browser service, but most do. If your browser is activated by your carrier, it will have a name that identifies it with your carrier. For instance, my BlackBerry 7280 has a "Cingular Browser" icon on the home screen.

The other way a browser can be activated is through your corporate IT staff if they have a BES installed with MDS. MDS stands for Mobile Data Services and is a piece of software that can be installed in addition to the BES. If these are installed, and your IT staff configures your handheld to use a browser, an icon labeled "BlackBerry Browser" will be shown on your home screen.

Another common way is through a service called the BlackBerry Internet Browser Service (BIBS). Many carriers offer this service, though there may be an additional fee. The BIBS is very similar to using an MDS except that the server is not controlled by your IT staff. If your carrier has configured your handheld to use BIBS, an icon labeled "Internet Browser" will be shown on your home screen.

What Kind of Content Can You Get?

Even if you have a browser icon on your handheld, you may not be able to view every web page out there. This is because there are many kinds of web pages and your browser may not be configured to view them all.

The web content you are most used to seeing on your desktop is content made with Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML. HTML is a feature rich language and is transferred using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Often the rich features of HTML (such as frames and client-side scripting) just don't work well on small devices such as a BlackBerry. To make small devices functional, another web page content type was created called Wireless Markup Language (WML), which is transferred using a subset of HTTP called Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

The point of all this technical mumbo-jumbo is that your browser may be limited to either WAP or HTTP. Generally a browser offered by your carrier will be configured for WAP content but may allow HTTP as well. However, a browser that has been configured by your IT staff will generally allow both HTTP and WAP content.

Which Browser Should I Use?

So if you have two browser icons, why does it matter what kind of browser you use? Well, one browser may restrict content, but even if you have two that allow HTTP content, there is an important difference that should be considered. That difference is how the browser traffic gets to the Internet.

With a browser offered by your carrier, the HTTP requests go to your carrier first and then to the Internet through a server in your carrier's office. With a browser that is configured by your IT staff, the requests go to your office first and then to the Internet. This difference may seem insignificant, but having requests go to your office first has some distinct advantages.

First is security. I'm sure you trust your carrier, but the fact is that you just don't know what your carrier might be doing with the data while it is relaying it. Without going into details, we can simply say that using the browser which goes through the servers in your office is more secure.

The second advantage is that by having the browser traffic go to your office first, you can access your company's intranet as well as the Internet. Many companies use an intranet extensively for internal operations of all kinds, so this may be a huge benefit.

Surfing the Web with Your BlackBerry

When you launch a web browser you will see either the bookmarks screen or the homepage will be loaded and displayed in the browser screen. Which screen is displayed depends on how your browser was configured. If launching your browser displays your bookmarks, review the upcoming section titled "Using Bookmarks" first so you can load a web page.

Once you have a web page loaded and displayed on your handheld you will need to be able to navigate around it. Figure 8.1 shows the default home page provided by blackberry.com. Each of the links available on the displayed web page are shown in blue text. Regular text is shown in black text. Like an email message, the browser screen has a cursor that can be scrolled around the screen using the trackwheel. The cursor jumps from link to link as you scroll the trackwheel up and down. If there is a section of the web page that has no links, there may be a small black cursor at the end of the line that is scrolled up and down with the trackwheel instead.

Figure 8.1
Displaying the default home page in the BlackBerry browser.

To open a link on a web page, first scroll the trackwheel up or down so that the link is selected, then click the Get Link menu item and the new page will start loading—just like a browser on a desktop. Loading the new page will take some time, though. While the page is loading, a small progress bar is shown at the bottom of the screen Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2
The bar at the bottom shows the progress of the page loading.

If you realize that you opened the wrong page or something is wrong and the page is taking a long time to load, you can stop the loading by clicking the Stop menu item. You can also press the Escape button. Stopping a new page from loading will display the previous page again so you can select a different link.

After opening a link, you often want to go back to the page you came from. You can do this by clicking the Back menu item, or pressing the Escape button.

Each time a page is loaded, it is also added to the cache so that it can be referenced again later. Particularly when you return from a linked page, you may notice that the previous page loaded very quickly. This is because the browser was able to load it from the cache and did not need to retrieve it again over the wireless networks. This is a big time-saver, but unfortunately, clicking the same link again will not reload the page from the cache, even though it is in the link history and was cached.

If you want to return to the page you just came from, you must select it from the link history. Clicking the History menu item displays a dialog, shown in Figure 8.3, that lists all of the web pages you have viewed. The page you are currently viewing is shown in bold in the list. You can scroll to one of the web pages, either above or below your current page, by scrolling the trackwheel up or down. Once a page is selected, clicking the trackwheel displays a dialog asking you to confirm that you would like to go to that link. Click the OK button to confirm and that page will be displayed from the cache.

Figure 8.3
The History menu item shows a dialog with the link history.

At times you will want to load a page that is not directly linked to your home page. To do this, click the Go To menu item. A dialog will be displayed allowing you to enter the address of the web page (URL) you want to load (see Figure 8.4).

Figure 8.4
Enter a web address to visit a site that's not in your bookmarks.

Notice also that the http:// is already entered into the edit box. You can delete it using the Backspace key, but generally you will want it and having it there will be a time-saver. The address in the edit box defaults to the address you entered previously, and often this isn't the desired address. You can quickly clear the edit field by clicking the Clear button on the dialog. If you happen to have the web page copied onto the clipboard, you can paste it into the edit box by clicking the Paste button. Of course, you can type it in manually as well. Pressing the Space key will insert periods into the field, eliminating the need to press the ALT key. Once the address of the web page is entered, click the OK button to load that page.

Sometimes you just want to go all the way back to the beginning, your home page. You can do this at any time by clicking the Home menu item. This is simpler and safer then pressing Escape or Backspace repeatedly most of the time.

Of course you can reload the web page you are currently viewing as well. Do this by clicking the Refresh menu item.

Sending a Link As an Email Message

One of the new features in version 4.0 of the handheld software is the ability to send a web page address to someone else in an email message. You could do this in previous versions of the software by manually copying the address to the clipboard, then creating a new message and pasting the link into the body of the message.

With the 4.0 version of the software, however, you can do the same thing by clicking the Send Address menu item while you have a link selected in the browser. This will display the Address Book, where you can select the recipient of the email and then display the Compose Email screen with the web page address already placed into the body of the message. Once you are at the Compose Email screen, you can add more text to the message or edit the web page address before sending the message.

Viewing Web Page Information

Occasionally, you might want to see a little more information about the web page you are viewing. This won't happen often, but if it does, you will be glad you know how.

Two of the most common needs are to see the address of the page you are currently viewing or the address of a link on the page you are viewing.

With a browser on your desktop, the web page address is at the top and you can easily see it. With such limited screen space on a handheld, this element had to be removed. You can still view the current page address by clicking the Page Address menu item. This will show a dialog with the page address shown in it and the date and time it was retrieved (see Figure 8.5). Two buttons at the bottom of the dialog can be clicked to close the dialog. If you want to copy the address into the clipboard, click the Copy Address button to copy the address and close the dialog; otherwise, just click the Close button.

Figure 8.5
Viewing the address of the current web page.

Similarly, if a link is selected, you can click the Link Address menu item. The same dialog is shown except the date and time portion is missing because the page has not been retrieved yet.

There are two other ways to view information that is not so obvious and not so commonly used. While you have a web page loaded, scroll the trackwheel up past the top of the web page. There are two icons at the top that the cursor will jump to. These icons look like a padlock and series of squares that are supposed to look like two computers communicating. Clicking the trackwheel will display a small dialog with information about the connection. The first icon, the one that looks like a padlock, is the Security Settings. If you have established a connection to a web server using a secure connection, that information will be displayed in the dialog.

The other icon displays the connection information, including how large the page is and how long it took to load.

Both dialogs contain two buttons. If you want to keep the information presented in either of the two dialogs, you can click the Copy button. This will copy the information in the dialog to the clipboard and close the dialog. To simply close the dialog, click the OK button.

Using Bookmarks

Bookmarks are a way of keeping track of some of your commonly visited websites. Keeping them in a separate list allows you to simply select the web page from the list of bookmarks instead of typing the address in and then browsing to that web page each time. To get to the Bookmark list screen, click the Bookmarks menu item. Figure 8.6 shows the default bookmarks screen.

Figure 8.6
The bookmarks screen of the BlackBerry browser.

Opening a bookmark is just as simple as opening a link on a web page. Select the bookmark and click the Get Link menu item. You can also press the Enter key while the bookmark is selected.

Adding a Bookmark

You can add a bookmark at the bookmark list screen by clicking the Add Bookmark menu item. The dialog, shown in Figure 8.7, prompts for all of the required information including the address of the page to bookmark and a title that you would like to give it. Although this works, it is not the best way to add a bookmark.

Figure 8.7
Adding a bookmark from the bookmark list screen.

Instead, you should use the Go To menu item to actually view the page that you would like to add as a bookmark in the browser first, then click the Add Bookmark menu item. This dialog, shown in Figure 8.8 looks different. The address field is hidden because the browser already knows the address. It also uses the page title as the default bookmark title, further reducing the amount of typing you need to do. It is also a good idea to load the page first to make sure that it will display properly on the handheld before adding the bookmark.

Figure 8.8
Adding a bookmark for the current page.

You will also notice a new check box labeled Make Available Offline. Checking this button causes the full data of the bookmarked page to be saved in the cache. Later when you want to view this page, selecting the bookmark will display the saved web page instead of retrieving the page from the Internet again. This is true even if the handheld is out of coverage or the wireless modem is turned off, which can be a very useful at times. The saved content is never updated, however. If the page gets updated and you want to update your bookmark, you will need to delete the bookmark and re-create it with the updated page loaded into the browser. You will find more on deleting bookmarks in the "Managing Bookmarks" section a little later in this chapter.

Organizing Bookmarks in Folders

You probably already noticed that bookmarks could be sorted into folders when we created new bookmarks (shown previously in Figures 8.7 and 8.8). Clicking the Change Folder button on the Add Bookmark dialog displays the folder list shown in Figure 8.9.


Figure 8.9
Selecting a bookmark folder.

To add the new bookmark to a folder, scroll the trackwheel up or down until the desired folder is selected and click the Select Folder menu item.

The folder tree only displays two levels of folders at a time, however. If a folder has an icon of a folder with a black up-arrow, a Move Up menu item will be available to move the view up one level to the parent folder. If a folder has an icon of a folder with a plus sign, the folder contains subfolders and will have an Open Folder menu item to move the view down one level to view the subfolders.

You can add a new subfolder by clicking the Add Subfolder menu item. A dialog, shown in Figure 8.10, will be displayed prompting you for the name of the new folder. Clicking the OK button automatically opens the parent folder and selects the new folder in the list.

Figure 8.10
Creating a new bookmark folder.

Now you might be wondering how you can get to those bookmarks that are saved in subfolders, because the bookmark list didn't show any folders when we looked at it in Figure 8.6. That's because the Bookmark list screen just shows the contents of one bookmark folder. To select a different bookmark folder to view, click the View Bookmark Subfolders menu item from the Bookmark list screen. This will display the Bookmark selection screen we saw in Figure 8.9. Scroll the selection to the desired Bookmark folder and click the Select Folder menu item again. Now the bookmarks stored in that folder are listed in the Bookmark list screen.

Managing Bookmarks

Sometimes a bookmark didn't turn out the way you wanted it to and you need to change it. You can do this by scrolling the trackwheel to move the selection to the desired bookmark and clicking the Edit Bookmark menu item. This displays the Edit Bookmark dialog shown in igure 8.11.

Figure 8.11
Editing a bookmark.

In this dialog you can change the name or address of a bookmark. You may need to manually erase the text of the fields by clicking the Backspace key repeatedly. If you have the new text you would like to use in the clipboard, you can paste it by pressing the Shift key while clicking the trackwheel. You can also simply delete the bookmark by selecting it and clicking the Delete Bookmark menu item.

Not all bookmarks can be deleted or have the address changed however. Bookmarks that existed when you received your handheld are created as part of the browser activation and cannot be changed or deleted.

You may also want your bookmarks put into a particular order. You can move a bookmark up or down in the list by clicking the Move Bookmark Up and Move Bookmark Down menu items. These items cause the selected bookmark to swap places with the bookmark above or below it in the list. Of course, if the selected bookmark is already at the top of the list, the Move Bookmark Up menu item will not be shown.

You can also move bookmarks into another folder by clicking the Move Bookmark menu item. This will cause the folder list to be shown. Clicking the Select Folder menu item will then cause the bookmark to be moved into that folder.

Installing a New Ringtone

Installing a new ringtone on your handheld is actually pretty simple once you figure out how to do it and find a source for them. Unfortunately, there is very little guidance on how to install them and most carriers do not include BlackBerry handhelds in their ringtone sections. Also, installing a ringtone requires the use of a web browser, and cannot be done any other way.

BlackBerry ringtones are really just Standard MIDI files. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and was one of the first standards for making music on the computer. Standard MIDI files play just one note at a time, as opposed to Polyphonic MIDI files, which can play many notes at the same time. MIDI files generally use a. .MID extension.

You need to find a web page that offers links to MIDI files. There are many out there and a search for MIDI should turn up a few, though not all are free. BlackBerry.com offers some as part of a "Browser Demonstration" web page, so this is a good place to start. In your browser, click the Go To menu item to enter the web address of http://mobile.BlackBerry.com. The page offers an interactive way to access many common features such as searches and directories. Select the BlackBerry Extras link in the list and click the Get Link menu item. Next, click the Ringtones link in the list and again click the Get Link menu item. The first time you visit this page you will see a page with a legal disclaimer. Scroll to the bottom (yes, it is a long way down there) and click the I Accept button. The next screen shows a list of ringtones that you can download. Select a ringtone to download and then click the Get Link menu item again.

This actually downloads the ringtone onto your handheld and displays a screen allowing you to save it, shown in Figure 8.12. When the screen is shown, the ringtone automatically starts playing, so don't do this if you are in a meeting! You can stop playing the file by selecting the button with the square on it and clicking the trackwheel. To play the ringtone again, click the button with the triangle on it.

Figure 8.12
Playing a downloaded ringtone.

Simply downloading the ringtone does not make it available to be used as a ringtone, however; you must save it first. Do this by clicking the Save button on this screen. When you do this, the screen in Figure 8.13 is shown asking you to name the ringtone. This defaults to the name of the MIDI file you have downloaded, but sometimes this isn't the best name and you can change the name to something easier to read here.

Figure 8.13
Naming the ringtone you are saving

Saving Pictures on Your Handheld

One of the new features in version 4.0 of the handheld software is the ability to save pictures on your handheld. These pictures can be used as your Home screen image or your Standby screen image if your handheld supports a Standby screen. Sometimes your handheld comes with some pictures already saved into it, but if you want to add more, you have to use the Browser to save them. The process of saving an image is very similar to saving a new ringtone. There are some pictures available on http:\mobile.blackberry.com under the Wallpapers section of the BlackBerry Extras link. You can save a picture from any web page that has them.

To save an image to your handheld, first scroll the cursor so that the image is selected. Next, click the Save Image menu item. When you do this, you will see a dialog like the one shown in Figure 8.14 with a default name and some buttons. The default name is the name of the file from the web page address. You can change this if you want by scrolling up to the File field and typing a new name in. Clicking the Save button saves the image and closes the dialog. If you want to replace one of the images that you have already saved onto your handheld, click the Select button and choose the name of the image to replace from the list.

Figure 8.14
Saving an image from a web page.

Changing Browser Options

Like nearly every other BlackBerry application, the browser has its own set of options that can be configured. To access the Browser Options screen, click the Options menu item from a loaded page or the Bookmarks screen. The browser options are divided into two groups called Browser Configuration and General Properties, shown in Figure 8.15.

To open one of the option groups, scroll the trackwheel to the desired group and click the trackwheel.

Figure 8.15
Opening the browser options.

Browser Configuration Options

This group of options can be rather large and confusing. Some of the options may not be changeable, depending on how your browser was activated.

Most of these options define how your browser works and include addresses and identifiers that should not be changed (see Figure 8.16). I will only mention a few of the more useful options, and the rest you should not change unless told to do so by your wireless carrier or IT staff.

Figure 8.16
Viewing the Browser Configuration group of options.

The first option in the list, and the most commonly changed, is the Home Page. The Home Page is the web page that will be loaded when you first open your browser (if you've configured it to do so). It should load fast and be the page you want to use the most often.

The next two options help reduce the amount of data that must be transferred when a page loads. Images are often used in web pages and in order to be displayed properly, they must be downloaded in addition to the web page itself. This sometimes can take a long time on pages with lots of large images and can use up your monthly data faster.

The first option, Show Images, can be set to completely filter out images based on the type of web page being loaded. To not show images at all, change this option to No. Otherwise you can change it to On WML Pages Only or On WML & HTML Pages, depending on what kind of pages you load most often.

If you have the Show Images option set to No, then you will not see any images when you load a web page. However sometimes it is useful to at least know that there was an image there and that it was removed. Changing the Show Image Placeholders option to Yes will do this. With this option set, when a page loads that had an image, the word "[image]" will be shown where the image was.

The Content Mode option lets you specify what kind of content the browser will display. The options are WML Only, WML & HTML, or HTML Only. If you do want to limit the content to just WML or just HTML, you can do it here. Normally, if the content is restricted, it has been configured that way by your provider and you cannot change it.

Next, we will skip several options that are not typically configurable and look at the Start Page option. It is located in the next group of options. The Start Page option lets you specify what page should be displayed when the Browser application is opened.

Like your browser on your PC, you can set the Startup Page option to "Home Page" to have it automatically load the home page when you open the browser. Having the home page load up can be nice, but it can also be frustrating if you don't have good coverage or often want to load a different page. Another common option is the Bookmarks Page. Using this option causes the bookmarks list to be shown when the browser application is opened. This is good when coverage is an issue because the bookmarks are stored locally on the device and there is no need to load the page. The last option, Last Page Loaded, is good when you don't want to go back to the Home Page or Bookmarks each time you enter the Browser. With this option, you can continue to surf the internet from wherever you last left it.

There are many more options in this group, but generally they should not be changed, even if you are allowed to change them, unless instructed to do so by your carrier or IT staff.

General Properties Options

The General Properties option group is very small compared to the Browser Properties option group. This only has two options, neither of which are very complicated (see Figure 8.17).

Figure 8.17
Viewing the General Properties group of options.

The first option, Confirm Close on Escape, is off by default. If it is checked, the browser will display a prompt asking if you are sure you want to quit the browser when you press the Escape key on the topmost page being viewed.

The other option, Confirm Execute Scripts, is also off by default. With this option off, loading a web page with a script in it will execute the script automatically without prompting the user. This is sometimes viewed as a security risk. Checking this option will cause the browser to display a prompt asking if you want the script to run. Having this option checked impacts the user experience though, and can be annoying.

Clearing the Browser Cache

Caching is something that happens automatically to make browsing the web faster for you. As mentioned in a previous section of this chapter, web pages and pictures are stored locally on your handheld so if you request them again they do not have to be retrieved from the Internet each time. Obviously, all these things take up storage space on your handheld.

If you use the browser a lot, you should periodically clear the browser cache so that your handheld does not run out of storage space. The browser cache is cleared when your device is reset, but hopefully this doesn't happen often. Instead, you should use the menu items in the General Properties option group. You can open this group by clicking the Options menu item then selecting the General Properties and clicking the trackwheel again.

There are actually two caches on your handheld, the content cache and the cookie cache. There are three menu items that can be displayed when you display the menu. The menu items to clear the caches are only displayed if the caches contain some data. The Clear Content Caches menu item is used to clear the downloaded content of web pages, including images. This is where the majority of the data is stored. The Clear Cookies Cache menu item is used to clear any cookies that have been received. The last menu item, Clear Raw Data Cache, will clear both the content and cookie caches.

Version 4.0 of the handheld software makes it easier to clear the caches by adding a new group under the Options screen called Cache Operations. Selecting this option group shows a screen with up to three buttons. The buttons are Clear History, Clear Cookies, and Clear Content Cache, as shown in Figure 8.18. Each button is shown only if the cache contains some data that can be cleared.

Figure 8.18
The new Cache Operations screen where you can clear the caches.

You should clear the caches periodically, especially if you use the browser frequently; every few weeks is a good guideline. However, if you begin to notice messages being deleted automatically, it is time to clear the caches.

About the Author
Bill Foust has been a recognized activist and consultant specializing in the RIM BlackBerry for more than five years. He's an active participant in BlackBerry developer forums and the BlackBerry-users Yahoo! group. He has written many BlackBerry applications including ExpenseMinder and EzToDo, which were two of the best-selling applications at Handango.com.

(Reproduced with permission from Pearson publishing as Que Publishing.)

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