UPDATE: Microsoft has released some detail of the Deepfish browser, via a Q&A here. Dr. Gary William Flake from Microsoft said that in order to combat the problem of needing separate web pages for mobiles “the majority of today’s browsers use a single-column format which dynamically reformats existing pages by repositioning the content to fit in the limited screen size. This essentially “crushes” the page to fit the small screen. This approach, while an improvement in some cases, generally results in a difficult-to-view page that requires excessive scrolling in order to use the portions of the page the person is trying to reach”. The intent of Deepfish is to show the page as the designer intended it, and save on download times by only downloading in detail the part of the page the user wants to view.
The MS Deepfish page is here...all the available demos have been downloaded but you can sign up to receive notification of future releases if you want.
Microsoft has released a demo version of its new mobile browser Deepfish—well, it has taken the demo down now, but Engadget got in before they did. “The Deepfish gimmick is the ability to see an entire web page on your Windows Mobile screen and then zoom in on the bits that you want to read, click, and the like. The software takes a screenshot of the webpage and uses it as a map; the rub here is that because of this approach, no dynamic content is supported.” This isn’t particularly new—at least, the general concept of viewing an entire page in miniature and zooming in on the desired part isn’t new. The browser is navigated with the joystick on the mobile phone (which personally I hate, they seem to stop working for me pretty quickly). There’s a screenshot of the process on Engadget.