A bit of honesty please!

[TrashyMG]

yes i would've been using old software but also referrin to the fact web browsing will never be as fluid as ios or android due to resistive touch screen and stylus.

Capacitance touch and big fingers is exactly what I hate about using my Android phone.. Nubs work fine for navigating web sites in my opinion.

 

[PFan]

Hi all,


Wow lots of replies!!


If I am being honest I may use it for web browsing, I currently have a HTC phone which I use but I am sure a full keyboard/mouse experience would be better! (I do not have a tablet etc) and cannot be bothered with switching on a laptop etc...


WizardStan - I would be interested in knowing exactly which device you would recommend for my needs if the Pandora is a bit over the top?


The mention of N64 being worked on really appeals also!


Making your own TV out cable? I thought these could be purchased from Pandora retailers?


Also does anyone know if CraigX has some that are readily available? I saw a "private" link at one point but I am not sure if that has run out! Also if I ordered now would I get a 256 or 512 RAM version?

 

[PowerGod]

Web browsing sucks

...I can't understand what you mean, the only thing that 'suck' are embedded videos, flash or even webm are VERY slow on the browser, but if you download them you can play the files with vlc, mplayer and so on without issues (720p and up videos are slow anyway)


The navigation is great with firefox, you just have to learn how to use effectively the hotkeys, cause I'm currently writing from my Pandora in fullscreen but with 5 tabs opened (including GMAIL with full interface and chat), and I can go from one page to another with CTRL+PageUp or PageDown (in this case the right shoulder button and the Y/X gaming keys, sooo convenient) or I can go forward and backward in the visited pages history by pressing ALT+LeftArrow or RightArrow, and so on..


I prefere surfing with this than my PC. You just have to LEARN a thing or two before using effectively this thing, for example what is a swap file and so on, but after that you are done


EDIT: just to be precise I'm using Firefox 11 with a 512mb swap file on SD (thanks Slaeshjag) and the old kernel so I'm using only 256mb of the Pandora RAM... this means that the experience can only improve

 

[Binky]

web browsing will never be as fluid as ios or android due to resistive touch screen and stylus.

Has nubs; has dpad; has buttons; has mouse emulation


Wait - dratted thingy didn't tell me about all these new posts before this one

 

[elwing]

to me, if you except multitouch resistive touchscreen is better in all aspect than capacitive touch...

 

[ZXDunny]

Also there is so much nice and free homebrew like Super geometry Dust, VVVVV, Quake1-3, etc. and even commercial games start showing up.

If we're being honest here, you should point out that only Quake 1 is playable - Quake 2 crashes at inopportune and random moments, and Quake 3 has serious control issues.


D.

Have you tried yamagi quake2?

Yes, it crashes hard on the first level quite often, usually after about 2 minutes of play - at random. Usually when an explosion noise is heard in the background - that's usually the sound that's repeating over and over again as I have to hard reset my Pandora.


I'm sure this has been mentioned. If not, my apologies - I'd pretty much given up on a decent version of any of the Quakes on the Pandora after that last Q2 outing.


D.

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

Web browsing sucks

...I can't understand what you mean, the only thing that 'suck' are embedded videos, flash or even webm are VERY slow on the browser, but if you download them you can play the files with vlc, mplayer and so on without issues (720p and up videos are slow anyway)


The navigation is great with firefox, you just have to learn how to use effectively the hotkeys, cause I'm currently writing from my Pandora in fullscreen but with 5 tabs opened (including GMAIL with full interface and chat), and I can go from one page to another with CTRL+PageUp or PageDown (in this case the right shoulder button and the Y/X gaming keys, sooo convenient) or I can go forward and backward in the visited pages history by pressing ALT+LeftArrow or RightArrow, and so on..


I prefere surfing with this than my PC. You just have to LEARN a thing or two before using effectively this thing, for example what is a swap file and so on, but after that you are done


EDIT: just to be precise I'm using Firefox 11 with a 512mb swap file on SD (thanks Slaeshjag) and the old kernel so I'm using only 256mb of the Pandora RAM... this means that the experience can only improve

It's not as nice as an android phone or iphone though and that may very well be what he's used to.


But to be honest it is a year ago I used the Pandora and sleep issue was fixed which someone said on here it probably wouldn't ever get fixed so maybe web browsing is a hell of a lot better. Would like to see a video to be honest.


I still believe that you won't get the experience you get from a phone though.


But let's be honest where the phone wins (web browsing) the pandora wins on everything else.

 

[WizardStan]

I still believe that you won't get the experience you get from a phone though.

That's good. The Pandora isn't a phone and shouldn't pretend to be one. It has full-featured web browsers (give or take stable Flash support, cursed Adobe) which no phone can compare to. If you stripped out all the features that make Firefox and Midori such great browsers, reduce to the most basic Opera build like what you have on iOS, instruct websites to provide their mobile versions, then you'd probably get comparable performance.

 

[kuru]

Phones have shitty browsers. Phones make me zoom in and out all the time to hit small links. I really don't get what's good about browsing with a capacitive screen and how this is more fluid. Maybe panning around a page is a bit easier if you prefer having a finger in the view. I don't. PGUP/PGDWN, Home, End and the D-Pad are my friends.


Edit: If it really is about panning with your finger, FiFo should have a plugin for that.

 

[diligentcircle]

Edit: If it really is about panning with your finger, FiFo should have a plugin for that.

Hm... anyone know of one, by chance? I'd actually be very interested in this; sliding a finger is easier than using the scrollbar and more precise than using pageup/pagedown (and won't be stopped by websites auto-selecting some textbox, unlike pageup/pagedown and the arrow keys).

 

[kojack]

to me, if you except multitouch resistive touchscreen is better in all aspect than capacitive touch...

Plus you can wipe fingerprints and dust off the pandora screen without accidentally clicking on things.

 

[renegadechic]

...I can't understand what you mean, the only thing that 'suck' are embedded videos, flash or even webm are VERY slow on the browser, but if you download them you can play the files with vlc, mplayer and so on without issues (720p and up videos are slow anyway)

hmmm on the latest beta, including the zram and using the latest firefox, i have been on several sites and streamed video pretty effectively, perhaps with the occasional stutter, and certainly not in very high resolution but just fine. the trouble i find with sites like youtube is that the weight of the rest of the page really hinders using it more than anything. its always somehow loading something else and eating resources i want to use for streaming. pretty tedious! on less busy sites though, i have little to no problem at all.

 

[MarioPandio]

Edit: If it really is about panning with your finger, FiFo should have a plugin for that.

Hm... anyone know of one, by chance? I'd actually be very interested in this; sliding a finger is easier than using the scrollbar and more precise than using pageup/pagedown (and won't be stopped by websites auto-selecting some textbox, unlike pageup/pagedown and the arrow keys).

´Grab and Drag´ add on works just fine for this on Pandora FF11.

 

[diligentcircle]

the trouble i find with sites like youtube is that the weight of the rest of the page really hinders using it more than anything. its always somehow loading something else and eating resources i want to use for streaming.

I don't know if that's true or just your imagination, but even if it is true, it hardly matters; the limiting factor that prevents you from playing >240p videos at a decent speed on YouTube, as I understand it, is something to do with the processor speed and an extremely inefficient... video format or something of some sort.

 

[kirkanoss]

Making your own TV out cable? I thought these could be purchased from Pandora retailers?


Also does anyone know if CraigX has some that are readily available? I saw a "private" link at one point but I am not sure if that has run out! Also if I ordered now would I get a 256 or 512 RAM version?

if your in the usa link has a shop ithic.com and would be 512 ram from any new order


and last i knew he had some EXT Connector & Tiny BoBs left to make a tv out or wait till the op team finds a company to make them. and they are looking

 

[relliker]

...the limiting factor that prevents you from playing >240p videos at a decent speed on YouTube, as I understand it, is something to do with the processor speed and an extremely inefficient... video format or something of some sort.

The processor speed requirement for youtube is because of crap flash (and in our case gnash,swfdec, whatever), not because the Pandora is lacking. At the standard 600MHz all video in other "sensible" formats (avi, mpg, mp4, mkv, .mov) etc all work fine without glitches as will youtube videos if you download them in another format instead of flash-streaming them. It's all FLASH's fault. FLASH, FLASH,FLASH. For once I agree with Apple's Steve Jobs's (R.I.P.) decision not to support flash on his products. It always was and still is a resource hog on most platforms.

 

[WizardStan]

as will youtube videos if you download them in another format instead of flash-streaming them

It's the same format, FLV, and the Pandora has no problem playing them in other apps, it's just as you say, the Flash player is terribly inefficient. I don't think this is any real fault of TI or Youtube, it's all down to problems with ActionScript. If you want to harp on Adobe a bit, here's a good read: http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/05/06/reaching-the-limits-of-adobe-stupidity/

 

[diligentcircle]

The processor speed requirement for youtube is because of crap flash (and in our case gnash,swfdec, whatever), not because the Pandora is lacking.

It's the same format, FLV, and the Pandora has no problem playing them in other apps, it's just as you say, the Flash player is terribly inefficient. I don't think this is any real fault of TI or Youtube, it's all down to problems with ActionScript. If you want to harp on Adobe a bit, here's a good read: http://whitequark.or...dobe-stupidity/

HTML5 videos are just as choppy (and it's even worse because you can't even select 240p with that player). Same goes for downloading the videos in 360p+ with get-flash-videos. Kind of makes it hard for me to believe that Flash is the enemy here.

 

[WizardStan]

Really? I've got a lot of 480p FLV videos that play just fine in panplayer.

 

[diligentcircle]

Really? I've got a lot of 480p FLV videos that play just fine in panplayer.

My understanding is it isn't the file type "FLV" that's the cause, but something about the video files (like codec or something). I'm not very familiar with video files, though.