*UPDATE - The link for BOLT ver. 2.0 is now available, download here*
Kevin is currently in Las Vegas attending CTIA 2010 and sent us all off this little piece of information from the Showstoppers event there. What you see above in the pic is an early glimpse of what is to be BOLT 2.0. Releasing early tomorrow the new BOLT browser has many other upgrades coming with it aside from just tabbed browsing. Some new features have been added and plenty of upgrades have happened server side to enhance the browsing experience for users.
"Each new version of BOLT becomes more exciting to announce," said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream. "We are closely listening to our end-users through our user forum, our Twitter and Facebook pages, and their comments on blog posts and articles, and they are guiding our development roadmap in important ways. It is this close relationship we are building with our users to which we attribute our stunning growth. BOLT added 1 million new users in the last five weeks alone."
BOLT has upped the ante here for those looking for a better browsing experience on the BlackBerry platform. As most users are awaiting the webkit browser from Research In Motion, BOLT is offering that experience in one way or another right now. I certainly cannot wait to see how this latest version looks. Hit the jump for the full list of additional features added to version 2.0 of BOLT. We'll let you all know tomorrow when the 2.0 version goes live. In addition to tabbed browsing being added, Bolt maintains all the original features from earlier versions plus, many other new features:
- Perfect rendering of Web pages on any class of phone, scoring 100 percent on the Web Standard's project Acid3 test.
- Streaming video from many of the world's most popular video sharing websites, including YouTube, MySpace, Blip.TV and MetaCafe, as well as websites that stream videos such as CNN, ESPN and any website with embedded YouTube videos.
- Super fast download speeds.
- Copy and pasting text.
- Built-in integration with Twitter and Facebook.
- Password manager.
- Download/Upload manager.
- Ability to run Web-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, ranging from Google docs to Mafia Wars.
- The inclusion of widgets, standalone mobile applications that are run directly from the browser, such as a weather app, calendar app, calculator, Twitter client and others. These widgets let people using any phone take part in the mobile apps revolution.
- Best of breed over-the-air data compression, resulting in faster load times and decreased data usage.
- Patented split screen viewing to make surfing complicated Web pages simple, and viewing content on the smallest of screens easy.
- Additional notable upgrades in BOLT 2.0 include a faster widget gallery with updated user interface and a server upgrade to WebKit 4.03
Read more
Opera Mini browser updated to version 7
If you are not satisfied with the native BlackBerry browser you may be interested to learn that Opera Mini has been been updated to version 7. The browser now offers a 'Smart Page' which gives you all your news from your Facebook and Twitter feeds which is a pretty nifty feature. As always Opera Mini crunches data so if you are on a data limited plan this may well be a great solution...
Bolt Browser updated to v2.30 - adds HTML5 support, cloud backup and more
If you're not using a BlackBerry Torch, Curve 3G 9330 or a Bold 9650 running on BlackBerry 6 this might interest you. Bolt, has updated their 3rd party web browser with some great new features to make browsing on BlackBerry devices a better overall experience. The list of changes is as follows: New Advanced Desktop Features – Along with the ability to perfectly render Web pages as...
Opera Mini 5 No Longer Running Beta, Final Version Released
While we all sit and wait to see what Research In Motion is going to bring with its WebKit browser, the folks at Opera Software are going full steam ahead. Long the chosen alternative over the built in BlackBerry browser, Opera Software has finally taken Opera Mini 5 out of beta. As noted in the press release: Today’s release puts the finishing touches on the Opera mobile-browsing...
W3C finalizes HTMl5 specs
The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, has announced that it has finally finalized the specs for the HTML5 standard after almost eight years of work. This should allow rich content to work seamlessly across desktop and mobile platforms. Though parts of HTML5 have been used by web developers over the years, the final W3C recommendation is now ready. W3C head Jeff Jaffe said of the...