Skyfire Blog

We are excited about our Skyfire 1.1 version. This release focuses on performance improvements for both platforms and specific improvements related to Symbian scrolling and zooming. In addition, we’ve improved the reconnect experience and mobile website browsing.  We encourage you to upgrade today by going to http://get.skyfire.com with your device or follow the upgrade notification on your existing Skyfire installation.

• 1.1.0.13041 Symbian
• 1.1.0.13052 Windows Mobile touch and non-touch

What’s new in 1.1?

• Improved page load times. For sites that take a long time to load, we updated our algorithm to bring you the content much quicker.
• Improved scrolling and zooming on Symbian. This is a much faster and smoother experience now.
• Improved reconnect. Skyfire will show clearly when you can start interacting with the web page in case it previously timed out and disconnected (to save battery life).
• WML support. If you are browsing to mobile sites that use the old mobile WML markup, you can now view the content.
• Improved mobile website support. Mobile.* websites are now rendered automatically as mobile with the exception of mobile.yahoo.com since it is a PC site.
• Page up/down navigation via short-key: You can use now ‘2’ and ‘8’ to easily navigate one page up or down. Great for reading articles. Now the short-key for invoking the Superbar is ‘*’. Please note that on some devices with a non-standard keyboard layout, short-keys may behave differently since this is phone specific.
• Updated Plug-ins: For Flash, Silverlight and QuickTime we have the newest versions to give you more compatibility with more sites.

Fixes in this release

• Skyfire quits on startup on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices: It affected a limited number of 6.0 and 6.1 devices as well. (Fixed Issue 7369)
• Multi-line text entry behavior on Symbian: This was an issue when you exited text entry mode with predictive text on, or used the navigation keys. (Fixed Issues 7149 & 7112)
• Superbar state on Symbian: Cancel button did not always exit from Superbar. (Fixed Issue 7156)
• Samsung Propel and Jack (AT&T): Could not uninstall Skyfire if the SIM card was missing. Fixed.

Known issues in this release

• Short-keys inconsistent on non-standard keyboard. On some keyboard layouts (half-qwerty, dual keyboards), the short-keys do not work as expected. (Issue 7498, 7408, 7581)

Enjoy!

We are for looking a Community Manager to be the frontline voice to our customers as well as promote Skyfire to people that want the best browsing experience. We’re looking for someone who is both a great listener and great talker (in the written form).  You’ll be reporting regularly to our teams about issues, opportunities and insights.   If you have experience supporting consumer products, love gadgets and technology, Twitter, and Facebook, shoot us your resume at jobs@skyfire.com.  For more details about the position, you can read the job req here.

Yesterday, we rolled out some new features.  They are all on the server side so there is no need to upgrade.  Simply launch Skyfire to experience what’s new:

• Gmail integration - Add your Gmail credentials to receive notices of your unread messages. The notices appear in your feeds on the Skyfire start page and link directly to your Gmail inbox. For your first visit, you will need to login to the Gmail website. Also, please be sure that your IMAP settings are enabled for your Gmail account.

Now you can have Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail seamlessly streaming on your Skyfire start page - making it easy to stay in touch on the go.

• Search history - See your 4 most recent searches at the top of the start page when you launch Skyfire.  You can also clear or collapse the history.

• Facebook media thumbnails for albums - If you have your Facebook account integrated with Skyfire, now when your friends add media, you’ll see a sample of the posted photos.  These thumbnails will be displayed in your Facebook feeds on the start page.  Clicking these takes you directly to that album on your friend’s Facebook page.

Hope you enjoy these new features.  Let us know what you think at feedback@skyfire.com, or send us a tweet.

Unfortunately, our Skyfire BlackBerry Alpha was leaked today and we’ve temporarily stopped our private Alpha program.   Our intention with this Alpha was to get some early feedback under NDA with a limited number of BlackBerry Bold users – all under NDA during this early dev phase.  We know that we have lots more work ahead of us, so we intentionally limited the number of participants as well as the development to the Bold model.  Needless to say, this leak was not conducive to the intent of our Alpha.

During the time it was leaked, there were many BlackBerry users trying the Alpha release on Curves, Storms and other BlackBerry models – it was not intended for these devices.  Of course, eventually, we will expand the program to include more participants and more BlackBerry models. In the meantime, we appreciate BlackBerry users’ interest in Skyfire and we’re working hard to get to the Open Beta BlackBerry finish line.

Hello Skyfire users,

In our continuing efforts to bring joy into your lives, today we are happy to announce the release of some key improvements to our service.

Here is a summary of what we’ve rolled out:

• Country-specific search results – we have improved our international search coverage, so users in different countries will see significantly more targeted results.
• Inline commenting for Facebook and Twitter – you can now directly comment on and see nested comment threads from Facebook, and can @reply and RT on Twitter (in same UI), directly from the start page.
• Internal messaging – Skyfire will start posting occasional updates about its product and service directly to users on the start page. The first message informs users of the improvements in search.
• Facebook feed fix – users who were before not getting full news feed updates should now see all their posts again

We hope you like these improvements and look forward to hearing your feedback.  Happy browsing!

It’s my pleasure today to announce that Jeff Glueck is joining Skyfire as our new CEO. The timing and fit couldn’t be better. With the 1.0 launch and our rapidly growing installed base and solid technical foundation in place, Jeff is ready to hit the ground running. He’s the perfect fit because of his unique mix of success with partners and direct-to-consumer internet marketing that has spanned start-ups and large-scale global operations. His focus on creating user value that translates to internet monetization will spark our next stage of growth.

Jeff come from Travelocity where as CMO he helped the company grow from $3.5 billion in sales to $10.6 billion globally. He led branding, customer experience, business development and the advertising model business. (He’s the guy behind the Roaming Gnome.) Jeff created the advertising business at Travelocity and grew ad sales by nearly 40% in 2008. He also earned his stripes on the start-up side too. Prior to Travelocity, he was co-founder of the internet start-up Site59.com in 1999, which pioneered last minute packaging technology. Site59 became the US leader in the “last minute deals” space and was sold to Travelocity in 2002.

I am taking on the role of Chief Product Officer working with the extremely talented team here to continue building great products. It was always my intent to build the solid foundation and then find a seasoned executive that shared my vision and passion to accelerate our growth. Now with Jeff on board, I get to focus on creating the next generation user experience.

At Skyfire, we’re going to continue to do what we do best – bring the full-featured web to consumers and continually excel at both user experience and speed. I welcome Jeff aboard.

We enabled the upgrade trigger for both the Windows and Symbian version of Skyfire.
Thus next time you launch Skyfire you will see a notification that allows you to conveniently upgrade right from within Skyfire.
Simply accept and it will download and install the newest version to your phone. See the previous blog entry for a list of fixes – we think it is worth it.
If you do not want to upgrade right away, then no worry: you can upgrade at any time later (trigger it from Menu | Upgrade).

If you have a Symbian phone with Skyfire 0.8.5 is already installed, the upgrade may give a error message of “unable to install”. In this case please uninstall Skyfire and then start fresh by fetching Skyfire from http://get.skyfire.com . If you registered you will not lose your bookmarks, history or cookies as you can log back in to your account.

Enjoy the newest version.

Since our Skyfire 1.0 launch, we’ve fixed a few bugs and are releasing this new update. We encourage you to upgrade today by going to http://get.skyfire.com with your device.

The release versions are:

1.0.0.12114 for Symbian
1.0.0.12113 for Windows Mobile touch and non-touch

What’s new in this 1.0 update?

• Reduced Memory footprint. We reduced the memory footprint of Skyfire for both Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. This should help folks reporting issues on memory constrained devices.

Fixes in this release

• History is presented in the proper order.
• Cookies in the UK data center are handled more reliably.
• Sharing links via SMS are handled more reliably.
• Reconnect correctly loads the last page in history plus we’ve improved reliability.
• Site specific issues have been resolved for Rooftopcommedy.com and thefind.com.
• Zoom buttons behave properly and disappear after a couple of seconds.
• Default browser setting works more consistently.
• Text entry on Symbian has been improved with one caveat below.

Known issues in this release

• Multi-line text entry on Symbian: Skyfire might exit the text entry mode when the user is choosing a word from the predictive text list. Plus, using the down key might NOT get you out of text entry mode. If this happens, use enter or center OK. Issues 7149 & 7112
• Superbar state on Symbian: Under some circumstances, exiting the Superbar via the ‘cancel’ option will navigate to the previous page. Issue 7158
• Change connection on Symbian: Choosing the search WLAN option might not change the WLAN connection. Issue 6633.
• Samsung Jack (AT&T): Because of a security policy on this device, it will not allow uninstall of Skyfire if there is not SIM card in the phone. Simply insert a SIM card.

Enjoy!

We’re excited to launch Skyfire 1.0.  If you are using an earlier version of Skyfire, go to get.skyfire.com from your phone’s browser or your PC, and upgrade today.  Launch 1.0, and get ready to take advantage of these enhancements.  Let us know what you think at feedback@skyfire.com, or on our User Forum.

• Thumbnail interaction. Now you can click on links immediately after the page loads without having to zoom in. This enhancement is especially helpful for high resolution phones, and for familiar sites where you know right away where you want to click. It makes getting to the content you want on the page simpler, quicker and more efficient.
• Improved zoom. Double-tap or double-click to zoom over any element, including links, images or videos. The zoom interaction is smoother and more responsive as well. Best of all: when you zoom in you will get readable text instantly.
• Enhanced navigation. When you navigate back or forward, you return to the last viewport (e.g. zoom level and portion of the page). This eliminates the need to pan and zoom into the section you were viewing on the previous page. Skyfire remembers the viewport even when you select a page from your history. We have also added shortcut keys, (9) for forward and (7) for backward navigation.
• Improved page handling. Enhancements have been made especially for AJAX-intensive sites such as Facebook and Gmail. When larger parts of the page get updated, the client will more quickly and accurately reflect this. In addition, now, we support full-width iFrames in Skyfire.
• Fast start. We changed both the sequence and behavior of the Skyfire launch so you get started as quickly as possible. You can type a search or URL in the Superbar while Skyfire is connecting in the background. You can put Skyfire to work before the start page is even loaded. Plus, we’ve improved connection performance.
• Reconnect to last state. When you leave Skyfire in the background Skyfire disconnects to preserve battery life. When you come back to Skyfire (after minutes, hours, days), it will reload the same page to the same zoom level and focus. You can continue right where you left off. When you exit and start again, Skyfire you will always land on the start page.
• Connection helper. There is a new mechanism to detect when connections cannot be established to Skyfire servers. If this is due to a network configuration (common in GSM land), then we provide suggestions to help out. This is especially useful if you are with a carrier/data plan that places restrictions on certain APN configurations, which interferes with Skyfire.
• Enhanced search results. Google results now include video, news articles, local results all blended on a single results page and ordered by relevance. Vertical search categories are still available.
• Improved RSS feed search. Find your favorite custom RSS feeds through the improved Add-Feed feature, found under the Customize menu on the start page. Search by site domain, feed URL, or even topical keywords.
• Easier sharing of RSS items from start page. We’ve exposed a simple “Share this article” link below each RSS story displayed on your start page to make it easier to share interesting items to your Twitter and Facebook.
• Remember last connection (Symbian only). Skyfire can now remember the last connection for you, so you will not have to choose a connection every single time. In addition, if you want to change the connection type while you are in Skyfire you can do so.

Have fun,

Robert

It’s a big day here at Skyfire as we announce Skyfire 1.0.  I am really proud of the Skyfire team that has relentlessly improved the Skyfire browsing experience during our beta phase.  We set out to bring the PC web, real fast to your phone.  With the help of our enthusiastic beta community, we’ve reached this milestone day.  Today, you can download Skyfire 1.0 from your phone at get.skyfire.com, or click here.

When we first launched Skyfire Beta 0.5, we were absolutely floored by the initial response.  Today, the demand for Skyfire continues to explode.  In just the past five months, over one million people have installed and used the Skyfire. What really makes us happy is that people are using Skyfire more often and more people are making Skyfire their default browser - for all of their mobile browsing, not just their video consumption.

In fact, Skyfire users are doing things on their phone they couldn’t before.   We love to read the thread in our User Forum, “What did Skyfire do for you today?” Every day, when you use websites and watch videos that don’t work on any other mobile browser, you bring our mission to life. Consistently, the top websites used on Skyfire are the top websites used on PCs - such as the full-featured Hulu, YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, Google Docs, full-featured Gmail, and professional sport leagues’ full websites.

As I reflect back on our journey to 1.0, we’ve come a long way, but as I look forward this is just the beginning. With 1.0, we focused on enhancing user interactions, stability and scalability to create a solid foundation on which to build the future of our service. Specific improvements in this release include enhanced navigation, zooming and interaction as well as faster launch, power optimization, and new search functionality.  Please see the Release Notes to read more about Skyfire 1.0.

Also, want to share some of the media’s response to Skyfire 1.0:

• New York Times: App of the Week:  Skyfire Loads Flash in a Flash
• San Francisco Chronicle: Skyfire 1.0 Mobile Browser Now Available
• All About Symbian: Skyfire 1.0 Web Browser Now Available
• Cnet: Skyfire Mobile Browser Reaches 1.0
• Engadget Mobile: Skyfire Browser Hits Version 1.0
• Financial Times: Skyfire Aims High in Battle of Mobile Browsers
• Gizmodo: Skyfire Leaves Beta, Steals Windows Mobile Browsing Crown
• GigaOm/jkOnTheRun: Skyfire Mobile Browser Hits the Big 1.0
• InformationWeek: Skyfire Mobile Browser Officially Kicks Other Browsers’ Tails
• Mashable: Skyfire Mobile Browser Reaches Version 1.0
• MobileCrunch: Skyfire Burns Through the Beta Tag
• VentureBeat: Rich Mobile Browser Skyfire Launches Faster Version 1.0

From all of us at Skyfire, we want to thank the over one million Skyfire users that helped us through our beta period.  Without your feedback, encouragement and support, this day would not be the same.