Pocket Internet Explorer Start Page
A Replacement for the Default Pocket Internet Explorer Home Page
Introduction
The default home page on all Pocket PCs is pretty lame. You can go to the built-in AvantGo client and to three or four other pre-defined locations, and that’s about it. Having an assortment of locations quickly available without having to use the Favorites dialog is important to me, so I set out to create a new Start Page for my Pocket PC that was both attractive and functional.
![[PNG, 240×320, 14.7 KB]](/images/ppc/pie_start_page/0_ppc_blue.png "Screenshot of the Pocket PC tab")
The screenshots below show the results of my work. There is a brief description of each tab next to its screenshot and a more in-depth description of the project starts on page two. Page three contains the Theme Gallery and page 4 shows the Revision History.
Let me begin by answering what has become the most frequently-asked question since I first released this last year: No, this version of the Pocket Internet Explorer Start Page does not work with the version of Internet Explorer included with Pocket PC 2002 devices. It requires a device running Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC due to the page’s use of cascading style sheets. I state this in the very first paragraph of the documentation included in the download and I will be modifying some of the text throughout this site in order to make this fact more clear. At this time, I am not sure how the recently-announced Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition will affect the Start Page. Since that release contains a new version of Pocket IE with another new rendering engine, I’ll need someone to try it out since HP won’t release an upgrade for my “old” h5455. 
Where to Download
To download the Start Page package, simply click here to download a zipped version. I also ask that you please take the time to completely read the documentation included in the zip file before asking questions. I tried to be very thorough when writing that and expect it will address most questions you may have. If you have questions that are not answered, feel free to post a comment here.
Description of the Tabs
This is the main page of my Start Page. It contains the link buttons for the Pocket PC and related sites I visit most often on my Pocket PC. (The linked pages are the mobile versions of each site which display well on the Pocket PC’s small screen.) The buttons are in no particular order, though Pocket PC Thoughts is the site I visit most often.
![[PNG, 240×320, 6.44 KB]](/images/ppc/pie_start_page/1_info_blue.png "Screenshot of the News and Information tab")
This is page two of my Start Page, which contains links to news and information sites, as well as travel and financial sections. There is plenty of room to customize this one to your liking.
![[PNG, 240×320, 5.68 KB]](/images/ppc/pie_start_page/2_searches_blue.png "Screenshot of the Searches tab")
This is my search page, which currently has only Google. The search form produces results from the Palm version of Google, which is optimized for mobile devices./>
![[PNG, 240×320, 5.56 KB]](/images/ppc/pie_start_page/3_blogs_blue.png "Screenshot of the Blogs tab")
With the increasing number of personal “blogs” that are becoming mobile-friendly, I added this tab to my Start Page. I link to my own site as a quick way of testing updates, etc. The downloadable package does not include most of the sites shown here because I doubt most people would visit the same blogs I do. Feel free to customize to your heart’s content!
![[PNG, 240×320, 6.83 KB]](/images/ppc/pie_start_page/4_misc_blue.png "Screenshot of the Device Admin and Miscellaneous Sites tab")
This page is mostly to provide quick links to various network devices on my (and friends’) networks. The links go to the Web-based config pages of the various devices. This isn’t always easy to use on a Pocket PC, but has come in handy on more than one occasion. Again, the downloadable package does not include all of these links, and the ones that are included contain sample URLs only. There is also a group of mobile-friendly online shopping locations, as well as a FedEx link for tracking shipments.
Continue to page two for a detailed description of the Start Page project.
April 16th, 2004 at 03:24
Rock on.
April 17th, 2004 at 09:36
What a nice start page.
Is it possible to add a page with rss feeds inbedded in it?
April 17th, 2004 at 15:26
I’m not entirely sure what you mean. If you want to actually display RSS feeds within the page, I don’t know if that’s possible. If you just wanted to link to some RSS feeds for whatever reason, you could certainly do that using regular HTML hyperlinks.
April 22nd, 2004 at 00:44
I am not a PPC geek by any stretch of the imagination and I was a little cowed by the thought of copying files all over the place. NOT at all hard and the result is a stunner. So much better than the start page out of the box. Great work - thanks a lot
April 22nd, 2004 at 23:17
Great work. I think the next step now is to make an internal webserver to offer some really dynamic driven start page. That’s something I plan to do so let me know if you’re interested.
July 5th, 2004 at 06:11
Great piece of work…keep it up!
October 13th, 2004 at 16:35
Dave, you mention this in your review, but I’ll point it out anyway: looks like the PIE that comes with WM2K3SE doesn’t do CSS the way your pages require. Still, though, nice work.
October 13th, 2004 at 21:23
That’s not entirely surprising, though it is a bit disappointing. Since PIE in WM2003SE changes the way it renders pages, I figured some tweaks would be needed. I have an hx4700 on the way so I’ll see what’s needed to make it work on a VGA screen. Unfortunately, I no longer have a QVGA Pocket PC so I may make two versions of the Start Page available; one the way it is now optimized for 240×320 Pocket PCs running WM2003 and another for WM2003SE devices. I’m hoping that tweaks for VGA will also work okay for QVGA.
It’ll also be interesting to see how the thing works in landscape modes and when running in “true VGA” mode with SE_VGA. If anyone wants to send screenshots of the page on their new device, please e-mail them to me at “comments” at this site’s domain.
November 8th, 2004 at 02:43
I cant tell you how much I like your Start Page. I made some changes based on my favorite links and it was great.
But two days ago I installed HP Print 4.0 and Pocket Informant update to version 5.5.
Since then when I start the PI explorer the screen goes wild. It looks like Stop/Refresh button gets stuck and the screen is trying to refresh endlessly. The only way to stop it is to close the program.
I tryed to uninstall both programs but it did not help.
I am wondering if you have heard about this issue?
November 8th, 2004 at 14:44
I have never seen that problem before. I can’t imagine it’s related to my Start Page, though, since it’s just simple HTML and style sheets. I also use Pocket Informant v5.5, but haven’t installed the new HP Mobile Printing software yet. Mobile Printing v2 is in ROM on my hx4700 and it works fine for the rare occasion that I need to print from my Pocket PC.
Do any of the menus work in Pocket IE? Can you reset the home page to the default? If not, and you have a Pocket PC registry editor, you can edit “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page” and set it to about:home then start PIE again.
November 13th, 2004 at 03:06
Now I know for sure that it is HP Mobile Printing 4.0 that causes the problem. After I restored from my back up file and installed PI 5.5 everything worked fine, but after installing HP Mobile Printing 4.0 the same problem with PIE Start Page repeated itself again. Please let us know if you’ll find the solution.
November 15th, 2004 at 02:13
There isn’t really all that much I can do to fix the problem. I can’t believe the problem would be caused by anything I did, but I guess anything is possible. Since it happens after you install HP’s Mobile Printing app, I’d recommend contacting HP about the problem since they are more likely to have the time and resources to track down the source of the problem.
December 2nd, 2004 at 14:35
I can confirm Alex’s findings as they match mine exactly. It is important to note that this effects the Start Pages loaded off of the device (h2215 in my case) file system, but the pages work fine if you put them on a web server and access them via the web. You can test a web installation at http://www.drealm.com/archive/PIE/.
December 2nd, 2004 at 16:22
Progress. If I remove the top line of each index file it will work. I removed < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Not sure why, discovered via trial and error.
December 2nd, 2004 at 16:37
Correction: You need to remove the comments to make it work. The DOCTYPE line can remain, but the line must come immediately after the DOCTYPE line.
December 2nd, 2004 at 21:08
That is just really strange — especially the fact that the same page loads fine from an online location. Thanks for troubleshooting this, Chris! On your Pocket PC, does the path to the Start Page files contain any spaces or unusual characters? I’m just trying to comprehend why it works online but not on your local copy. Even more frustrating is why HP’s printing software causes such a bizarre symptom.
December 2nd, 2004 at 22:46
Glad someone else was having the wild PIE_Start_Page opening after installing HP Mobile Printing. I will apply the fix that you guys have figured out.
Thanks everyone
December 20th, 2004 at 18:34
Hi there,
I got the same refreshing problem. I also have HP print 4 installed. I would like to have this PIE Start work but I don’t realy understand the workarounds for this problem from Chris Hanley. How can I change the Index file?
Wouter
December 20th, 2004 at 18:36
Hi guys. I got the same problem with my MDA II and this program and HP print 4. I would like to have this work but I don’t understand the workaround from Chris Hanley. How can I change the Index file? Who can help me out here?
Wouter
January 4th, 2005 at 23:47
Hi, does anybody have figured out a way to develop drop down menu in Pocket Internet Explorer? I tried Java script, it does not work. My os is Windows Mobile 2003 on Axim X30.
January 5th, 2005 at 01:08
The mobile version of PPCW.net uses drop-down menus quite well. Have a look at the code used there to see if that helps.
February 6th, 2005 at 02:52
I’m anxious to use your progi on my WM 2003 SE, please let me know if/when you update it to work with this release. Thanks!
February 6th, 2005 at 12:37
It actually works great as far as I can tell. Everything looks pretty much the same on my VGA hx4700 as it did on my old h5455. I do know that it won’t look right if you run in “true VGA” mode through the use of a program like SE_VGA, but in the regular high-res mode provided by Windows Mobile 2003 SE on VGA devices, it looks fine. I’ll be revising this page soon to include updated information and a screenshot or two from a VGA device.
Do you have a VGA or QVGA device, Drew? Please go ahead and give it a try and let me know if it doesn’t look right for you.
May 4th, 2005 at 08:14
[...] 해놨습니다. í•œ 번 연구해 ë³´ê³ ì‹¶ìœ¼ì‹ ë¶„ë“¤ì€ ë‹¤ìš´ë°›ì•„ì„œ 보세요. http://www.beauvais1.com/archives/2004/04/10/pocket-i [...]
May 4th, 2005 at 09:06
Google to the rescue. Google’s beta Korean-to-English translator allowed me to get the gist of what the previous comment was about.
May 18th, 2005 at 20:38
I love your Pocket IE template…. but just wondering if you can assist…. In Windows Mobile 2003SE, I excclusively use the “One Column” Layout of pocket IE. That just plays havoc with your template. My question thus is there an ‘easy’ way to change the html code in your template to get it to display properly using the one column layout format? (I’ve played around with html before but not to that extent)
Thanks
May 18th, 2005 at 22:51
Wow… never noticed that before. (I very rarely use one-column mode.) The problem is that I still have to use a table for some layout since Pocket IE still doesn’t support positioning with style sheets.
The “tab bar” along the left side of the page isn’t actually text — it’s a group of GIF images — so PIE can’t really do much with it when shifting content around in one-column mode. Moving the tabs to the top of the page would resolve that problem.
Actually, that would eliminate the need for the table, and I could use text instead of GIFs, too… hmm… Maybe in the next version. I’m hoping Windows Mobile 5 doesn’t completely break it.
May 20th, 2005 at 20:16
Dear Dave,
I own an Anextek SP230 PDA Phone. It runs on Microsoft PPC 2003. I connected a Sandisk SD Wifi card on it. The card works fine. Link Quality and Signal Strengths are good. Pinging it shows no data loss.
However, I can never get the Internet Explorer to work. I alwas get an error ” The page you are looking for cannot be found”. I have installed your new start page, but it doesn’t help.
Anyone out there who can help me?
Robert
May 21st, 2005 at 00:26
You might get a lot more help by posting your question in the forums at a Pocket PC site like Pocket PC Thoughts. My initial guess, however, would be that when you setup the wireless LAN connection, you selected the wrong connection type. Options are “Work” and “Internet.” Whatever it’s set to now, change to the other and see if it works then.