John Cooper's List: portal

HP’s Mobile Internet Experience (MIE) user interface is a bit more attractive than a default Ubuntu distribution. The home screen is comprised of three panes. The left pane is for email, using Thunderbird. The center pane is for the web, featuring a search/address bar and bookmarks for launching a customized version of Firefox. The right pane is for music and photo, using HP’s own MediaStyle player and manager.

I set up the Thunderbird panel for my Gmail IMAP account, but after a couple of days I found myself more comfortable with accessing Gmail through the browser again. The Thunderbird interface is superficially attractive, since it displays the headers of your latest messages is soon as the computer is booted. But clicking on one of these headers doesn’t open the message directly. It opens the Thunderbird client in full screen mode, so you have to click on the header again to open the individual email. So the header column on the home screen is essentially a launcher icon for Thunderbird.

The same is true for MediaStyle. When you click on a thumbnail of a photo on the home screen, instead of displaying that photo full-sized, you’re taken to MediaStyle’s photo manager, from which you have to select the thumbnail again. Clicking on the thumbnail cover art for a music file works similarly: the selection launches MediaStyle’s file manager, and the file must be re-selected.

The web pane is better designed. The dropdown bookmarks menu and four Favorite thumbnails launch the browser and go to the selected website directly. The entry bar at the top of the allows you to put in a URL or search term, and the icons for Go and Search are intuitive.

The Linux version of Firefox, though customized, doesn’t seemed optimized for the Mini’s 1024 x 576 screen. The browser frame consumes too much real estate, but I’m still searching for a lightweight Linux Firefox theme — the two that I found wouldn’t install. Most of the extensions I use on the Windows version, on the other hand, did install (I have more compatibility issues with the latest Windows Firefox betas than with the MIE version). Fullscreen Mode (F11) is the best way to use the browser in most cases, especially when using Google Docs and Gmail.