RIM filed patents for technology that prioritizes different components of a Web page when loading and displaying it according to GoRumors. Specifically, it should make BlackBerry Browser load and display a page’s main content before processing CSS and Javascript files. The patents further RIM’s efforts to improve its mobile browsing experience as enterprises and consumers increase their reliance on Web apps.
If you’ve ever seen your BlackBerry stuck on a blank screen even though 50 out of 51 kilobytes of Web page has already loaded, you’ve experienced the problem RIM is trying to solve. The CSS and Javascript files used to format a page’s text can be larger than the text itself, so showing readers the text before it’s formatted should speed things up considerably.
RIM announced in November it will release a new WebKit-based browser sometime in 2010, and filed a patent in January for technology to speed up browsing using proxy servers.
The BlackBerry Web browsing experience has been notoriously weak and it makes sense for RIM to improve the experience not just for consumers but for increasingly Web dependent enterprise users as well.
The iPhone and Android are gaining popularity in the enterprise, and many third-party tools such as Sybase‘s Afaria attempt to bring the advantages of RIM’s Blackberry Enterprise Server to other devices. RIM needs to innovate continuously in order to stay ahead in enterprise, and the browser is a good place to start.
