pTHINCBetter web browsing on your mobile device

Joeng KimRicardo Baratto

Jason NiehColumbia University, USA

Outline

• Mobile Web Browsers

• Problem

• Alternative: Thin Clients

• Usability

• Visual Comparison

• Measurements

• Conclusion

Mobile Web Browser

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

VIDEO

FLASH

IMAGE

Issues with Mobile Browsers

• High quality pages mean..– More Data Download– More Client Processing– Compatibility Issues

• Application, Platform, Browsers, Standards

– Requirement Issues• Flash, Java Applets, Javascript, Plug-in

– Resize Issues– Language support

Alternative: Thin Clients

Thin Client

• Leverage Server– High speed connection– More resource– Persistence

• Allows– Heterogeneous display– Stateless client

Thin clients vs Web

• rewrite applications for the web

• client browser and helper applications

• preserve software investments

• no client applications

Thin Clients

pTHINC

applications

windowsystem

devicedriver

framebufferraw pixels

high-level requests

virtual devicedriver

pTHINC

applications

windowsystem

display updates

input events

pTHINC

• Fast and Lightweight

• Leverage and Virtualize display

• Video support

pTHINC protocol

• copy

• solid fill

• pixmap fill

• bitmap

• RAW

Usability Enhancements

pTHINC Usage

Visual Comparison

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Measurements

Measurements

• Test run on basic Web benchmarks

• Variable conditions– PDA: Dell Axim x5, x51v

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Web Latency

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Latency measurement based on average page load time

Video Results

Quality based on amount of data transferred

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Conclusion

• Mobile Web Browsers can be improved

• pTHINC: potential alternative– Increased visual performance– Better usability– Helper functions such as video

more info

network computing laboratoryhttp://www.ncl.cs.columbia.edu