bolt
Posted by Anil Kapri on Thursday, May 6, 2010
Under: mobile tips and tricks

At CTIA yesterday, Bitstream has released a new version of the Bolt Browser. It's V. 0.94, also called Beta 2. New features include:
- - Significantly improved BlackBerry scrolling speed and control
- - A new 3XL (extra large) magnification mode with content 33.3 percent bigger than in 2XL
- - Double tap approach to select links on touchscreen devices like the BlackBerry storm (eliminates inadvertent clicks)
- - Wi-Fi auto-selection as default option when Wi-Fi is both enabled and available
- - Save and view pages locally on the phone
- - Support for folders in favorites
- - A new landscape viewing feature
- - Improved magnifier dragging in split screen mode on the BlackBerry Storm
- - Improved video quality on mpeg4 capable devices.
- - Lightweight encryption when HTTPS is disabled by the user -- secures the user session by encrypting login and web page data. While not as secure as HTTPS, this offers much better security compared to unencrypted plain text.
- - Improved scrolling speed in image rich pages.
- - Double tap enhancements for switching between split and full screen
- - Improved BlackBerry Storm home page tab clicking
- - A user preferences page to reduce menu clutter - especially good on the BlackBerry since there we utilize the native menu structure (without sub-menus)
0.94 offers a nice set of feature and performance enhancements. I especially like the ability to save pages for offline viewing. It works well and allows you to specify the folder to save to. Pages are saved in some sort of binary format that seems specific to Bolt.

Bookmark folders are a nice enhancement although the implementation is a little clunky (see 2nd image). Folders appear at the bottom of the bookmark list and it's not possible to move them. When you click a folder to open it, Bolt jumps back to the top of the list and you have scroll back down to the bottom to see the folder's contents.