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Alternatives to AvantGo? 37

Posted by Cliff from the looking-for-better-options dept.
docricketts asks: "I've been scoping out some ways to expand the content of a few sites that I manage and have been considering creating versions for PDAs and phones. I've looked around but it looks like AvantGo, at least on PDAs, is the only option for those folks not connected via wireless networks. Now that they have changed their pricing structure, charging $1000 for 'channels' that have one to 100 subscribers, this looks completely inaccessible for content sites that are there to provide info rather than make money. Is AvantGo it, or are there alternatives that I'm not seeing?"
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Alternatives to AvantGo? More

Alternatives to AvantGo?

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  • Use Plucker (Score:2, Informative)

    by mmynsted ( 552933 )
    Try Pluker

    http://www.plkr.org/index.plkr

  • Plucker: better than AvantGo! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @11:58PM (#4605254)
    Check out Plucker [plkr.org]. It's better than AvantGo in nearly every way.
    • Regrettably, I have a handheld that still run the WinCE system. The Plucker handheld client is Palm only whilst Avantgo is multiplatform.

      • Re:No WinCE/PocketPC (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Then don't use it!

        These guys don't work for you, or for anyone, they work for themselves. They write whatever code they thing will be useful TO THEM. I don't think the WinCE platform is open, and probably won't give you a free toolkit to produce software for it, and, well, it's Windows-based, so they aren't in a rush to go out and support your platform, since it's probably not in their best interests.

        Get someone else to port it, Plucker IS open source.

      • As a slightly less Anonymous-Coward-ish reply, the Plucker Client isn't actually Palm only. There's a GTK+ version for machines which can support it, and the popular Opie-Reader for Zaurus will read Plucker formatted files.

        There isn't a native WinCE program that will read Plucker files, but there is a fair amount of interest in one. Sadly, the interest doesn't seem to come from people who are able to program for WinCE, and the core developers would rather not spend their time writing products for platforms they don't use. However, I've found that they are happy to help people who want to help themselves, so if you start writing a WinCE viewer, I'm sure you would get a lot of help.
        • I take the hint!!!

          I'll have a look at the WinCE SDK and the sources of the client and see what is possible.

          • As a side note, I've recently been informed that you can get a GTK+ dll for some PocketPC models, with which you can run the GTK+ version of Plucker. That might be a faster route to go to get a working WinCE client.
            • I have done some hunting via Google and can only trace the Linux/IPAQ version on www.handhelds.org. I do note though that one of the libraries floating around (used for the Perl port amongst other things) emulates some of the Palm API.

              Thanks anyway for the hints.

  • Handstory (Score:3, Informative)

    by DietFluffy ( 150048 ) on Wednesday November 06, 2002 @12:01AM (#4605278)
    HandStory, the AvantGo Alternative. [handstory.com]

    HandStory Suite reviewed as AvantGo Alternative by the Handheld Computing Weekly.

    'HandStory Suite' 'Almost every Palm powered user knows about AvantGo. It's bundled on the installation disc with new PDAs, and it's long been billed as the killer app for your Palm. Its appeal is undeniable; the program is a free, convenient Web clipping service that delivers freshly-updated content you've subscribed to -- like the New York Times, Joke of the Day, and The Weather Channel--directly to your PDA at each HotSync to read on the road.' 'The once undisputed king of offline content is starting to show some cracks, though. AvantGo can't take advantage of the Sony Clie's popular full-screen, HiRes+display, for instance, and financial difficulties at the company have forced it to adopt a two-tiered service plan, with content beyond 2MB no longer free. Worse, the company has clamped down on its Web partners, charging them fees that have driven many to scale back their support for AvantGo.' 'But there are alternatives. If you'd like to experiment with offline browsing and want to see what the world has to offer beyond the reassuring AvantGo logo, step right up to... HandStory...' 'HandStory is the most complete and elegant of the AvantGo alternatives. Designed to be a complete media reader that features an integrated memo pad, doc reader, image viewer, eBook reader, and Web clip browser, it can also take advantage of the Clie's HiRes+mode. Armed with HandStory, you may be able to abandon several other apps and rely almost exclusively on one program.' 'The program's desktop component has conduits for converting Web pages, text documents, and graphics to the Palm. The big news, though, is that HandStory is trying to take on AvantGo in a big way, with a library of about 150 clips ready for download. That's small potatoes compared to the thousands of AvantGo channels available, but HandStory promises to continue building its collection.'

    • My problem with HandStory is that it isn't open source (which, I realize, is being nitpicky, but it's just one of those things, y'know) and it doesn't work on the PocketPC 2000/WinCE 3.0. I sent an email to their customer support line about two weeks ago and have yet to receive a response. Plus, why shjould I pay $20 for a browser for my PDA when the browsers for my desktop are free? I essentially want the Internet experience just slightly distilled and in my hand.
  • http://www.palmblvd.com/software/pc/The-Plucker-Te am-2001-3-30-palm-pc.html

    it will convert any web page into a palm db and it has a browser... i haven't tried it but it sounds like it does what you want.
  • PocketPC's (Ipaqs, Jornadas, Toshibas, Cassiopeias) support offline browsing through ActiveSync. As long as you keep your pages simple enough (i.e. no huge nav frames) your pages should be legible.
    • perhaps i'm an idiot -- but i've never gotten that to work. for the zaurus, it seems you need to setup an http proxy on the machine you're connecting through. for the casio i have, ... activesync by itself refuses. is it only on MS Windows CE 2002 (not 2000?) not that i really want to browse the net from a 320x240 screen on a casio attached to a USB cradle ... but ... well ... no, i really don't actually.

  • Just be sure to have a "light" URL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by netjeff ( 163914 ) on Wednesday November 06, 2002 @03:09AM (#4606145) Homepage
    My recommendation is to create a "light" version of the site. No frames, no giant tables of contents, simple little graphics at most. If it's a site that updates often, be sure that the user will not have to specify a different URL everyday to get the latest (most current) day.

    Then on your "regular" page, offer a link to the light page. That way people can use whatever they want. Personally I use Plucker, but as noted in this thread there are other options.

    For an example, take a look at RISKs digest.
    http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks

    Down in the middle they have a link to the latest version of the digest (http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/go/risks/latest). That link is to a much lighter than the "full" version of the latest digest.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The sitescooper (sitescooper.org) is an excellent Perl based program which very effectively collects, strips down and repackages webpages in an efficient manner. It is reasonably simple to configure. I use it with iSilo on my PalmOS Visor, but you can also use it on arbitary PDAs by using HTML output. It does require a script to run on the syncing computer which is a problem if you are not travelling with a laptop with internet access. It also features the capacity to use netscape cookies to access stuff like NY Times and Salon.

    For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a Zaurus there is a particularly nifty alternative Zepo (http://www.alterna.tv/zepo/ http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=6 83). Zepo directly snarfs, reformats, and compresses webpages when it has web access and then allows you to read the results offline when not connected. It's java based, thus hopefully platform independent. I've sucessfully snarfed websites at Starbucks using a T-Mobile 802.11b connection. Very fast and efficent.

    WWWOFLE (www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/wwwoffle/ http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=3 01) is an offline capture, storage and display system, I've used it on the Zaurus but it has problems in handling cookies and establishing a link to the T-Mobile service at Starbucks.

    To summarize: working from your home computer with the Palm or Zaurus should use sitescooper. If you are travelling with a Zaurus use Zepo.

  • Plucker ... once some minor shortcomings are fixed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yelvington ( 8169 ) on Wednesday November 06, 2002 @05:14PM (#4611404) Homepage
    I'm an executive with a media company that owns newspapers throughout the United States, and we're seriously considering Plucker as a recommended replacement for AvantGo for our PDA-equipped readers.

    However, there are two serious "gotchas" - not with Plucker itself, but with the (very new and nice) Plucker Desktop utility, which solves most of the usability issues we had with Plucker.

    We need the Palm hotsync action to automatically trigger Plucker Desktop to perform the channel updating. This is probably a fairly simple bit of conduit work. (Under Windows, look into the registry, find the Plucker binary location, and exec it with the appropriate arguments).

    The other item is a one-click "sign up for this channel" functionality -- basically just a metadata file on our Web server containing URL, depth and follow/nofollow directives, probably in XML. This requires some more work on the desktop app and installer.

    I've corresponded with the primary author of Plucker Desktop, and they're both on his radar, but needing some smart programmers to dive in and help out.

  • Plucker vs. AvantGo (Score:3, Informative)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Wednesday November 06, 2002 @05:23PM (#4611504)
    I've been using and working with Plucker since 1998, and I think I can lend some credence to our particular alternative here. Here's a brief rundown of our project against AvantGo's offering:
    • Plucker has three forms of compression (Zlib, DOC, and none), AvantGo does not
    • Plucker supports 14 languages, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker supports local files (file://tmp/foo.txt) and intranet (including https://) content, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker supports runtime image scaling via the parser ([alt]maxwidth, [alt]maxheight), AvantGo does not
    • Plucker is an 100k footprint on the Palm, AvantGo 4.0 is 399k, without content
    • Plucker supports Gestures, Autoscroll, Tap Navigation, and Hardware button configuration options, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker is free and open source, under the GNU General Public License, AvantGo is not
    • Plucker uses an openly-documented data structure format, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker works on 11 platforms, 5 operating systems (with varying degrees of difficulty), AvantGo supports 1.5 OS' (Windows, and "almost" Macintosh)
    • Plucker does not "restrict" what websites can do with their own content or slap them with fines for misusing it, AvantGo does
    • Plucker supports multiple instances of the same content (NYTimes with images, NYTimes with color, NYTimes without images) loaded at the same time, AvantGo does not
    • You can beam your Plucker content to another Plucker user, with AvantGo you cannot
    • Plucker offers 5 font choices, 7 on Sony devices and 9 on Handera devices, AvantGo offers 2 fonts, with one being built-into the PalmOS itself
    • Plucker has full support for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OSX operating systems, AvantGo supports.. well, one.
    • Plucker includes full tools in Python, Java, Perl, C, C++, GUI desktop options, commandline options, and parsers, including viewers for Linux-based PDA devices. AvantGo has none of these
    • Plucker supports an email-only interface, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker supports Bookmarks, AvantGo does not
    • Plucker does not force advertisements on you, AvantGo does
    • Plucker does not use an insecure proxy server to "broker" requests from the client, AvantGo does
    • Plucker does not support "hiding" of PDA-sized content urls, AvantGo does, and restricts by license, what content providers can and can't do with their own content
    • ..and many other features I didn't mention

    Have a look at our project at www.plkr.org [plkr.org] and try it out for yourself. If you want to help us out, please do. We believe we have the superior product, for dozens of reasons. We're smaller, faster, more feature-rich, secure, and we put the user and content provider back in control of their own content.

    The Plucker Desktop application can be found at desktop.plkr.org [plkr.org]. It is written in wxWindows, and works on Linux, Solaris, and Windows.

    The High-resolution viewer application for Sony and Handera high-resolution devices can be found at hires.plkr.org [plkr.org].

    We also have an irc channel, so feel free to join and talk to other Plucker users and developers. Point your irc client to irc.plkr.org and join #plucker to chat with us.

    If you wish to help out with PDA-sized websites, take a look at OpenURLS [plkr.org] and help us out maintaining the list. I've done all of the work so far to fetch these urls (600+), but we need some help sorting them and categorizing them.

    We have a lot of other things going on, and we are quite active. Jump aboard and help us out!

    • Does the client run on PocketPC/WinCE? I know you support a whole plethora of desktops, but getting it on my handheld is what is important for me.
      • Does your PocketPC run Linux? If so, then yes.

        If not, can your PocketPC run the GTK+ viewer? If so, then yes.

        If not, then someone will have to port it to PocketPC, i.e. not us.

        • Regrettably I can't run Linux yet there as I need synchronisation/integration with a Win2K desktop. AFAIK, the GTK+ viewer doesn't run there. However a bastardised version of Cygwin does run so perhaps there is some possibility of a port. Unfortunately I'm doing other things at the moment so don't have time to look at this. Maybe later.
    • Plucker works on 11 platforms, 5 operating systems (with varying degrees of difficulty), AvantGo supports 1.5 OS' (Windows, and "almost" Macintosh)

      [...]
      Plucker has full support for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OSX operating systems, AvantGo supports.. well, one.
      Be fair here, David. Those are both the same point, and it's not quite true. I was using AvantGo with my Linux box ages ago, with a utility called malsync. I suspect that it would work just fine on any Unix, including OSX, so AvantGo works on the same number of platforms as Plucker.

      And AvantGo does do things that Plucker doesn't, such as nicer table handling, and form submission.

      Having said all that, I switched from AvantGo to Plucker because its advantages far outweigh its shortcomings, which are growing fewer by the day. I remember just a short while ago, when there was no Plucker Desktop, and things had to be done by hand. I also look to the future, and see two separate groups working on different approaches to making tables look nicer. I would expect to see a demo of prettier tables in the next two weeks.

      • I was using AvantGo with my Linux box ages ago, with a utility called malsync. I suspect that it would work just fine on any Unix, including OSX, so AvantGo works on the same number of platforms as Plucker.

        Actually, I'm being quite fair, malsync [tomw.org] is not an AvantGo product, nor is it supported by AvantGo in any way (and in fact, I host the mainline malsync sourcecode [sourcefubar.net] in my cvs). malsync is a reverse-engineered tool that provides functionally-similar capabilities to what AvantGo's Windows conduit provides, but it most-certainly is not supported or written by current AvantGo personnel (unless that changed very recently).

        I didn't include third-party tools or patches in my assesment above, for both products, for exactly this reason. Otherwise, I would have included the fact that Plucker _does_ support forms and tables, through third-party patches and code.

        I'm actually working on a better breakdown of pros and cons between both applications, which was spawned by my original post here. Hit me in private email for the link to it. I'd love to get your input on the featuresets.

        And please don't use my real name here in an open forum. I didn't use it, so I trust that you'll respect that and do the same.

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