Blazer 2.0 ReadMe October 12, 2001 Handspring Blazer is a proxy-based Web browser for the Palm OS(r). Using Blazer and a wireless or wireline modem, Visor and other Palm OS device users can access virtually any site available on the Internet. Blazer provides access to sites developed in a number of commonly-used Web and wireless markup languages, including HTML, WAP (HDML/WML), and cHTML (i-mode). New features of Blazer 2.0 Blazer 2.0 includes several feature enhancements over Blazer 1.1, as follows: * Ability to change your home page. Users can now define any URL to be the browser home page. * Enhanced bookmarking interface. A new bookmark interface makes it easy to visit your favorite sites with a single tap. Enter up to 100 bookmarks on ten distinct pages. * Improved performance. We made some "under the hood" changes that will speed up Blazer performance and increase responsiveness. * Security. We added support for a few additional types of security, including proxy authentication and HTTP authentication (basic and digest). System Requirements * Handspring Visor handhelds running Palm OS 3.1 or higher. Other Palm OS devices running Palm OS 3.5 or higher with a minimum of 8MB memory. * 400K free memory * Wireless or wireline modem * Internet Service Provider (e.g. carrier ISP service, OmniSky, GoAmerica, AT&T, Earthlink) Installation and Setup * Windows users will download an installer program. Users of other operating systems will download the Blazer 2.0 prc file. * Windows users should launch the installer and follow the instructions provided by the installer. * Users of other operating systems should double click the Blazer.prc file that is downloaded to place the file into the Palm Desktop's Install tool. Blazer 2.0 will be installed on the next HotSync. Bookmarks * Existing Blazer 1.1 users should note that Blazer 2.0 requires a different format for storing bookmarks, and the Blazer bookmarks file previously used by Blazer 1.1 will be re-initialized and cleared by Blazer 2.0. * With Blazer 2.0, you can store up to 100 bookmarks and categorize them on ten separate pages. Adding bookmarks is easy: when you're viewing the page you want to bookmark, tap the Menu Icon, locate the Options pulldown menu, and select Add Bookmark. Blazer 2.0 will automatically populate any relevant fields, although you can change the bookmark's name or other information manually if you like. Once you tap on OK, the bookmark will appear on your list. * To make bookmarks the default view, tap on the Menu icon, locate the Options menu, and select Blazer preferences. For Initial View, choose the bookmark icon. * To open any bookmarked page, go to the Bookmark View, then tap on the bookmark you want to bring up in the browser. Blazer will then load the bookmarked web page. * To edit bookmarks, go to Bookmark View and tap on the page icon at the bottom of the screen that contains your bookmark. Then tap Edit to bring up the Edit Bookmark List screen. You can also edit the page's Title from this screen. To edit a single bookmark, tap on the bookmark you want to change, and the Edit Bookmark screen will appear for you to make changes. If you tap Delete in this screen, you can remove the bookmark entirely. * You may want to rearrange bookmarks or move pages around. From the Bookmark View, tap Edit. To move bookmarks on a single page, simply tap on the bookmark and drag it to where you want it to appear on the list. If that slot is full, the other entries will move down one slot as the rows fill. You can also move a single bookmark to another page by tapping on it and dragging it to any page icon at the bottom of the screen. It will appear at the bottom of the list on that page. Alternatively, move and hold your bookmark over a page icon and the display will switch to this page; you can then drop the bookmark anywhere on this page. Home Page * With Blazer 2.0 , you can choose any URL to be your home page. The browser launches to this page each time you start the application. To change your home page, tap on the Menu icon, locate the Options menu, and select Blazer Preferences. Tap on the home page URL to edit. * To restore the factory default Home Page setting, tap Restore in the Set Home Page dialog box. Connectivity * If you are using Blazer with a VisorPhone, and are unable to connect to your ISP, check that your VisorPhone SIM is unlocked. If it is locked, launch the VisorPhone app, power on the VisorPhone, and enter your password. * If you are using a wireless modem and have trouble accessing web pages, the problem may be related to coverage for your Internet connection. If you are using a wireless Minstrel modem (with OmniSky and GoAmerica services) and the left-most light on the modem is blinking, you are out of coverage. VisorPhone's indicator light will flash red slowly if it is out of coverage. * If you suspect that the connection to your ISP may have been dropped, attempt to reconnect by selecting Disconnect from the Options menu in Blazer and then reloading the page. Some wireless modems will perform this reconnect function automatically. * Ensure that the modem did not drop the connection because your handheld powered off automatically. Modems use a lot of power. As an efficiency measure, the Idle timeout setting in the Details section of Modem preferences (under Network in Palm OS 3.5), is set to Power Off by default. This means that the connection will drop if your handheld goes to sleep. You can lengthen the Auto-off after setting in General Preferences or set the Idle timeout to a higher value. * Palm OS 3.x is not helpful about warning you when your connection has been lost to the Internet. You might not see any error message alerting you to the lost connection. Some third party modems use hardware detection to get around this problem and they will automatically try to re-establish the connection. * Make sure your unit has adequate power. Low battery levels can lead to poor connection quality. Proxy/Security * Blazer 2.0 is a fully secure web browser incorporating 128-bit SSL encryption, and enables users to visit secure web sites which also utilize 128-bit SSL security and identify themselves with certificate chains rooted at one of the root certificates trusted by Blazer. Secure web sites which do not meet both these criteria will not be accessible with Blazer in order to protect the user's data. * If you are dialing into an Intranet protected by a firewall, Blazer may not be able to retrieve web pages because the browser is unable to communicate with the Blazer proxy server. Contact your network or system administrator for a possible solution, such as using a separate HTTP proxy server. * If you are attempting to access web pages on your corporate Intranet, the Blazer proxy server may not be able to communicate with your Intranet web server, in which case you will not be able to view these pages with Blazer. * For security reasons, some web sites may automatically log you out of a secure session after a set amount of time. In order to re-enter the secure session, you may need to clear the Blazer cache first. * Some web sites will detect that you are browsing from a PDA, and will serve a different page than you would see from your desktop browser. Such pages are typically formatted and optimized for mobile devices. Other * If your Navigation bar or loading progress icons are displayed incorrectly, try reloading the URL, or exit and relaunch Blazer. * Very large pages may not load fully due to the fixed limit on available working memory on Palm OS devices. * Blazer may fail to load pages containing JavaScript, Java or plug-in dependencies such as Macromedia Flash. Blazer attempts to load pages by ignoring these features but does not always succeed. * Blazer does not support JavaScript. Hyperlinks based on JavaScript will not be functional. * Blazer may fail to update a graphic on a web page when Refresh is selected from the Page menu; the text on the page is updated. Navigate to another page, clear the Blazer cache then return to that web page. BlazerDEMO * If you are using the trial version of Blazer, BlazerDEMO, it will expire two weeks after initial use. * To purchase a licensed copy of Blazer, please visit http://blazer.handspring.com for the latest information. Support * Visit http://www.handspring.com/support/ for the latest Blazer support information.