As you may have noticed, the upcoming Zune HD is set to have a fully fledged multi-touch browser onboard, and word around the grapevine is that it’s based on the Internet Explorer mobile engine.

Now, it doesn’t take much to come to the conclusion that this’ll be based on Internet Explorer 6 mobile, debuting in Windows Mobile 6.5. After all, both the Zune & Windows Mobile Teams are now headed by the same people, and both are built on Windows Embedded technology (commonly know as WinCE around these parts), and to top it off the Windows Mobile team have just completed finishing up moving Internet Explorer 6’s codebase to the mobile platform, but spicing it up with some of I.E 8’s vastly improved javascript engine, and some (not entirely working) transparent PNG support, AND including a rather smooth zooming engine, which coincidently would work rather nicely on Zune.

Still, I sincerely hope that it isn’t. Now it goes without saying, but Internet Explorer 6’s rendering is one of the main banes of the internet to web developers, an engine that just can’t hold it’s own on current web standards. Now, I.E 6 mobile includes a few extra things that I.E 6 desktop didn’t, but for the most part, you’ll get the same experience on both. Just to get a taste of what I mean, lets look at a couple of examples. On the left is what I.E. 6 mobile gives you, and on the right is what you should be seeing, as rendered by actual mobile browsers.

thezoone.com using I.E.6 mobile	thezoone.com using Skyfire Mobile 1.0

Here you can see some problems already. Check out the problems with transparent PNG’s on the border on the news box. Why is the text squashed into that little column? No proper flash 9 support? (Adobes problem mostly, but as you can see others have managed some very workable solutions). Oh, and really odd, two of the images are wrong, using images that aren’t even on my server anymore! Lord knows what’s going on there… lets chalk it up to more problems with I.E. 6. Oh, and it took over 2 minutes to load on a Wi-Fi connection.

mobile facebook site, on I.E. 6 mobile	mobile facebook on Opera Mobile 9.5

Now here is a laugh. This is one of Facebook’s mobile sites, designed primarily for the iPhone (note: so the better, cooler one). As such, it features generous helpings of the latest web standards, enough to test any good browser. Lets not even bother noting what’s wrong here, just look at the difference between the images, and take into account that this is a site made for mobile devices. Nice job, Internet Explorer! Now, compared to other mobile browsers, I.E 6 mobile can be upto 10x slower loading complex pages, and considering that on a good mobile browser it can take upto 30 seconds to fully render such a page… yeah, things can get real bad.

Now imagine for a minute, that you’ve bought a brand new, top of the range, Zune HD, complete with a fantastically designed and silky smooth UI, only to be left with results like this when you hit the web browser.  Enticing, no?

Take this with a grain of salt though. Hopefully the Zune & Windows Mobile team together will be able to pull something more amazing out of the bag.