A new class of cruise missile being deployed by the military? A bad Saturday morning cartoon from the early '80s? A heavy metal band?

Nope, it's a wireless Web browser just released by Bitstream (Nasdaq: BITS). ThunderHawk sounds a bit over-the-top for something you scroll through on a tiny handheld device, but the company is making promises as dramatic as the name.

The browser allows full access -- text and images -- to regular HTML Web pages without losing legibility. The company said that once the browser is ready for rollout later this year, it could replace the dull inadequacy of WAP (wireless application protocol) with a full computing experience on higher-quality devices.

Specifically, the browser is being optimized for devices with color screens, such as high-end PDAs (personal digital assistants) and the mobile phones that are common in Japan.

How It Does What It Does

It ain't WAP, and it ain't cHTML. The shrinkage that makes it possible to get a full Web page onto a handheld device is accomplished through a combination of server-side squeezing and special fonts designed to be readable at tiny sizes, allowing HTML pages to be made smaller in terms of byte count and screen space.

"Everything is reduced in size while maintaining readability," Sampo Kaasila, who developed ThunderHawk, told Wireless Newsfactor. "Most of the complexity has been put on the servers."

ThunderHawk takes the Web's HTML and sends a smaller version to the device. A Web page appears roughly as on the desktop -- only much smaller, yet with little more scrolling than on a conventional desktop monitor.

The Real Deal

The beauty of ThunderHawk, apart from saying the name out loud, is that it will provide a real Web browsing experience to users, many of whom may have found the unintuitive text interface of WAP a severe disappointment. It allows access to the full Web, not merely the near-microscopic sampling of sites that offer WAP versions.

One wonders whether anyone really wants the full Web on a mobile device, but Kaasila noted that with the familiar Web interface, mobile data becomes much more appealing.

"I think a big reason people are not using the wireless Internet with cell phones is that all they get is a couple lines of text," he said. "Not much to see there."

Bitstream hopes carriers and device manufacturers will find something to see in ThunderHawk, which is expected to be fully developed in the third quarter this year.

"Limited rollout is possible by the fourth quarter," Bitstream director of product development Bob Thomas told Wireless NewsFactor. "We'd like to shoot for working with partners [as early as that], with device manufacturers or wireless carriers to have it preinstalled on devices."

But What's With the Name?

Both Thomas and Kaasila laughed when asked where the in-your-face moniker comes from.

"At least it's not Web-something," Thomas said. "It'd sound like everything else."

Kaasila admitted that the name was a default because Bitstream execs couldn't agree on anything to replace the original ThunderHawk code name, which Kaasila picked at whim. Still, he said he thinks it has an edginess that is fitting.

"One reason for the boldness is that I see it as a destructive technology, disruptive to the common wisdom, which is you can't do this, can't put a full Web page on a mobile device. It's interruptive to that common wisdom."