Microsoft made 2 big debuts this week, the first of course being the black Xbox 360 Elite, hewn from the darkest of dark matter and fueled by shadowy cosmic energies. It’s a cool release no doubt, but after the cheers died down, current 360 owners began to wonder why they were so excited about suddenly having their shiny new next-gen console become obsolete.

The revised Xbox 360 in its formal black attire has been rumored for weeks, so that introduction came as no surprise whatsoever, but the second announcement, while not as exciting as a new strike at Sony on the gaming front is none the less worthy of note.

Known as “Deepfish”, Microsoft let loose a new compact web browser for Windows Mobile devices. Still in a pre-beta state, the most exciting part of this application is the ability to render mini versions of webpages that preserve the layout and structure of the page, rather than the stripped down, 1-column scrolling messes a traditional limited-feature mobile browser provides. I’ve got mixed feelings about treating webpages on small screens in this manner. At first glance this definitely seems more usable, though it requires an additional layer of UI to find what part of the site the user wants to examine in detail, and then zooming in. It reminds me of the browsing capabilities of the coming iPhone, though I wonder how nice it will be on the decidedly smaller screens of the traditional Microsoft based PDA.

I say I have mixed feelings because while this zoom-in-and-out navigation looks cool, it does feel like it will be an excuse for websites not to offer an alternative layout customized to the small screen. After all, that’s one of the big promises of HTML content: the ability to tailor its presentation for whatever environment it’s currently being viewed in. Still, in a choice between a zoom-navigation (zoomigation?) based browser and the pitiful offerings on most current phones, the application that actually makes mobile browsing worthwhile will no doubt be the winner.

As always, we can head to YouTube to see Deepfish in action.