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DON'T MISS OUT ON THIS NEW BROWSER, A MUST FOR PDA OWNERS WITH DATA PLAN:
www.SKYFIRE.com
Watch The Intro On The Home Page
It's kinda nice, but it's another of the page through a proxy as an image browsers. The page is reformatted on their servers and then sent to the phone.
This has been around. It is in a Beta right now that you have to sign up for and be invited to. Been waiting months for the invite and basically giving up. Getting mixed reviews.
This is kinda old news. I have the beta of skyfire, it actually works fairly well. I have several wishes/bug fixes that I sent to skyfire, but overall it is fairly fast and pretty much plays any website you can navigate to.
I still use opera for most of my daily browsing, but I hope that skyfire gets better after the beta testing.
Skyfire
i got the skyfire download but everytime i've tried to browse..it keep saying that the network was lost eventhough i have data plan, i can browse internet with opera mobile 8.5
thanx
I didnt like it....will stick with Opera and PIE+
Meh, I just got the beta2 today. I'm not too impressed with it so far. There's lots of great things incorporated into it, but when you try to flow through pages you just can't do it. When a page loads, you have to zoom into it before you can enter text into any field.
I like to get online, do what I need to do, and get off--bam--finished. This new beta makes it very hard to do that. I've looked for ways to fix it this in its menus, but I just can't find anything. If someone knows how to fix it, let me know .
The things I love about it most are you can get on java based sites, watch embedded video, and hear embedded audio.
All in all, I'd have to say this is just a so-so browser. Great for the casual user who is multi-media focused.
I have the beta as well and I'll stick with opera 9.5. Plus I'd rather not do password work through a proxy server.
I use mini more. But sky is nice for some things. Mini is faster for me....beter syncing. rss. better rendering. better ui. sky does flash.
I just downloaded Sky today, I was let into the beta. And I will say that it's a little harder to use then the other browsers, but in making up for that. It actually delivers on what it says. I can't watch youtube on PIE or opera. I can on Sky, once flash is in the other browsers, Sky will have nothing, but until I find a browser that can play flash.. This rocks for all kinds of things, last.fm, and youtube are great, though I hate the zoom, and it needs some kind of volume control built into the browser.
Opera mobile when it is fully released will have flash. Last.fm plays better with pocket scrobbler. Hit me up over IM and I can send u a cab.
I actually like skyfire, but i noticed I can't go to any .Net sites. Whats up with that? Anyone?
Just got the beta this weekend
Good:
Renders pages well
Plays flash movies
Bad:
Stupid long startup time
Retarded "First you need to zoom!" UI concept. Just awful. Really awful
Text doesn't go into textbox, pops up for input.
Pretty much zero configuration
They should just rename this this to what it is: Streaming online pron viewer.
If they cut the start up time in 1/2, eliminated the need to zoom first (Start in desktop view, tap + hold to bring up the zoom box), and let you customize the way the interface works, they could have a winner. As it is now, Im suprised they consider this even a beta. It has nothing more than core funcitonality, which is more alpha to me.
anybody else get the feeling that even though the page load itself is pretty quick the browser on the whole sorta lags
I downloaded it tried it uninstalled it. it was a memory hog, makes you sign in every time (why can't it remember user information?), it's another one of those we reformat the web for you portals.
Crashed on my device almost immediately.
Got my E-mail yesterday and it works great. It uses a lot of memory though. But so far I like it.
another browser that will require money
I don't get these browsers, instead of updating HTML tags via the W3C we get these browsers that reformat pages before delivering them to the PPC.
I installed this, tried it, had it first complain about memory issues, then crashed when I tried to open the crosswords link on the NY Times page, and uninstalled it.
What exactly are the memory requirements for this thing?
Some specs would be nice.
It's not something I'm going to use.
emkorial said:
Just got the beta this weekend
Good:
Renders pages well
Plays flash movies
Bad:
Stupid long startup time
Retarded "First you need to zoom!" UI concept. Just awful. Really awful
Text doesn't go into textbox, pops up for input.
Pretty much zero configuration
They should just rename this this to what it is: Streaming online pron viewer.
If they cut the start up time in 1/2, eliminated the need to zoom first (Start in desktop view, tap + hold to bring up the zoom box), and let you customize the way the interface works, they could have a winner. As it is now, Im suprised they consider this even a beta. It has nothing more than core funcitonality, which is more alpha to me.
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ROTFLMAO, streaming online pron viewer. BWAAAWBWAAA
I love this program. It's awesome. It does have some limitations others have noted, but if you're looking to stream media, or view a page as it's shown on a PC it's the way to go.
If you're looking to USE a webpage, read, etc, I'd rather use pIE. But I like having both.
I love that it can play ANY streaming media I've thrown at it and look / sound great.
If you haven't already, check out this streaming media site: http://www.hulu.com
It has full episodes of many online shows, with very limited ads, for free! No signup! it's sponsored by NBC and FOX and it's 100% legit. It works GREAT in Skyfire!
Finally
A browser that does all. Opera+PIE+Skyfire. I can now with all three do everything I need to lol. Lets see if firefox can integrate the three. or someone.
Android comes with a seriously awesome web browser. It can easily browse regular desktop versions of web pages even over EDGE with no major problems. I'm so glad to leave crippled mobile versions of web pages behind me forever.
EXCEPT
Google, of all places, seems to have some kind of lock preventing the Android browser from gaining access to the desktop versions of their websites. They come up with the mobile versions by default, and even if you click the button to switch it to the desktop version, it doesn't. It takes you to yet another mobile version that is just styled a little closer to the desktop version, but it's by no means identical.
Google built this browser, they know that it can handle desktop webpages, why won't they let us do that with their own sites? I find it really annoying to deal with crippled versions of Google's web pages. In Gmail I can't edit my contacts, in YouTube... I don't know what the hell's going on... all I see is large ugly text, in Google Search I don't have the convenient switch to image search while viewing web results. It's FRUSTRATING.
chefgon said:
Android comes with a seriously awesome web browser. It can easily browse regular desktop versions of web pages even over EDGE with no major problems. I'm so glad to leave crippled mobile versions of web pages behind me forever.
EXCEPT
Google, of all places, seems to have some kind of lock preventing the Android browser from gaining access to the desktop versions of their websites. They come up with the mobile versions by default, and even if you click the button to switch it to the desktop version, it doesn't. It takes you to yet another mobile version that is just styled a little closer to the desktop version, but it's by no means identical.
Google built this browser, they know that it can handle desktop webpages, why won't they let us do that with their own sites? I find it really annoying to deal with crippled versions of Google's web pages. In Gmail I can't edit my contacts, in YouTube... I don't know what the hell's going on... all I see is large ugly text, in Google Search I don't have the convenient switch to image search while viewing web results. It's FRUSTRATING.
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Click to collapse
I really dont know why your browser does that, but I have access to the regular google.com classic view page. I can pic between web, images, local, news.. etc.. I can also log to igoogle.com
I can aswell
Most mobile sites have a link to view the regular site. Google has this.
go to www.google.com then you see on the bottom Mobile is default choice, click on CLASSIC to view the regular website version
Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.
quedijo said:
Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.
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Yes I've had that problem as well as not being able to get into market have no clue why. Frustrating!!!
I keep having this problem too. The only thing that seems to solve the problem is a restart. I dont know if it has anything to do with me clearing the cache but it IS verry annoying.
Yeah, even killing the browser process doesn't do it either.
quedijo said:
Anyone else having an issue with the browser where after a while it no longer renders the pages?
It shows the progress bar filling up and done, but just a blank page.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats network issues with thew the 3g when i disable 3g it worked but sometimes it wont
i think it has to do with your cache i wish they come out with a new firmware that lets you save programs to sdcard or cache to sd card
I'm having the same issues. It was working when I first got the phone, but now it only gives me the option for mobile view.
I found a solution to the most annoying, biggest mistake from Google. For those who loved iGoogle and cant find it, here it is:
www.google.com/ig/i?source=mofe
And here is an alternate BETA site from Yahoo as backup:
http://beta.m.yahoo.com/
brooklynite said:
I found a solution to the most annoying, biggest mistake from Google. For those who loved iGoogle and cant find it, here it is:
www.google.com/ig/i?source=mofe
And here is an alternate BETA site from Yahoo as backup:
http://beta.m.yahoo.com/
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Click to collapse
I guess Google found out the shut down the site.
Yahoo's Beta sucks.
To make this short, sweet, and to the point: if someone can tell me how to view only 'full sites' with the browser that would be great. Also, without using an outside browser app. Devs please feel free to delete when felt necessary. I tried a search but didn't come up with anything....
Thanks
Travis C
I suggest using dolphin browser, go into settings > user agent > desktop. I'm not sure about the default browser, haven't used it in a while, but I know a lot of times at the bottom of a site it will have the option to view full site.
Interesting it looks like the feature was removed. I remember on 1.6 you could switch between Android, iPhone, or Desktop.
I believe that was just on the custom browser made by Loccy(sp?). It was based off the regular browser source code, but was still basically custom made.
True. I guess that I had been using ROMs for so long that I had forgotten that the original didn't have that. Guess I will just have to wait a little longer. But some on the sites do have the option but some of them just load straight back to the mobile view on I select it. But no biggy.
MODs please feel free to delete this thread whenever. We can leave it at 'that option will probably be put into a future ROM'.
Travis C
Try Steel, good browser, has user agent Desktop option.
My favorite browser so far is Dolphin, with the stock android browser running a close second. But, the only problem with both browsers is that they don't seem to utilize much of the cache when it comes to moving backwards and forwards through web pages.
For example, let's say I'm on the General forum of N1 on XDA. I click into a thread, then when I want to go back to the general forum. Instead of taking a split second to access whatever's in cache, it'll go through the whole process of downloading all the content again.
Can it not do what our computer browsers do and just read it straight off the cache?
Opera Browser does that.. is it worth the switch is the question.
You know, I always wondered why the stock browser kept such a large cache, but never seemed to load pages from it... not that I am giving you any assistance with your question.. more like adding one of my own.
Anyone know why this is?
Sorry it double posted me...
erikikaz said:
My favorite browser so far is Dolphin, with the stock android browser running a close second. But, the only problem with both browsers is that they don't seem to utilize much of the cache when it comes to moving backwards and forwards through web pages.
For example, let's say I'm on the General forum of N1 on XDA. I click into a thread, then when I want to go back to the general forum. Instead of taking a split second to access whatever's in cache, it'll go through the whole process of downloading all the content again.
Can it not do what our computer browsers do and just read it straight off the cache?
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Click to collapse
Desktop browsers do the same thing. It's just a lot faster.
There's no way to load a webpage 100% from cache.
I open new windows/tabs 95% of the time. And that's BOTH on my phone and on my PC. I rarely use the same tab, and have been middle clicking etc for years.
I hope cyanogen can add this functionality, possible with an adjustable time frame. Say to only poll server side if it's been more than 5 minutes since you last loaded the page.
It's frustrating having to wait for a page to reload like the subscription list page.
what is stopping you from loading pages in new tabs like paul was saying. that seems like it would accomplish what you want.
Just to clarify because this may not be common knowledge...
Opening a link in a new tab is activated by long pressing on the link
t0mmy said:
what is stopping you from loading pages in new tabs like paul was saying. that seems like it would accomplish what you want.
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Click to collapse
I used to do that on the desire rom when I had it loaded, because switching tabs was easier and faster on the HTC broswer.
Default browser is kinda of a pain to change tabs, and the press/hold to get to the open new link shortcut is one second to long and moves into cumbersome territory.
I browse a little different on the phone than I do on the desktop. I've been on opera's nuts for years since they first introduced tabs to the world. =D
I want to make a (more recent) comparison of web browsers available to us on the ASUS TF101 and TF201 tablets, something that is useful. In my experience we don't have all that many threads that are Really Good on this subject, that don't get bogged down with noise and opinion drowning out the signal after a while.
The browsers, web sites, and procedures I will use for testing are being collected HERE as they are written.
I am open to suggestions of things to test as long as they don't cost me $$$, are legit, and hopefully widely used by communities of people in general. If it has issues with the stock browser in HC/ICS/GB/Froyo in fast/simple usage, like crashy crashy! Then I am more likely to test a suggestion.
Note for mods: this is cross posted in the forum for both tablets.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
One test i would like to see is which browsers you can put into desktop mode and fool HULU with.
Neither. Hulu knows it's an android because you're running an android version of flash.
Joey563 said:
One test i would like to see is which browsers you can put into desktop mode and fool HULU with.
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Yep, its the Flash version that matters.
In the Apps forum there's a hacked Flash plugin that works with Hulu.
@topic
Great idea. Looking forward for the results.
The things that i'd like to see reviewed are the rendering speed and image quality while browsing.
Speed will be noted somehow but I really don't know how to scientifically do image quality, past "Looks ...." to me, lol.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
Lifehacker is a good website to test. See if any browser can reproduce the two different scrollable objects properly, like it would be on a browser in Windows or Mac. A lot of browsers will simply choose to lock the two scrollable columns into the page, such that if you try to scroll one, the other follows.
I'd suggest testing a website like Verizonwireless.com, specifically the Explore, Shop, My Verizon, and Support buttons. On a computer, a mouse-over shows a drop-down menu, and a click takes you to the next page. The iPad does this very smart where tapping once on "Shop" for instance will bring down the dropdown menu, tapping it once more will take you to the webpage it links to. So far, the Android browsers I've tried have an awkward execution for this mouse-over effect where you have to hold the button like "Shop" for around half a second and then swipe away your finger to avoid going to the link it points to. See if you can find a browser that works mouse-over in a similar fashion to Safari.
+1 for lifehacker/deadspin/gizmodo sometimes (usually) first load is a blank screen and I have to hit reload. After reload its marginally functional, but not 100%
Also try facebook in desktop or iPad mode... Some stuff works well... Other stuff is total fail, like inviting people to events.
I'll post more as I remember them. I've actually been thinking of making a list like this, but you beat me to it.
Edit: thought of one more: google docs... Word processor, spreadsheets, the whole lot of them...
Spidey,
One thing I find very helpful in web browsing on my Transformer is the ability of a browser to scroll using the scroll wheel on a bluetooth mouse. I've noticed some browsers will scroll with the mouse, and some will not.
If possible, during your testing, you might want to add that as a yes/no feature, it would only take moments to test and include in your results.
Thanks for taking this on, I'm looking forward to your results/conclusions, and the inevitable "discussions" that will follow, either agreeing or disagreeing with your results.
Hi!
Can you test logmein.com as well? In stock and Dolphin it is not working.
I know there is .apk for Android, but it's costly.
@ERamseth gdocs is on my list and whenever possible I'll be testing desktop versions of sites. Can't say that I use Facebook very deeply though so a grain of salt may be needed..
@dm36415 Sorry, don't have any bluetooth mice to test with but great suggestion!] If the Windows box doesn't get pissy maybe I can try yanking my wired one off the desktop, but I can only test that on the TF101 as my Prime won't be getting a dock for a while :-(.
@stenc55 my word that site pissed off the stock browser, just trying to scroll the front page. Not sure how much I can test it but I'll try. Out side of Opera/Firefox, everything will probably barf at it though, and those two might as well lol.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
Are you just planning on testing rendering quality/performance, or are you going to sum up some of the other UI features that get mentioned (how tabs work, gesture support, how fluid/laggy scrolling down the page is, is there an incognito mode, etc)
How easy/difficult to import bookmarks from a PC browser, with or without folders.
Most browsers use the same back end as the stock browser, i.e. they do about as much work as Maxthon used to do. So the most use on quality/performance I can give versus the stock, I'm sure will usually be load times and usability. Opera & Firefox are the only two that I know of who bring their own magic for the back end. Unless I get something like native libs in the app data to suggest they included their own rendering engine, I'm marking it as "Stock".
I've been testing the Prime's stock browser, Angel, and Boat for part of the day in between taking care of my mother. Current data that I've recorded:
App name (in launcher, usually), market page, version tested, demographic (mobile, tablet, ...), rendering engine, approximate start time and page load times, exit method (menu, closing last tab, etc), available user agent settings, bookmark storage, sync, and folder support, gesture support, quick control support, plugin support, password remembered, speed dial support, max # of tabs, and "Editorial Remarks" like what I've written for Angel Browser:
My remarks on Angel Browser said:
Has a handy sidebar on the left, similar to what you can do in Opera Desktop; quick controls interfere with sidebar.
You can configure what toolbars are visible.
You can configure by pattern, what app handles what URL.
You can configure by pattern, what UA is given for what URL
You can configure the heck out of what clicking stuff does.
You can configure where most data is stored.
You can configure quick controls, UI, and most everything.
Bookmarks UI can have ads unless you purchase the Angel Browser License app.
Handy scroll down button (by default).
Has "Notes" and "Read Later" features.
Good alternative to the stock browsers UX.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For websites tested, App/Site/Load Time/Rendering/Date and Editorial remarks are also being made for websites, like this one for the stock ICS browser on the Prime:
Prone to crashing and input lag
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For rendering, it's mostly focused on does it look/work like the desktop site and is it usable? For example, mail.google.com is gitchy in Boat browser and may give you a seizure.
Try editing a document in Google Docs (right now in every browser I tested it's almost impossible and does really strange things).
Note well: I no longer have a TF101 available so tests off TF201 by me are scrapped. People seem to have settled down post Chrome on ICS enough that I may just scrap it totally. If someone would like to pick up on TF101, PM me with your Google Docs address.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
Zooming, text reflowing and hardware acceleration.
The most important aspects of a browser, and the only browser that does these properly on mobile, is Opera.