Database Users

Browser sync and differences

Hi,
one of the most important features for me (which makes me want to buy Honeycmob tablet) is browser.
As far as I know browser in Xoom is sort of a mobile version of Chrome.
So, my questions are:
- how close are they in reality?
- what can be synced?
- what can not be synced?
- what about extensions I use in my desktop chrome (one of them is freshstart to save open tabs! excellent)
- can I have my bookmarks bar in Honeycomb (I use it a lot)
I use three different PC's every single day and I work with browser a lot. All this makes Chrome so much pleasure to use... because I can finish work at one machine and easily continue (exactly where I was) on another machine few minutes later. I was hoping that tablet with Honecomb will fit right in
Will it?

Currently it only syncs bookmarks. All of your bookmarks sync just fine, folder structure is preserved. The only difference is that Bookmarks Bar shows up as the root folder with Other Folders as a subfolder in that. There is not a bookmarks bar, per se, but you can set your homepage to a Chrome-inspired "Most Visited" page which holds 12 pages (unfortunately you can't customize them, they are always your 12 most visited pages).
Chrome-to-phone still works on the Xoom, so you can always send pages from Chrome to the tablet, but you don't get any sort of tab syncing or extensions.

Is there any way to make web sites think it is chrome browser? Once the Flash is on the system it should be able to play all free videos as any other "desktop" browser.
I thought I read somewhere that phones with Android and Flash can do it.
Playon is not a solution. At home I can watch hulu on my desktop/netbook - the whole idea was to access it when I am not at home

galtom said:
Is there any way to make web sites think it is chrome browser? Once the Flash is on the system it should be able to play all free videos as any other "desktop" browser.
I thought I read somewhere that phones with Android and Flash can do it.
Playon is not a solution. At home I can watch hulu on my desktop/netbook - the whole idea was to access it when I am not at home
Click to expand...
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Just like on phones, you can set it to use a desktop user agent. But for sites that check the flash version, you'll need to hex edit the plugin (there are other threads about that here if you look around)

At this stage I just need to know if it is doable - there is other thread about it... and I have been told -NO WAY (to do it) -either Hulu Plus or nothing :-(

Opera Mobile - How to Put Desktop Mode Only!

Google is Your Friend. I googled it and Here Is the Istructions. I Tried it and It Works Perfect. After These Steps Opera Will Open Full Desktop Web Pages. Opera is One of The Only Browsers That has like NO Typing Lag so This is Very Useful (To me Atleast) Here it Is:
1. Install the Opera Desktop browser on a computer (opera.com)
2. In Address Bar Type opera:about
3. Copy the exact user agent onto a piece of paper (Or Notepad)
4. Install the Opera Mobile browser (from android market)
5. On Tablet Address Bar Type opera:config (In Opera Mobile Browser)
6. Go to User Prefs and Find Custom User Agent
7. Copy the Opera Desktop User Agent you wrote down onto The Custom User Agent Box
8. Push Save and Restart Opera Mobile.
Now All Web Pages open In Full Desktop Mode. Enjoy. Flash Still Doesnt Work but This is Still the Fastest Web Browser for HC Tablets Atm.
Edite : This is just the steps I took. Other User Agents should work fine too i.e Internet explorer or Firefox. ***

To those lazy people, just input some random useragent and it should work fine for 99% sites out there (with the exception of some that ONLY accepts a certain browser (mostly IE only)). This will cause statistic collection to have weird entries of browsers being used depending on the useragent you pick

Browser Desktop Mode questions.

Ok, I have read literally hundreds of posts concerning desktop vs mobile mode in the browser. I have tried several browsers, and have switched them all into desktop mode via the settings. But, none, including the stock browser and Dolphin seem to work as promised. So, I have several questions:
1. What is it that allows a website to recognize an android phone or tablet and an
ipod touch as a mobile device?
2. Is there any way to permanently change "whatever" so that all websites
recognize my tablet and ipod touch as a desktop?

I'm using opera mobile and all pages works fine on desktop mode

xamilek555 said:
I'm using opera mobile and all pages works fine on desktop mode
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I tried one version of Opera last week and had no luck. Today, I downloaded Opera Mobile as you suggested and it worked just fine. Thanks for the suggestion.
But, the still should be a permanent fix for all Browsers. And, I would still like to know how a website recognizes a mobile device.

I believe they check the OS, not the browser, then redirect accordingly.

Running Honney Vil and stock browser and not seeing that problem, so probably does check the os, don't really know.

This is all based on what your browser "broadcasts" to the web server. I remember way back in the day, some custom ROMs had an option in the settings menu, even on the native browser, to set your browser type to one of many options, including "Android OS", "BlackBerry", "IE", "FireFox" etc... Most web sites are the ones in control of which page to display to you based on what browser it detects hitting the page. Below is an example of one of my web site's access log
Code:
[IP Masked} - - [24/Aug/2011:14:55:57 -0400] "GET /forums/viewtopic.php?p=28441 HTTP/1.1" 200 11347 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Baiduspider/2.0; +http://www.baidu.com/search/spider.html)"
[IP Masked] - - [24/Aug/2011:14:56:09 -0400] "POST /forums/posting.php?mode=reply&f=11&t=2900 HTTP/1.1" 200 3144 "http://[URL Masked]/forums/posting.php?mode=reply&f=11&t=2900" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.3; en-us; DROID X2 Build/4.5.1A-DTN-117-15) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1"
It's from those logs where it says things like "Android 2.3.3" that tells a server which site to load. Unfortunately, most developers have hard coded anything as "Android" to be shown the mobile browser. Other browsers, like Dolphin and Opera, are either broadcasting a different type of browser, or give the option to.

I have the settings in the stock browser set to viewing mode:desktop (under the advanced tab of the browser settings) and have not come accross any pages that get redirected to mobile. I'm running stock 3.1

Right, you send USER_AGENT info when you connect to a site and based on that - typically what the OS is - the site can redirect.

With 3.0.1 you had to type about:debug in the browser to get the debug menu in settings and there you could change the user agent string. In 3.1 we have that in the advanced menu but I still prefer the old way;-). Don't forget to clear the cache after you do that because the browser might have cached the redirect to the mobile site.

Thanks for all the info. I have the stock browser, Dolphin and Opera Mobile. I have the user agent configured to Desktop in all 3 browsers. All 3 work on most, but not all sites. Only Opera works on all sites that I have tried. It is very disconcerting for sure as I really prefer the stock browser.

jostarr said:
Thanks for all the info. I have the stock browser, Dolphin and Opera Mobile. I have the user agent configured to Desktop in all 3 browsers. All 3 work on most, but not all sites. Only Opera works on all sites that I have tried. It is very disconcerting for sure as I really prefer the stock browser.
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Well, then it goes back to what I posted about the web sites themselves properly delivering the right site based on the user agent (thanks for reminding me of the name user agent gammaRascal!). The web designer has to write code to account for all the various user agents.

There are some other differences too. Try this website in the stock browser,
dolphin and Opera: http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=nyy
With the stock browser, the standings right below the picture on the left, is not complete.
with Dolphin, all looks like as on my PC.
with Opera, the page does not fit the screen.

[Q] desktop vs mobile browser

So, with it's desktop sized resolution, how can we set our browser to display "desktop" pages instead of "mobile" pages?

Donaldjbennett said:
So, with it's desktop sized resolution, how can we set our browser to display "desktop" pages instead of "mobile" pages?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Type in browser address bar 'about:useragent'
It won't stick after reboot probably, we need a browser tweak for that I think.

The about useragent is short lived...have to do it each time you powerip again.
Samsung is idiotic for not offering desktop options with screens like this.
Best options? ...third party browsers.
Two best (ie:fastest) with desktop options?
#1 boat browser mini FASTer than stock.
#2 Opera Mobile..
both have desktop settings and displays.
Faster than dolphin or Miren.

Daily comics

We gave up our newsprint subscription some time ago and went to reading our local rag with an app that works fine with our Nook Tablet and Nook HD. But breakfast is not the same without a few comics
So I set out to do something simple to allow us to read our favorites without a lot of scanning through lists on websites. The result is a very simple HTML page (sample attached as txt file; change extension to htm or html) with nothing but comic title links. The sites accessed are GoComics and Arcamax. Both work really well in this way with the comic coming up nicely famed in a landscape view, no need to scroll unless it's a large panel like Rubes or a Sunday version. The behavior of both sites is enhanced if you are using AdAway.
The only issue is that Android does not open local HTML files. Ah, but there's an app for that! (attached). I wish I could give credit for it, but I've forgotten where I found it in my searching to solve the problem. Install that and then you can navigate to the local HTML file, select it and be asked how to open it (might as well check the box for "always"). Once the file is open in your browser you can bookmark it or add it to speed dial. And there you are, daily comics at your fingertips (literally).
And the NST? Well, we're going on a trip and I don't want to take my NT with me but did want something to read so I decided to try this today on the NST. To my surprise it works like a charm! I use RotationLocker and Tasker to force my Opera Mobile to stay in landscape mode.
The other major on-line comics site (comicskingdom) does not work as well. The panel comes up only partially in view, etc. So if you have to have something only they carry, you have to deal with it. Sometimes you can find an on-line newspaper that has a comics section and gets it from comicskingdom but displays it in a friendlier fashion
The HTML file is really easy to edit, even if you know essentially nothing about HTML. Just open in a simple text editor and change titles and urls and you're good to go. It's set up now in a simple two-column format which you can expand by example.

How does one go about downloading the .txt file? Clicking on it just takes me to this page, and ES Downloader doesn't know how to handle it.

Um.....on my laptop clicking on the file link displays the text file contents in the browser. Let's try a zipfile?

nmyshkin said:
Um.....on my laptop clicking on the file link displays the text file contents in the browser. Let's try a zipfile?
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Excellent, thanks!