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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.
So I have had the HD2 for a few months now and I can't seem to find its true potential. Ive had no problems with it. I can get everything working smoothly. Done. But can anyone else give me some tips as to what I can do with the HD2? What do you do with your HD2?
I also really want to utilize true multitasking but I dont know what is "true multitasking".
Can someone give me a few examples besides streaming music via web while I do a word document?
What do "YOU" do that is true multitasking?
Listening to music in the bus with Skype and IMPlus running in the background, Opera to check timetables online, Google maps open to know where I am, launch camera to take a photo of something I just saw in the street, receiving a mail and reading it, opening the tasks app to add a reminder related to said mail, switch back to google maps to check where I'm now, switch to opera again to check something online that I just thought about, switch to the music player to skip a track, switch to IMPlus to answer a message I just received, opening adobe reader to check something in a document... going back and forth between all those.
kilrah said:
Listening to music in the bus with Skype and IMPlus running in the background, Opera to check timetables online, Google maps open to know where I am, launch camera to take a photo of something I just saw in the street, receiving a mail and reading it, opening the tasks app to add a reminder related to said mail, switch back to google maps to check where I'm now, switch to opera again to check something online that I just thought about, switch to the music player to skip a track, switch to IMPlus to answer a message I just received, opening adobe reader to check something in a document... going back and forth between all those.
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so by doing all those without having to close a single thing out? And you do this using the task manager in the upper right corner?
What I don't get is how is this different from Apple's iphone. Though it doesnt have multitasking, isnt it the same as opening things up and hiting the center home button and going onto the next app, etc? I dont see the difference.
the difference is on the iphone when you hit the home button it closes whatever you were in.
so any IM app such as skype, aim, facebook all get closed so you cant get messages in the background. you cant have pandora or slacker radio playing in the background. you can do one thing at a time.
pretty simple really
lemonspeakers said:
so by doing all those without having to close a single thing out? And you do this using the task manager in the upper right corner?
What I don't get is how is this different from Apple's iphone. Though it doesnt have multitasking, isnt it the same as opening things up and hiting the center home button and going onto the next app, etc? I dont see the difference.
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Click to collapse
The difference is multitasking can switch between apps without terminal them. In iphone once you click the home buttom, the running app closes then you are able to start other app. It can't regard as multitasking cause iphone can only run a app at a moment. But wm os can run a number of apps in background at the same time and switch between them instead of close one app and start the other one app. That is mean you can play a game in wm then you skype somebody, when you switch back to the game, it resumes. But in iphone, you start skype before you terminal the game.
lemonspeakers said:
so by doing all those without having to close a single thing out? And you do this using the task manager in the upper right corner?
What I don't get is how is this different from Apple's iphone. Though it doesnt have multitasking, isnt it the same as opening things up and hiting the center home button and going onto the next app, etc? I dont see the difference.
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Click to collapse
I use taskfacade or aebplus' task manager function mapped to the windows button.
The iphone can do most of it, with a few exceptions, for example if you open google maps and do a search, have the results displayed, then close the program to do something else, once you run it again you'll arrive at the main screen and you'll have to do your search again. With skype, you open it and it connects, but then if you close it to do something else you won't be notified of new messages, you'll have to manually reopen skype once in a while to see if you've received something. On the HD2 skype stays open and will sound when you receive something.
Then, I haven't used an iphone enough regarding the web browser, if exiting and coming back keeps all your open tabs etc.
On mine I cycle/run with run.gps running actively in the foreground, Pocketscrobbler running actively in the background, along with Audiobooster, music player doing its thing, RSS reader doing its thing, Push sync doing its thing...
Good thing on multi task is surfing. U can open more than one tab and while the sides are loading u check your mails or something.
I like it and its a feature I would miss on the Iphone...
What's not to get on multitasking?
being an iphone user for a time, one of the largest complaints (even after jailbreaking) was the limited multitasking. Even with backgrounder running, the phone was slow as crap. The touch hd2 on the other hand...
I have 13 applications open and I still see no lag anywhere. nuff said
1) i noticed opera doesnt keep loading if you switch to another task. It stops.
2) music in the bg is normal and most phones can do that. unless they are streaming like pandora. but even so jailbreaking makes it possible to do this for iphones.
3) skype is required, or eventually inevitable. Using hd2 is almost like you're sucked into skype, since everyone is using it, right? LOL
4) jailbreaking an iphone allows it to multitask. why not do it besides the illegal thing and the risk? its like bricking an hd2.
the new iphone OS4 should have multitasking too.. but i heard it only allows the apps to save some services or something, but the app still closes... thats why pandora doesnt work with it i think xD
apple will always be performance > flexibility, thats why they will never have TRUE multitasking, and for me, TRUE multitasking is when the application i open are still running IN REALTIME ( and doesnt stop ) in the background.
I find it really important that I can run my navigation system while having my calendar reminding me for my appointments or being able to receive phone calls.
Can you be on a call and quickly check a document, calendar, email, or web browse on the HD2? Thanks
Tomb77 said:
Can you be on a call and quickly check a document, calendar, email, or web browse on the HD2? Thanks
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Click to collapse
Yes. You can be on a call and continue watching a movie also.
lemonspeakers said:
1) i noticed opera doesnt keep loading if you switch to another task. It stops.
2) music in the bg is normal and most phones can do that. unless they are streaming like pandora. but even so jailbreaking makes it possible to do this for iphones.
3) skype is required, or eventually inevitable. Using hd2 is almost like you're sucked into skype, since everyone is using it, right? LOL
4) jailbreaking an iphone allows it to multitask. why not do it besides the illegal thing and the risk? its like bricking an hd2.
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Click to collapse
which version of opera are you using?
mind loads perfectly well in the background.. as do all the non java browsers I use.
why is skype required, I've used it twice in all the years I've been using winmo, which is quite a while now!
woopee do you can do some basic crap on the iphmoan
***SOME*** not all, but some, try really using the hd2 as it can be used, as a true powerhouse, with full multitasking, not something that you can do a couple of basic things with.
maybe HTC and MS should sue apple for copying multitasking on a smartphone
who gives a damn about jailbreaking the iphmoan? this isn't an apple forum..
Kalavere said:
Yes. You can be on a call and continue watching a movie also.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately I do not have the phone in hand but I have an HD2 user that has a hard time with entering their exchange password to get in to multi task while on a call. disabling the password probably wont work and is not a good idea. I assume there is an auto lock while on a call that he may be able to disable. any help or ideas? your help is much appreciated.
Tomb77 said:
Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately I do not have the phone in hand but I have an HD2 user that has a hard time with entering their exchange password to get in to multi task while on a call. disabling the password probably wont work and is not a good idea. I assume there is an auto lock while on a call that he may be able to disable. any help or ideas? your help is much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everything should work exactly the same while on a call... just hit the home button or start button to get whereever you need to go. Now, depending on your network, you may not be able to access the internet while on a call. If you're on 3g, you usually can... but if your on edge/2g, then you may not be able to.
An example of multitasking (seeing as that is what the op asked for):
Today. after almost bricking it setting it up how i like it (it's only a week old) i did a hard reset. Since that point i have had, the wifi on and wifi remote access doing various things, activesync doing it's thing on direct push to my exchange server, msn messenger bugging the hell out of me, pocketmusic keeping me entertained, facebook for windows mobile pissing me off, various explorer windows, word 2010 (you gotta do some work sometime), the text messaging app keeping up with the boys (and girls) that i call friends and phm registry editor (so i can install the tweaks i like) all running at the same time, since about 9am. The phone has lagged a lil here and there but nothing that has worried me and yeah the wifi needed a rest a couple of times coz the chip was getting hot and the packet loss was getting a bit high but overall i think it's done well considering it was getting hammered. Battery hasn't needed charging yet either (and it's not an extended one).
I've got a couple of friends that have (and i like this so i'm gonna use it) iPhmoan 3GS' and they want the 4G. I'm constantly being pestered by them to switch (i'm on my 5th winmo device) and all i do is laugh at them. Just yesterday one of them was wetting himself over the 4G having 256MB of ram. The direct quote he got was "my phone has 1ghz processor and 576MB of ram and can multitask better than your girlfriend. Go suck it!! It's in the corner over there" and that is my general attitude to the iphone and apple's idea of innovation right now. It's Overpriced, useless, unintuitive, lazy, anti competitive and designed to generate nothing but profit for apple. Anyone that want's or has one is more stupid than they look and far richer too.
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...
Click to collapse
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 :-(
Thoughts on Multi-tasking and "Exit" in Android. Developers please read and respond.
Having done extensive reading on the topic, I understand why developers don't see the need for an "Exit" option for most Android programs. For behind the scenes management, it isn't required. The problem is that our needs as end-users are different than that and should take precedence.
The classic example of needing an "Exit" option is the web browser. If you have been browsing a while, you may need to back through several pages to get the thing to close, which is a pain in the neck. Another example may be a music player. I might not want it to pick up where I left off when I start it next time.
End-users want to be able to choose from options like these when leaving an application.
1) Pause - exactly what it sounds like. This is pretty much what happens most of the time when leaving an application, but it should set a priority flag of some sort so it is one of the last things to get "ruthlessly killed" to recover memory.
2) Exit - stop everything and reset to a default state so that the next time it is started it is a fresh run.
3) Background run - this is true multitasking by user choice. The app continues doing whatever task I set it to while I go do something else. Much like what happens with music players or Navigation programs when the Back key is used.
4) Home or Back key - it would be handled in the current default manner, letting Android decide what is correct.
I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I believe a proper multi-screen launcher should allow you to start different apps on different screens and go back to the app started on a particular screen automatically when you return to that screen. So for example I could be doing e-mails on screen one and have my music player open on screen 2 and perhaps be reviewing a spreadsheet on screen 3 and go back and forth between them as my music mood changed or I looked something up in the spreadsheet or on the web on screen 4 then went back to my e-mail to include that new information without closing one and opening the other and so on going back and forth. Android could decide if the app is paused or actually running while I go to a different screen, but anything open on a screen should be the last thing to be killed before essential services.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on what an OS needs to be able to do before it can call itself multi-tasking, as well as the kind of control us users want on our phones. After all, they are OUR phones, right?
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.