Posts Tagged ‘168’

Up until now we have discussed about lots of third party web browsers for the Apple iPhone that have recently been offered a space in the App Store. iBlueAngel is also a third party web browser and it is considered the best of all. The iBlueAngel app is presented by Hung Duong and is considered as the most promising third party web browsers. Asan ambitious project for iPhone, the iBlueAngel hosts a variety of assorted features and a unique interface to access those features.

Besides basic web browsing the iBlueAngel allows the users to select and copy blocks of text on a website and then e-mail the same along with the URL using the iPhone’s e-mail application. If you paste the selected block of text in the address bar then the bar will expand and look like a Google search box. Then it will search the web for that text only. This is a very useful option practically. You can search for any phrase you come across during web surfing without loading Google.com in a new window. Unlike other third party browsers the iBlueAngel also supports offline view. Thus, you can save the web pages for viewing them even when your iPhone is not connected to the Internet.

The iBlueAngel can also handle variety of files including the PDFs, word documents, excel sheets, text files and PNG, JPG and GIF in images. All types of documents can be saved in the background mode without obstructing the browsing. Once all the data is downloaded and saved you can use the iBlueAngle’s Magic dashboard to quickly access all the stuff in offline mode. This programme also supports tabbed browsing, bookmarks, history, forward/backward option etc. It is the only third party web browser that has potential to replace Apple Safari in iPhones. Indeed, it is one of the most powerful third party browsers we have seen, and could potentially even replace the Windows Mobile web browser found in Windows Mobile phones like the HTC S740. Hung Duong has definitely been remarkably successful with this app, and we look forward to any new updates it undergoes.

Shaking Web is another third party web browser that has been approved by Apple for use with the iPhone. It is available on App Store and has got some unique abilities. The Shaking Web offers image stabilisation, just like the consumer cameras do. It stabilises the web page and the images on the screen. It is very sensitive to the slightest motions in your iPhone. Whenever it encounters a movement in the iPhone it moves the web page slightly in response, to match the physical movement with the web page movement so that your focus doesn’t get distracted.

However the Shaking Web has its own downsides. The image stabilisation works well when you are simply walking but once you are in the car, bus or bike the stabilisation feature becomes the main source of disturbance. As the shakes that the iPhone receives when you are on a vehicle are more intense the image stabilisation fails to match the pace and the user actually gets irritated while trying to follow the bouncing screen. Moreover, the practicality of using image stabilisation when the iPhone’s camera is so poor, is also questionable. The application would make much more sense for a mobile phone like the Sony-Ericsson C905 with its impressive 8 megapixel camera. Apart from this the Shaking Web lacks lots of basic yet useful functions. It won’t offer you tabbed browsing (like WebMate), multiple pages, bookmarks, history, auto complete and some other nice features.

This web browser is only available for Apple iPhone. The iPod touch users can’t try it. However, overall the Shaking Web seems to be a failed experiment. So there are hardly any chances that the iPhone users will use it. Other third party browsers such as the Web Mate browser, Edge and Incognito are far better than this one.

Edge is one of the latest Apple approved web browsers for the iPod touch and iPhone. The company has started including third party web browsers in the App Store. All of them have something special in them. You can choose any of them considering your requirements and preferences.

Edge’s speciality lies in its full screen web browsing capabilities. It has been optimised to give the user a full view of the web page. Like other web browsers there will not be any interfering elements to obstruct your view. But to offer this the Edge has to sacrifice loads of functions that are generally used while surfing the web. Unfortunately, you will not be getting any address bar, forward or backward buttons, history, bookmarks support, refresh option, home button and many other tools. So clearly Edge still has a way to go before it rivals the browser used with Windows Mobile or Symbian phones, like the Nokia E71, yet alone challenge the Safari on iPhone browser. Every time you want to open up a new web site you have to specify its URL by navigating to iPhone’s settings page and then load the Edge. This naturally this irritates almost all the users and makes it impractical to use the Edge browser. But still if you have great tolerance level then this iPhone browser is best for you because no other can offer unobstructed browsing.

Another main feature of Edge is that it’s the only third party browser for iPhone that does not charge you anything. This browser is perfect for those who usually visit selected web pages and don’t switch form one hyperlink to other too much.

Apple is entertaining the third party Internet browsers nowadays and some of them have already been provided a space in the App Store. As of now there are only three third party browsers that can be downloaded from App Store for the iPhone, and compete with Apple’s Safari browser.

The first one is Edge Browser. The speciality of EDGE is that it allows full screen web browsing. However, to offer this the browser sacrifices on screen controls and navigation menus. So unless you are using analytics or working on a site about which you know each and everything the EDGE is useless. But EDGE is the only third party browser that is available for free. The second web browser that is Incognito that is very useful if you fear of leaking your website activities to another user. This browser leaves no traces of any session established between the phone and the web server. In other words you can browse the Internet without any worries as nobody can find out that which web sites you visited. The only downside of this browser is that it comes with a price tag of $1.99.

Another third party browser exclusively developed for Apple iPhone is the WebMate browser. You can get it by paying just 99 cents. If you are addicted to tabbed browsing then this one is for you. But this one also has its own limitations, and Safari naturally remains the best browser for your Apple iPhone. It cannot save information of active tabs. That means if you switch from one tab to other the latter one will get reloaded from scratch. So the overall browsing experience will be slow.