That means that for online content producers, publishers and advertisers, developing connected experiences for tablets still very much means targeting iPads. Cross-platform solutions are still wise from the perspective of anticipating what the market could look like in five years, but in the meantime, you won’t leave a lot of opportunity of the table if you go iPad-only. I’m sure the iPad’s power as a connected device had plenty to do with Monday’s debut of Facebook’s iPad-specific app design, for example.

Apple’s iOS also dominates the mobile space in general in terms of device share in use, with 43.1 percent of total. Android, despite having a considerable edge on iOS in the overall smartphone market, lags with 34.1 percent of device usage. That’s probably at least in part attributable to Apple’s iPad advantage. RIM comes in a distant third with 15.4 percent of the overall installed base.

Apple’s lead when it comes to digital traffic for non-PC devices is even more pronounced. IOS accounts for 58.5 percent of non-computer traffic (as measured by browser-based page views), while Android has only 31.9 percent. RIM lags even farther behind, with just 5.0 percent. This suggests Apple’s mobile device users, both iPad and otherwise, are the most voracious consumers of Internet-based content by far. That’s a good indication that despite the App Store’s success, web-based products can still also find an audience on the platform. With improvements to mobile Safari set to arrive in iOS 5 on Wednesday, I doubt we’ll see that trend change in the near future.

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What Dolphin HD gets right

Dolphin HD has a number of smart features that make it an attractive alternative to Apple’s Safari and other third-party browser options. There’s quick access to full-screen browsing with any site, speed dial for commonly visited site, the Webzine for curating your own multi-source news feed and gesture controls for navigating between pages, tabs and bookmarks.

Some of those features are definitely hits. The full screen button is great for reading without distractions, or for viewing rich-media content undisturbed by browser chrome. And the Webzine feature is cool enough to be its own app, akin to something like a simpler, but still quite effective, manually curated Flipboard. Webzine lets you either manually add or choose from a list of text-heavy sources like the New York Times  or GigaOM and then presents its content in more of a magazine-style layout.

Swiping left and right to call up bookmarks and a list of your open tabs is also a nice touch, although the actual gesture controls themselves and the clumsy implementation of said feature aren’t ideal and usually it’s easier to just tap a button or open a menu to accomplish the same tasks.

Overall though, Dolphin HD is great. It looks good, the tabs on tap layout works much better for browsing than the iOS implementation of multi-page browsing, and most of the features mentioned above make browsing the web a much smoother experience.
 

What Dolphin HD is still missing

Unfortunately despite the smart additions, Dolphin is still lacking considerably in one major regard: Like every other third-party browser on the iPad, it can only ever really play second fiddle to mobile Safari. That’s because it can’t be set as the default option for opening websites from Mail and other apps — and honestly, that’s really the main job of an iOS browser these days thanks to the rising influence of apps when it comes to mobile Internet usage. There’s also the fact that it’s really just a skin for mobile Safari. Apple insists even third-party browsers use its engine, so there’s little developers can do beyond adding their own features and interface, unless the offload page rendering to remote servers, like Opera Mini.

Think about it this way: If you open a link in Twitter that you find interesting and you want to read more, will you just use the “open in Safari” button or actually take the time to copy the address, open Dolphin HD and paste it in the address bar? Chances are you’ll take the path of least resistance like most other mobile users appear to be doing.

A winner waiting for competition

Dolphin HD is a solid experience on the iPad, as are the iPhone and Android versions. Luckily, the developers have included Webzine, too, which gives users a reason to check it out beyond browsing. But until Apple opens up the coveted default browser spot to offerings from other developers, the triumph of Dolphin HD remains a fairly hollow one.

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As with IE in desktop computing, mobile Safari is used for more than 50 percent of the browsing done on mobile devices (53 percent in August 2011, to be exact), and it has remained at or near that mark for many months now. Unlike IE, Safari on iOS isn’t bleeding market share; in fact, its usage is trending upward. In October 2010, Safari had 44.3 percent of the overall picture, which means it has grown by just under nine percentage points in less than a year, according to the stats from Net Applications. IE is steadily falling, losing ground especially to Chrome.

There’s more to the similarity between the two than just market dominance, however. Both IE and mobile Safari are default options on the hardware they ship with, but again, there’s a key difference: Apple really won’t let any other browsers play on its platform, even if a user does want to initiate a change. You can’t make any other browser the default options for opening links from other apps, and even the third-party browsers you can install from the App Store (like Dolphin) are actually just Safari at heart with feature and function changes. Microsoft got in trouble just for bundling IE with Windows 7 in Europe, let alone making it the only default option, so you have to wonder if similar action against Apple might follow down the road.

On the other hand, making Safari the only choice ensures Apple can guarantee a uniform browsing experience across all iOS devices it sells, and helps prevent security risks, something rival Android has had trouble with. You might think that because Android’s market share is still growing, it would be stealing some of mobile Safari’s thunder. It’s actually having more of an effect on Opera Mini, the second-place mobile browser, which has continually shed usage to the stock Android Browser. Opera Mini has traditionally targeted non-smartphone mobile devices, which might account for its early success and slow decline as people make the jump from feature phones to more advanced devices.

Apple is staying ahead in mobile browsing for one very clear reason: the iPad. Android has yet to have a hit tablet on its hands, and even cumulative sales of Android-powered slates don’t match Apple’s shipment volume, providing a huge edge to mobile Safari. My prediction? We’ll see Android pass Opera Mini and make a strong play for second, but Apple will continue to lead the pack for another year at least, and likely even beyond.

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All you have to do to access the new editing feature is point your mobile browser at http://docs.google.com. After sign in, you can then choose from a list of your available documents and press the new Edit button to switch from viewing mode to the mobile editor.

The new editor allows you to collaborate on the go using shared documents, and even broadcast notes live to people who have viewing access for your docs. Theoretically, you could use it as a private live-blogging tool from any event.

This is a great feature, and one I’ve been looking forward to since getting an iPhone. Bringing Google Docs to iOS devices should really help the search giant take away a few more customers from Microsoft’s share of the productivity software pie.

My own tests reveal that the update hasn’t been pushed out to my location yet, but Google does say the roll-out will take time. Check out the video below for a preview of how mobile editing works, and let us know if the new feature is live in your area in the comments.

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For additional learning on Safari for Mac, checkout Safari 101 and Mac Browsers (subscription required).

Tabs

The first noticeable thing about iCab is that it actually uses real tabs. The UI borrows heavily from Mobile Safari; the URL bar looks almost identical. However, underneath the URL bar is a bookmarks bar, and underneath that is the tab bar, which seems to function just like the tab bar in any desktop browser.

The tab bar does two things to the interface: one, it adds what some might consider “clutter” to the window. When compared to Safari, iCab has more of the “chrome” around the web page because of the additional buttons. The second thing the tab bar does is far more important: it reduces friction. Hiding tabs as Mobile Safari does puts them out of the thought process, it creates an independent experience for each tab. In iCab, when all the tabs are grouped together in the tab bar, I can see immediately what I have open, what I still have to read, and what I need to close. I can’t count how many times I’ve opened up the tab window in Mobile Safari and found eight tabs that are already open in the background of sites I forgot to read. Keeping all of the tabs visible means that I have one less step to go through to get to the tab that I want. In iCab, it’s simple; just look and touch. In Mobile Safari, I first have to remember which icon is the tab icon, then find the tab I’m looking for from the collection of website screenshots. It’s pretty, but adds friction.

Settings

iCab has many more settings than Mobile Safari, allowing your browsing experience to be customized to your liking. My favorite setting is the ability to open links to other domains in a background tab. This is by far the best browsing experience on any platform. Have a list of Google search results to check? Just tap each one and it opens in a background tab automatically. Reading through Daring Fireball’s Linked List? It’s as simple as scanning Gruber’s summary and tapping the link to open the tab in the background and on to the next one. This is how I’ve browsed for years on the desktop.

Another favorite setting are the filters. iCab comes out of the box with 142 filters to help block annoying ads. The filters are not enabled by default, but can be easily. Customizing filters is also very easy, assuming you know some basic wildcards.

Instapaper and Twitter are supported via modules. Modules are similar to Firefox’s extensions, but much simpler. They are more like bookmarklets on steroids. iCab does not have a very large collection of modules right now, but it does have a fairly simple tutorial on how to develop them. The repository has modules for jumping to the bottom of the page or the top of the page, and a handful of others, but if someone whips up a Readability module, I think that will have all the important stuff covered.

iCab may not be for everyone, since not everyone is going to need all of the features. I’ve just touched on some of the features that I’ve found useful, I didn’t even mention ScrollPad (place three fingers on the screen to scroll super fast!), the multiple privacy options, support for downloading files and opening them in another installed app, import and export of bookmarks, or full screen and kiosk mode. iCab is $1.99 in the App Store for a universal iPad/iPhone app. If you care about your browsing experience on the iPad, go get it.

I first heard about Quix a few months back when Merlin Mann was talking about some clever stuff he was doing with it. I remember having a look, but at the time it didn’t make much sense to me. Partly because when I’m on my Mac I already have established systems for quickly activating the type of functions Quix would be useful for. Add to that the fact that my main use of mobile Safari on the iPhone was pretty much limited to sending pages to Instapaper for later use and the whole notion of Quix left me unimpressed.

Now that I’ve got the iPad though, it’s making a lot more sense. At the moment it’s more iPhone than it is Mac, but that won’t stop folks from trying to push it towards the more fully functional Mac side of things. Quix is a good step in that direction, giving you access to the same type of in-browser functionality that you’re used to having on your desktop.

Quix works through the use of a “meta bookmarklet” which when activated launches a command prompt allowing you to initiate any other commands stored in the quix.txt file. The easiest way to get started is to just add the bookmarklet to the Safari Bookmarks bar on your Mac and then sync it to your iPad. Tweak the settings for mobile Safari to display the bookmarks bar, and now Quix will always just be a tap away. With almost 100 commands included by default, you’re well on your way to being able to do just about anything you want from within mobile Safari.

No need to stop there though, you can also host your own quix.txt file and fill it up with your own set of cool commands. The syntax is pretty straight forward, each line being made up of a command, the executable, and a short description. For some inspiration have a look at Merlin’s custom list to see the kind of tricks he’s come up with. If you have some of your own custom bookmarklets please share them in the comments.

I don’t use any browser on my iPhone other than Mobile Safari. And, unless you have a jailbroken iPhone, neither do you.

That’s because Apple’s webkit-powered Mobile Safari provides the browser engine for all the iPhone’s various windows onto the Interweb. So, whether you’re viewing a webpage from inside Tweetie 2, Instapaper or any one of the multitude of apps that allow for in-app web browsing, you’re using Mobile Safari.

Back in early February at the Mobile World Congress, Opera showed off an iPhone version of their mobile browser, Opera Mini, to a select group of reporters and tech-pundits. That left me a little confused; how could they produce a real browser, built from the ground-up, using its own in-house rendering engine, without breaking the rules?

You see, Apple has a strict rule that native applications are not permitted to reproduce the functionality offered by the iPhone out-of-the-box. That’s why you don’t see a third-party Camera app that doesn’t also offer some kind of additional “unique” functionality you wouldn’t get by simply using Apple’s own Camera software. The same goes for email applications, phone applications, iPod-like applications… you get the idea. Anything you can think of that seems similar to an Apple-made app likely is considered just different enough to be approved.

Opera’s Partner Manager Phillip Grønvold told Wired;

There are two reasons why we are confident that Opera Mini will met [sic] the requirements of the App Store…

One, our compression technology imposes limitations on what the browser can do — Opera doesn’t render rich, content-heavy documents like Safari does.

Two, Opera Mini does not actually render HTML on the device, it uses a custom binary representation of the website. We believe these technical differences make Opera Mini sufficiently different to Safari to be made available on the App Store.

So, let’s get this straight; the Opera Mini web browser doesn’t actually render HTML? Web pages are converted from HTML into some other markup (compatible only with Opera Mini) and then the ‘browser’ delivers a sub-par browsing experience? Presumably that’s what Grønvold means when he says Opera Mini ‘…doesn’t render rich, content-heavy documents’. It renders something less than you’d get normally. But, according to Wired’s Michael Conroy, it is fast. So, I guess that’s something. But… it’s something less than you’d normally get. It’s just a thought, but, wasn’t that the problem with phones before the iPhone? They delivered less than the best? I’m just saying…

With this in mind, the question shouldn’t really be “will Apple approve it” but rather, should we care about it in the first place?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never considered Mobile Safari unacceptably slow. My Internet connection has sometimes been slow, but that’s not the fault of Mobile Safari — which dutifully renders what it can, when it can. And you know, even when my throughput is a bit meager, I’d rather wait the additional seconds for the full-quality I’ve come to expect from Mobile Safari. Otherwise, what’s the point in owning an iPhone, if I’m only going to use apps that deliver pre-iPhone results?

And, while I’m on the subject of connectivity; in areas where my coverage is very limited and my iPhone can barely hold on to a simple GPRS signal, I simply don’t bother surfing the web. It’s an exercise in frustration. A hyper-optimised, super-fast alternative browser might seem like an attractive solution to someone who often finds themselves with limited throughput, but really, wouldn’t most people just wait until they get a stronger signal? Or, even better, access to a Wi-Fi network?

I know I haven’t tried it yet, I’m going by what Grønvold showed-off at the MWC —  but I just don’t see that it offers much in the way of utility and quality. Fart apps and Bikini apps also don’t offer much in the way of utility and quality… but look at what’s happening to them…

So, will Apple approve Opera Mini? I doubt it. It doesn’t matter that it renders web pages in some special way, it’s still a browser.

That won’t stop the wider tech press turning this into something it’s not. If it is approved, there’ll be talk of how it signifies this or indicates that and someone will claim this in some way ‘proves’ Apple and its iPhone are losing their sparkle… Walt Mosspuppet (the only technology journalist in the world) has this to say on the (unlikely) possibility of Apple approving Opera Mini;

…it would be great if their app makes it onto the store. After all, there are all sorts of big bets I win once I can show evidence that Hell’s frozen over, and Apple allowing another browser on the iPhone might just do it.

If (and when) Opera Mini doesn’t get approved, Apple will be criticized for… well, all the usual. Just fill in the blanks yourself, you know the words to this song by now. Ultimately, some kind of drama will be invented. It always is.

Do you want a different browser on the iPhone? And if you do, is Opera Mini the replacement you’ve been waiting for? Why? For goodness’ sake, why! Get sharing in the comments below.

According to a new report by BusinessWeek, though, I might have another chance to become more familiar with Microsoft’s search engine offering thanks to a deal between the Windows-maker and Apple. The two companies are said to be in negotiations to arrange the replacement of Google with Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone platform.

The New Mobile Landscape

Discussions are said to have been going on for weeks now, though BusinessWeek’s sources remain anonymous because the discussions have yet to be made public. They also maintain that talks could break down at any time, and there is no timeline for a decision, so it could be a while before we see any action as a result of these talks.

It’s a move that makes sense for both Apple and Microsoft. Once bitter rivals, the two are now both facing a major threat from Google in the lucrative growing mobile space. Microsoft basically looks dead in the water thanks to the incredibly stale Windows Mobile 6.5 and always just-over-the-horizon Windows Mobile 7, and while Apple is still a leader in the mobile industry, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing in the near future, Google has begun to take steps that could lead to mobile market domination.

Google’s Rise

First, Google created Android, an iPhone OS competitor that’s completely open and quickly gaining ground due to favorable licensing deals. And handset makers can spin their own UI, so that it still looks and feels like a branded, proprietary OS. Then, it bought up AdMob, which makes it the force to be reckoned with in mobile advertising. Seems Google took it right out from under Apple, too. Finally, it partnered with HTC to create the Nexus One, and set up its own mobile store that could change the way cell phones are bought the world over, if things progress according to plan.

When Apple first created the iPhone, a partnership with Google made sense. Both were challenging the might of established players in the field, like Microsoft, which at that time hadn’t descended into irrelevance, and BlackBerry, which continues to be a force to be reckoned with, although it does seem to be falling off, especially with its nascent efforts at the consumer market.

What Comes Next

Times have changed. Google now gets far more out of its partnership with Apple than does the Mac-maker. Revoking platform access is the smart move for Apple from a business perspective. But what about us lowly end users? What effect would the dissolution of the Google/Apple relationship have on consumers?

First of all, don’t worry. Apple won’t pull the plug on anything until it’s confident there won’t be any adverse effects on the user experience side of things. If the Bing default switch is coming, it’ll be an opening salvo, a way to taste consumer tolerance for change, not the first step in an inevitable overhaul.

If small changes don’t generate the kind of waves that turn over boats, then we could see other, more drastic shifts. The next most obvious place to make a change will be with the built-in Maps app. We’ve seen rumors that Apple is working on its own in-house solution, and that could well take over duties. If Apple does go this way, expect to see them up the game by rolling things like point-of-interest and navigation into the app itself, so that it comes off as improvement instead of just a business-based replacement decision.

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The script, which goes by the name of Gordon, was capably developed by Tobias Schneider, a programmer from Munich, Germany. Sadly the small script does not give true fully functional Flash support to the iPhone, as the software only enables Flash files to be displayed within the iPhone’s Safari browser.

However, the hapless and rather weighted shortcomings do not end there, as in order for the script to work correctly, website owners must incorporate Schneider’s code on each and every flash page they want to display correctly on the iPhone. In addition to this, preliminary tests have shown that pages running the new Gordon hack push the iPhone’s central processing unit (CPU) to it’s up-most limits.

Schneider’s freely distributed open-source project, which works thanks to a Flash runtime written in pure JavaScript, unfortunately has its limitations, despite it being admirable and in some ways a successful effort. The restraints in place will stop this nifty piece of code from receiving wide-spread adoption, so don’t expect too many Flash-enabled sites popping up on your iPhone any time soon.

If you want to see Flash in action on your iPhone now, you can. Simply get Safari open and head on over to Paul Irish’s site to give various demos of Gordon a spin. But be warned Adobe’s Flash is one resource-intensive extension which will eat at your iPhone’s battery power in no time.

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In a lengthy post comparing developing using Cocoa Touch for the App Store vs. developing web applications, Gruber goes over the strengths and limitations of both. In the end, he reveals that a new web app framework would bring the experience of using web apps much closer to that of apps which reside natively on the iPhone. The new framework is apparently called PastryKit, and it’s an official Apple endeavor.

PastryKit brings three really important things to the table for web developers:

• Hides the address bar, without the need to create a home screen shortcut first, which currently allows that.
• Allows for static, fixed position toolbars that don’t scroll along with the rest of the page.
• Allows for scrolling momentum, which allows users to “fling” lengthy lists without causing scroll friction, the way web apps generally do now.

PastryKit has already been deployed in its iPhone User Guide web page, though you can only see the effects if you’re visiting the site on an iPhone. They are all JavaScript implementations, and so should be usable by any web developer. MacRumors points out that performance issues attached to the new features could arise on older-generation iPhone models, since these are known to have trouble with JavaScript in mobile Safari.

There’s little doubt that Apple is keeping its eye on the mobile web space, which is poised to explode thanks to recent developments in web tech like HTML5, CSS and others. There are some things that the App Store is no doubt better for, including advanced 3-D games like the kind released by Gameloft, ngmoco and EA, but for other apps, an improved web interface could be just what the doctor ordered.

If Apple can get smaller developers who are creating apps with limited or light functionality to take their business to the web instead of routing through the App Store, it’ll be able to eliminate a lot of the static and chatter that currently gums up the review process and no doubt costs Cupertino a not-insignificant amount of overhead. It may lose revenue, too, but the more lucrative titles will likely remain as dedicated apps, being the aforementioned games from major publishers I mentioned above.

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