Wondering how to re-open a recently closed tab on iOS 5 Safari for iPad? When Apple released iOS 5, it included some nice new updates to mobile Safari, especially on the iPad. One of the best features on the iPad is tabbed browsing, it makes opening and using multiple web pages a breeze. What happens if you accidentally close one of them down and need to quickly open it back up again? Well there is a way to it very easily. We will show you how.

• Open up Mobile Safari
• Look to the far right of the screen about an a half inch down from the toolbar
• There should be a + sign

• Hold your finger down on the plus sign and a box will open up

• The box now shows a list of the web pages that you recently had open and its scrollable
• Click on the one you want to re-open and there you go
• That’s it, you are done

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Hot on the heels of last month’s Dolphin Browser for iPhone release, we now have Dolphin Browser HD. As is always the case with browser apps, Dolphin has to use the built-in iOS web view for rendering pages, so it has the same HTML, CSS, and JavaScript engine as Safari, but they do a good job of differentiating themselves via their interface and features.

• Simplify the way you navigate the mobile web. Open any of your favorite websites with just the touch of your fingertip in lightning speed.
• Bring out the beauty of the web and with Dolphin Webzine users can experience the web like never before.
• With Dolphin, you can access Windows you opened simply by swiping from the right edge of iPad screen to left. You can access Bookmarks simply by swiping from the left edge of iPhone screen to right.
• Enjoy desktop class web browsing experience. Create as many tabs as you need, quickly switch between opened web pages and open links in new tabs.
• Take advantage of the 100% of the iPad screen. Hide toolbars and tabs with one tap.
• Easily find a word on the web page. Work great for long articles.
• Dolphin excels bookmark management. Add bookmarks, create multiple nested folders
• You can set Dolphin to browse desktop versions of the web sites.
• Enabling private mode will stop the browser from remembering history.

Dolphin Browser is available on the iPad for free. Anyone saying goodbye to Safari?

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Dolphin Browser, very popular on Android, is now available for iPhone. Because of Apple’s security policies, it has to use the same core WebKit HTML and Nitro JavaScript engines as MobileSafari, and can’t add third party plugins either, but what it can and does do is add a lot of interesting interface elements, especially in gesture support, as well as sidebars and tabs.

Smart Phone, Clever Browsing. Now, Dolphin Browser is on iPhone! Dolphin Browser, presented by Mobotap, is the most intelligent mobile web browser available that allows you to interact and engage with the web through your mobile device in the easiest, most intuitive way.

• Gestures – You can simplify the way you navigate the mobile web without going through complicated clicks. On the bottom menu bar, you can find the gesture button (finger shape), which enables the gesture mode. In gesture mode, you can draw a sign or add a new gesture. For example, in any web site, if you input “v” gesture in the gesture mode, you can go to the bottom of the web site.
• Webzine – Bring out the beauty of the web and with Dolphin Webzine users can experience the web like never before.
• Tabbed browsing – Real tabbed browsing. Feel like you are on a desktop. Add tabs within Dolphin just like you would on a desktop.
• Sidebar – We implemented two side bars for you to access Bookmark and Tool Bar without going through complicated clicks; you can access Tool Bar simply by swiping from the right edge of iPhone screen to left. You can access Bookmark simply by swiping from the left edge of iPhone screen to right.
• Speed Dial – Put favorite sites on Speed Dial. Stop looking around in your bookmarks. Forget about typing out long URL. Just put your favorite sites on Speed Dial.
• Smart Address Bar – Smart and effortless browsing by auto-completing URL and context menus When you type the first few characters of a URL, Dolphin auto-complete the URL by displaying all results from both bookmarked items and your browsing history.
• Bookmark Folder – We implemented Folder in Bookmark. Now you can organize your bookmarks into different folders, as you currently are doing with your desktop web browsers!
• Desktop Mode – Switch between desktop view and mobile view according to your needs Need to view the full site of facebook sometimes on mobile? Dolphin helps you do that.

Dolphin Browser is available on the iPhone for free.

[App Store link]

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Planet-iPhones has released a browser-based Cydia Search. You can browse cydia’s default repositories, or add your own, which the website will refresh every hour. You can also search through categories or look for a specific app directly.

The app view on the site is very clean and and clearly lists: the description, the price, the developer and the repository including whether its from a trusted or untrusted source. It also shows, the iPhone’s cydia UI, for screenshots and any other notes.

Tell us, will you use this as an alternative cydia search?

[Cydia Search] via [iSource]

RockMelt has released a free iPhone version of its popular desktop app, a social-network, orientated web browser, that integrates with your Facebook/Twitter accounts, to share sites with your friends/followers as you surf, or you can update your social network statuses directly from the app. RockMelt for iPhone, brings all of these to the iPhone.

Since RockMelt uses your Facebook login, the iPhone App offers real-time syncing for your bookmarks, RSS feeds or social networks, between your iPhone and other computer. As well as offering their new “View Later” feature, which allows you bookmark specific items, like sites or tweets which you can read on your computer.

Unfortunately, there is no iPad app, as of yet.

Are you a RockMelt user? Will the iPhone app be replacing your current iPhone browser? Check out screenshots and a video after the break.

[FREE - iTunes Link]

During Apple’s iPad 2 announcement yesterday Scott Forstall announced that Mobile Safari was getting a 2x performance boost, in part by porting over Mac OX’s Nitro JavaScript engine.

As you surf the web, your fingers will love the responsiveness of the new Nitro JavaScript engine powering Safari. It runs JavaScript up to twice as fast as in iOS 4.2.2 Which means you get more speed behind each page load. And sites with lots of interactive features can appear on your screen even faster.

Users should see noticeable speed improvements under iOS 4.3 when visiting highly-interactive and complex websites across iOS devices, and when paired with the A5 chip and (presumably) more RAM on the iPad 2 it should really scream. Mac OS X Lion has recently been given a WebKit2 boost as well but there’s no word yet on whether that will be carried over to iOS or when.

Are you looking forward to the Safari performance boosts coming in iOS 4.3? Let us know in the comments below!

[Apple]

After an anxious wait it looks like Skyfire is finally out for the iPad. Just like the iPhone version of Skyfire released in early November, iPad users can tap into the millions of flash videos available online through a clever on-the-fly transcoding process conducted on Skyfire’s servers. In addition to the regular flash-enabling features Skyfire brings to the table, the developers have packed in a ton of great social functionality for you to play with.

You can do things like check your Facebook or Twitter news feeds from the bottom toolbar, along with sharing links to a number of social services and others like Read It Later. They’ve also decided to include a universal ‘like’ button for users who want to share what they’re reading (or watching) with friends on Facebook.

But they didn’t stop there. Skyfire for iPad has a ‘Fireplace’ button along the bottom which lets you quickly get to the links that only your Facebook friends have shared, making it easy to check out what your friends have been looking at online without even leaving the app. Two more small yet significant features are the ability to browse in full-screen, and Skyfire’s tab UI which felt very snappy compared to Safari.

You can get a full feature-list and pictures after the break, and don’t forget to tell us your likes and dislikes for Skyfire on the iPad in the comments below!

[iTunes -- $4.99]

• Play millions of Flash videos – everyday, with no limits!
• All-new ‘Skybar’ toolbar gives one-click access to video and related content
• Stay in touch: Unique Facebook and Twitter ‘Quickview’ allows you to see your wall and feeds with one click.
• Universal ‘Like’: Like ANY page on the internet, with one click.
• Fireplace: See only the links shared by Friends. Why? Filter what friends did from what friends shared (which is a great starting point for browsing)
• Popular: See what Friends and the Facebook community have to say about the site you are currently exploring
• Be informed: Quick access to GReader feeds
• Be social: Share via Facebook and Twitter
• Share to more services including GReader, Instapaper, Pinboard and Read It Later
• Standard browser elements: Tabs, search, sharing, bookmarks, history, etc.
• Full screen option for maximum use of screen real-estate – with scroll to top
• ‘Desktop’ option loads pages as on a desktop browser, giving more flexibility in accessing web sites
• Private Browsing option: Browse with no history and cookies left behind

Skyfire has released a demo video (see below) showing off the iPad version of their Flash transcoding browser. Already available for the iPhone with fairly positive reviews; some of the features in the iPad version are the ability to view full screen Flash video as well as embedded Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader integration.

The iPad version will be a totally separate app, which basically means you will have to pay again if you already paid for the iPhone version. No information on pricing, but expect to pay slightly more than the $2.99 that the iPhone version currently costs.

Hopefully Skyfire will have ironed out its previous server overload issues, prior to the launch of the iPad version. Do you use Skyfire? Are you excited by the iPad version? Let us know in the comments!

[Skyfire]

Skyfire for iPhone is a web browsing application that converts Adobe Flash to HTML5/H.264 so you can view it on iPhone or iPad touch. Seeing as Apple chose not to implement Flash into iOS, a lot of videos on the web still can’t be watched on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Skyfire steps in to try and bridge this gap and while it’s a nice feature to have, but not always the best experience.

iTunes Link

While having access to Flash content may be useful to some, the overall process can be daunting. A lot of times, I found that the app would take a while to convert the content. If you are on wifi, the process seems to be a bit smoother, but on 3G it was definitely noticeable. I will give them a little bit of a break here seeing as they sold a ridiculous amount of copies and had to pull it due to their servers being overwhelmed. This may be part of the reason streaming is taking a while.

Either way – in my experience, once the content did stream, it seemed to be quite choppy and broken up. I’m hoping this is something that will get better as Skyfire adds more server bandwidth. A lot of the times I noticed the audio streamed pretty quickly but the video portion would struggle to keep up with the audio or fall behind. Seeing as viewing Flash content is the main feature of the app, I’m really hoping we see major improvements in the near future.

As for the rest of the app, I actually quite enjoyed using it as a browser. Settings will give you an option to browse privately, which is nice. It also gives you the option of desktop or iPhone mode. To me, this is much easier than having to toggle individual sites from mobile to desktop view. It will save you a bit of time and you can just switch with two clicks instead of searching a site to figure out how to toggle mobile views on or off.

Sharing is also easy within Skyfire – you simply click the little plus symbol in the bottom right corner of the screen and you can share directly through Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. There is also a feature called Facebook Quickview which allows you to view your Facebook profile and stream from within Skyfire. It’s a nice feature but not something I really see a need for. I’ve never been a fan of the Facebook for iPhone app so I suppose having access to the mobile or desktop site in one click may come in handy here and there. It’s still not something I see myself personally using very often.

Skyfire also has a feature that allows you to search for video and content on any term you choose. When you click the search icon, it brings up suggestions of what you may search for based on the page you’re currently viewing as well. This is an extremely neat feature but sometimes it would throw out weird suggestions that had nothing to do with the site you’re browsing. If this feature is refined a bit more, I could see it becoming something I’d use frequently.

Bookmarks can also be added just like they can in Safari, so you should feel right at home if you’ve become accustomed to using bookmarks in Safari. It would be nice if your already existing bookmarks from Safari could be imported into Skyfire. Other than that, the overall browsing experience is great. I’m just not sure the main selling feature of the app is quite up to par yet.

Pros

• Great overall browsing experience
• Adds a bit more functionality than Safari currently offers
• Toggling between desktop and mobile mode is easy and more convenient than switching on individual sites

Cons

• Flash to HTML5 converting to streaming process can be quite daunting and slow at times
• Audio and video do not always sync up after streaming to HTML5
• Experienced a few crashes on 3G while trying to convert and stream video
• Search suggestions can be a bit off at times

Today RIM posted a video of their PlayBook vs. Apple’s iPad to demonstrate the browsing ability and speeds the PlayBook has to offer. The results are interesting but seemingly skewed as well.

There were three different tests RIM used to compare the browers on the two devices. They went head-to-head in raw web-site rendering, Acid3, and Java.

To start out they are both directed towards UEFA.com and then CBS.com. The PlayBook clearly finishing loading and rendering both web-sites faster than the iPad. The CBS site however has flash content on it and obviously will not fully load on the iPad.

On the Acid3 test both devices managed to score 100/100 but RIM boasts that the iPad has an HTML error during this test.

The funny thing about these tests are that the iPad is over 6 months old compared to the PlayBook not even being out yet for sale. Also an interesting note is the fact the PlayBook is running on QNX which is Adobe Flash and AIR programs so naturally it will run flash sites as compared to the iPad not having flash capabilities.

It will be far more interesting to see the 2nd generation iPad pitted versus the PlayBook as the two devices will be on a much more level playing field. Do you think this test has any validity given the fact the iPad is real and the PlayBook is still technically vaporware or do you think this is Apple’s chance to step up their game and blow the PlayBook out of the water?

Check out the video after the break!

[ CrackBerry ]

After 2 months of waiting in review with Apple, the new Skyfire mobile browser will be approved and available in the App Store for iPhone and iPad at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday for just $2.99. From CNN Money:

To get around Apple’s restriction, Skyfire came up with an innovative solution: When users click on a page that contains Flash video, Skyfire’s servers download, render and translate the video into HTML 5, which is a Web standard that iOS devices support. Skyfire then displays a thumbnail that users can click on to stream the video from its servers.

“We will attack those pesky blue Flash error messages,” said Jeffrey Glueck, Skyfire’s CEO.

We’ve previously heard that Microsoft worked with Apple to do server-side Silverlight transcoding and streaming to iPhone but this is the first we’ve seen anyone using the same approach for Flash. It should help users who want to see the 46% of web video not already available in HTML 5, though it still won’t give you Hulu — Hollywood blocks mobile access to online, Flash-based Hulu video. One step forward, half a step (and a kick in the shins) back.

Will you be grabbing this Flash-converting browser once it hits the App Store on Thursday morning? Let us know in the comments below!

[CNN Money]

This weekend GigaOm brought word that Mozilla was working on an iPhone app. Of course, thoughts turn immediately towards their most famous product — Firefox. However, Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party code interpreters and that means no Gecko HTML renderer and no TraceMonkey Javascript engine. And again, I don’t think there’s any need for Mozilla to make a WebView wrapper…

So what else is there? Browser link sync? The iPhone will sync Safari links, or Internet explorer on Windows, but syncing links for Firefox users is thus far unsupported, and no doubt many would love to have that functionality:

Later, I sat around gabbing with Lilly and Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s VP of Mobile, talking about Weave and the Awesome Bar, which is a way to get access to all your browsing history and bookmarks by just typing them in the URL bar on your browser. And while we were talking about Weave, I asked them if it was going to be part of this new, mysterious iPhone app. Lilly and Sullivan smiled and remained silent. Interestingly, they didn’t correct me.

Malik notes that Weave might be too competitive with MobileMe for Apple’s tastes, but that of course will depend on the exact implementation offered on the iPhone, and how flexible Apple is feeling (more so than ever, it seems of late). And if ever a Weave there was, bringing it to the iPhone certainly makes sense.

Layar Reality Browser [Free - iTunes link] is technically an augmented reality browser for the iPhone 3GS (it depends in large part on the compass to work its wonders).

For the uninitiated, augmented reality typically uses GPS location and internet data to layer information on the screen over live video. In Layar’s case, for example, to show local search results for “pizza” over the restaurants in an intersection you’re looking at on your iPhone.

Whether cool translates into usefulness — we’ll see. But on cool alone, it’s definitely worth a look. (You can also view search results in map and list view, but what’s the fun in that?”

[Layar via TechCrunch]

Our fearless friend, CrackBerry Kevin has been watching videos again and this time the take away has him happy: analysts who might be “in the know” say RIM may be fixing their infamously buggered browser by “next summer”.

While the iPhone uses the mobile version of the Apple-supported WebKit rendering engine, as does Palm’s Pre, Google’s Android, and some Nokia devices, RIM has thus far been content to roll their own rendered — with JavaScript turned off by default. No word on whether RIM will turn to WebKit or stick with the custom code, but it does look like the analysts are at least saying they’ll address some of the major gripes.

Our take? If RIM is serious about becoming a world-class web experience, Apple better get just as serious about matching them on messaging.

We’re going to kick off the Palm Pre vs. iPhone 3G S excitement with a simple browser smackdown.  The short version: the iPhone 3G S is faster in our video above, but the Pre is close and actually is edging out the iPhone after the just-applied 1.03 webOS update.  The part you actually should pay attention to is "time to content," i.e. how long it takes to load up the stuff you actually want to read as opposed to the javascripty-bits. Bottom line: speed-wise there’s a hair’s-breadth between the two browsers, it’s so close that you really ought not be making your purchase decision based on it — or bragging about it either way.

Feature-wise, we give the edge to the iPhone 3G S — they are on version 3.0 while the Pre is just getting started at 1.02 / 1.03.  The ability to pop up a link in a new browser window is quite nice — not to mention Autofill.  I myself prefer the Pre’s Card metaphor to the in-app tabs of Safari, but that ‘s a matter of taste.

Stay tuned for more as we pit these devices against each other!

[cross-posted at PreCentral.net]

Update: As noted in the comments and in a raft of emails, you can open links in a new card on the Pre with Opt + Space + Tap.  It works, but Palm, really, Opt + Tap isn’t really doing anything here.  Just saying. Thanks everybody!

Two iPhones enter, only one can be left standing. Which one will it be? Well, both devices got the Nitro JavaScript rendering engine boost courtesy of iPhone 3.0, but the iPhone 3G S brought a little gun to this knife-fight in the form of double the RAM, a faster GPU, and a super souped up processor with higher clock speed and phat’er pipes. (Think 486 vs. Pentium on the desktop).

So let’s just load up our friends CrackBerry.com, PreCentral.net, theiPhoneblog.com HQ, and Steve Job’s perennial New York Times test page and see.

(No, not which will win — we already know the answer to that! — but by how much?!)

Opera, the admirable yet often un-admired cross-platform web browser alternative to Internet Explorer on the PC, Safari on the Mac, and Firefox pretty much everywhere, was considered by Apple to be the original baked-in surfing standard for the iPhone?

Huhbuwha?

That’s pretty much what we thought too, though Valleywag stands behind the story:

Before the first iPhone was released, Apple wanted Opera to build the browser for the iPhone, says a source. Negotiations dragged on for six months, the sticking point being exclusivity — Apple wanted it, but Opera was unwilling to commit, seeing a larger market for licensing its proprietary software to multiple handset manufacturers.

Valleywag says, if true, Opera made a huge miscalculation, give the iPhone’s unprecedented mobile browsing market share. We say… shenanigans! Unless we’re talking history so ancient Bill Gates was floating overhead at Macworld announcing IE as the default Apple browser, this just doesn’t seem logical, reasonable, or rational.

As any longtime reader of this site knows, the iPhone started life as a tablet concept device called… (wait for it…) Safari Pad. Pretty big clue right there in the name as to what browser Apple was leaning towards, wouldn’t you say? (We would).

Likewise, Apple was willing to throw away devote resources to a Windows version of Safari, never mind Steve Jobs’ near totalitarian approach to keeping things in the Apple ecosystem (after having been burned one to many times by licensed technology).

Stranger bedfellows have tech made (see IE on Mac, above) but we’re filing this one under EPIC NO! for now…

After all the persistent questions about whether or not the BlackBerry Bold’s improved browser could compete with the iPhone, our friend CrackBerry Kevin decided to try to provide the definitive, final smackdown.

Go on and read the entire saga, but take heed, it’s not a pretty sight. Under ideal conditions, the Bold comes this close to competing with the iPhone on speed. Those idea conditions: 3G, Javascript off, strong signal, fresh reset, and WiFi off. Wait — WiFi off? That’s right, Kevin has two BlackBerry Bolds and both of them are five different kinds of screwed up — they fail with Javascript off, they fail with WiFi entirely. Now — not everybody is reporting the same hassles, but it’s starting to look like it’s a pretty serious problem.

The Javascript issue is very interesting, by the by. The iPhone defaults to leaving it on. One could argue that Javascript support helps make the iPhone able to browse the “Real Internet,” but one would be wrong about what makes up the “Real Internet”. The Bold, however, defaults to leaving Javascript off, and given Kevin’s results, it looks like a good thing they did.

What does this mean for iPhone users — besides bragging rights? Well, actually, bragging rights are enough for us. But there’s another tip you’re definitely going to be interested in, iPhone faithful. Can you guess it? Rene will let you know what it is very shortly.

Here’s the backstory to what you’re looking at, above: Mobile Computing posted up a video showing that the iPhone 3G obliterated the BlackBerry Bold in a download & render test of web browsers (We just covered this, oh, hours ago). Fun stuff, except as our friends at CrackBerry noted (and MC added too) – it wasn’t a fair fight. The Bold probably wasn’t actually using WiFi and also most of the Bolds out there have pre-release ROMS on them, so the finals might be a stitch faster.

So a loyal CB reader pitched in and posted a video of the Bold loading the same page again, but this time actually using WiFi, it came in a little bit faster.

At TiPb, though, we figured it still looked slow. But since the Bold probably had a pre-release OS on it, we figured we’d hobble the iPhone 3G as well. So above, Loyal Moderator Bad Ash pits the BlackBerry Bold on WiFi against the iPhone 3G on EDGE.

Yeah, it’s closer, but we’re still ahead by 4 seconds or so. Tie the iPhone 3G’s WiFi hand behind its back, fine. Tie it’s 3G hand back there too, fine. The iPhone 3G still seems to win out — and we look forward to being able to say that about the final Bold ROM too. Hey — you guys still have (slightly) more reliable push email, so there’s that.

Apple has released their latest, greatest, fastest, and coolest new browser yet — Safari 3.1 (big brother to the MobileSafari Touch browser built into the iPhone).

Safari is based on Apple’s open-source WebKit (a branch of the Konqueror/KHTML engine), the same foundation Nokia, Google’s upcoming Android, and even Adobe’s AIR runtime get their render on with.

In addition to faster rendering and Javascript, what makes this latest release so exciting is built-in support for the new HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) 5 draft. Apple VP of Marketing Phil Schiller tells us:

“Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface. And best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video [as tags -- yes!] and animation standards [CSS animation FTW!] for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience.”

And (looking at you Google Gears!) local SQLite databases for offline functionality.

These features, while nice for the desktop, seem perfect for an upcoming rev of Safari on the iPhone as well. Being able to easily code rich media sites that support enough interactivity to avoid the more complex Flash will give a lot of much-needed power to entertainment web-sphere. Offline data access, of course, opens things up wide for software-as-services WebApps like browser-based office suites. (Picture collaborating on an online spread sheet, taking off on an airplane with the browser keeping your portion of the data live and available, and then syncing back up with the team when you land).

Lighter? Faster? More Standard? To steal Dieter’s catch-phrase — Yes Please!

Already rocking Safari 3.1? Head over to Webkit’s Surfin’ Safari blog for the latest Acid3 (standards compliance test) results and sample some of the new features!

It seems that Mozilla has finally acknowledged the need for a mobile browser on the mozilla codebase that isn’t wreteched. PC Advisor reports that the mozilla foundation will be putting resources towards a mobile browser. And they didn’t act until now on the mobile browsing kit on the iPhone, 3 months after WebKit shines on the iPhone. To add insult to injury, Nokia has been using Apple’s WebKit, the browsing engine that powers Safari on the iPhone, instead of anything based off of Mozilla’s code, though Nokia also has a mozilla-basbed browser on their N800 tablet.

For those of you that are aware of Minimo, the project to bring mozilla to mobile devices, erm, make that Windows Mobile devices, the project is essentially dead. Minimo, doomed with only one developer who was not willing to expend extra time on the project, will never see an update again. A mobile browser project will now instead start from scratch.

You know, Opera has really been on top of the browser space. They put opera pretty much everywhere they could, and really got it out there. Their J2ME browser, Opera Mini, is a breakthrough bit of software for featurephones. I’m not generally liable to say anything pleasant about Internet Explorer, and by extension Pocket IE, but Pocket IE was a sight better than Minimo. It makes sad that Mozilla didn’t get until now that the mobile browsing world isn’t really a segment of the market where you want to be in last place.