Safari

WebKit Tells Flash to Kiss Their Apps: CSS Animation and 3D Already in iPhone Safari Browser

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Feb 6, 2009 a 10:50 am

WebKit is Apple's open source evolution of the old Linux Konquerer KHTML browser, and it forms the foundation of Safari on both the desktop and the iPhone (and Google Android, Palm Pre, Nokia tablets, etc.). Their Surfin' Safari blog has just announced CSS animation support, but the better news (via MacRumors), is that iPhone (and iPod touch) Safari already supports both CSS animation and 3D.

Want to check it out? Just hit up this awesome animated falling leaf demo on your iPhone!

Apple App Store Approves 3rd Party iPhone Web Browsers, BUT...

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Jan 13, 2009 a 11:56 pm

It looks like Apple has begin to approve some 3rd party web browsers for the iPhone. Like the (Jobs save us) "fart" apps that were pulled or pending for a long while only to flood the market on some magic-8-ball decided day, some of these web browsers were biding their time in the App Store approval queue for a good long while according to MacRumors:

Want iPhone Cut/Copy and Paste via Bookmarklet?

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Dec 11, 2008 a 10:00 am

The previous attempt to make an end run around the iPhone's lack of cut/copy and paste involved shared code called OpenClip and relied on a loophole Apple closed in iPhone OS 2.1

This latest tilt at the text editing windmill targets only 2 apps instead:

iPhone 2.2: Safari Tweaked, Cut and Paste Freaked?

By Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Sep 27, 2008 a 9:58 am

Wired's blog picked up a story from iPhone Atlas today about a minor MobileSafari browser UI change that sees the (defaults to Google) search box surfaced right on top beside the URL address box (currently it only pops up when the top box is activated to save on vertical real estate). To compensate, the Refresh button gets demoted and tucked inside the refresh box. Not sure about the usability on this change yet...?

SquirrelFish Javascript Engine Goes Extreme!

By Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Sep 20, 2008 a 1:55 pm

WebKit, the open source foundation behind Apple's Safari for Mac and MobileSafari on the iPhone (not to mention Google Chrome, Nokia, and Adobe) introduced the SquirrelFish JavaScript engine a while back, and billed it as the fastest on the planet. Then came Mozilla's (Firefox) TraceMonkey. Then came Google's V8. But you just can't keep a good SquirrelFish down -- not when it's willing to go... Extreme!

Surfin' Safari, the WebKit blog, made the announcement this week. But what does it mean for iPhone users? Muchfasterwebsiterendering.

How To: Disable Javascript to Speed up MobileSafari on the iPhone

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Aug 29, 2008 a 11:49 am

Dieter just told us about Crackberry Kevin's uber-frustrating experiences trying to pit the iPhone 3G and Blackberry Bold head to head in the browser war to end all browser wars. But -- silver lining -- for iPhone users, not only did we snag bragging rights, but a handy tip as well!

iPhone 2.0: Mobile Safari Browser Speed Boost!

By Rene Ritchie, Monday, Jul 21, 2008 a 11:55 am

Between the time you click a link and a web page finishes loading on your iPhone, there are many factors that ultimately decide just how fast that process will be, including connection speed (2.5 G EDGE/3G HSDPA/WiFi) CPU speed, and rendering engine. Like desktop Safari, Mobile Safari uses Apple's open source WebKit rendering engine, and it seems like for 2.0, WebKit has gotten its turbo on, especially in handling Javascript. Says Daring Fireball:

Safari 4 to Take Aim at Flash, Beef up Web 2.0 Apps

By Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Jun 11, 2008 a 2:55 pm

Hot on the heels of the just released Safari 3.1, some of whose features are reportedly trickling down to baby brother MobileSafari on the iPhone 2.0 firmware, Apple has reportedly begun seeding early builds of Safari 4 (5526.11.2) to developers.

The big news? WebKit's screaming fast SquirelFish Javascript engine is a go, and 53% faster, which will be huge for Web 2.0 apps like Google's... and the newly announced MobileMe service from Apple, of course!

In Case You Missed It: Bookmarklets

By Casey Chan, Monday, May 19, 2008 a 12:00 pm

We're running a new series here at TiPb (Titanium Powerbook? No, The iPhone Blog!) that brings older but still relevant/interesting/noteworthy articles, reviews, and blog posts back into the forefront of the discussion. Hopefully, we'll be able to uncover some great articles that you might have missed and offer further insight on everyone's favorite toy.

Also, it'll help transition our still new merger, PhoneDifferent fans will get a taste of TiPb writing and TiPb readers will catch up with what has happened in the PhoneDifferent world! Think of it as a blog within a blog or for the metaphorically inclined, dinnertime stories at a big happy family reunion..

Today, we'll bring back the topic of Bookmarklets. Mike Overbo, our Editor Emeritus, found that Bookmarklets extend the reach and capabilities of the iPhone's Safari browser. Essentially, Bookmarklets are small computer applications stored as a URL on your bookmarks bar. Examples would include a Find feature, IMDB search, eBay search, etc.

To use these Bookmarklets, simply store them to your iPhone's bookmarks and when you are in need of, say a quick Wikipedia search, open that particular Bookmarklet and it'll prompt you with a direct search screen rather than waiting for the page to open up. I use Bookmarklets everyday to quicken my online searching (darn that EDGE), take a look and see if there is anything you can use!

Read On For The Rest of the Links!

Flash and Silverlight to Make MobileSafari Crashier?

By Rene Ritchie, Monday, Apr 21, 2008 a 9:30 am

We've covered the iPhone Flash saga ad nauseam here, but in an interesting post involving the technology itself, NetNewsWire developer Brent Simmons (via DaringFireball) shares some interesting error/crash logs highlighting the instability-adding benefits of Flash, and the rapid catchup of Microsoft's copycat, Silverlight: