Saturday, July 16, 2011

Android browser options: some good, some bad

Take a look at some of the options for the Android browser. 


It makes no sense to have "change brightness" as one of the shortcuts in the browser.  That is an option that applies to the entire phone, not just the browser, and it is something you set once in the main settings.  The most important menu option for a browser would be bookmarks, which is buried on another screen.


This is what you get if you click the "More" button:
Awesomeness:
  1. "Find on page"  is an option I use constantly on a real web browser but it is not available on the iPhone.  I saw some poorly rated apps in the iPhone app store to do this, but having it built-in is really great.
  2.  "Downloads" is a real win for Android.  iPhones don't let you download files or save them, which is just horrific.  Just yesterday a coworker's wife asks "Can I use my iPhone as a flash drive?"  Nope! Only Apple-approved files on your device!
Sadness: Still no bookmarks???  Huh??  It turns out you get to bookmarks by the unintuitive process of holding down the refresh button for 3 seconds:
Once you get there, the screen is actually nicely laid out.  You can switch to a list view, add folders, etc.  This is really nice.

I'll spend another entry talking about the browser settings.

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