Apple iPad Review : Web Surfing on Mobile Safari, part 2

Here's part 2 of Jeremy Go's personal-unbiased-extensive Apple iPad review --

Web Surfing with the Ipad

I remember chatting with my good friend TP a few days before leaving for OZ that I wanted to get a tablet for two specific reasons; one was so I could read ebooks and secondly so I could browse the internet while in the toilet.

I’ll tackle the former some other post, but now that I have had the iPad for more than a week now, let’s see how it handles web browsing.

Before I begin, I should tell you that I surf the web alot. I use to find out what’s showing on TV and Movies, find out the latest news, and of course, stalking my friends on Facebook. (This last bit honestly takes up 99% of my web time.)

Having said that, alot of my web browsing is spontaneous. I might have heard something on TV I want more information on (hello Wikipedia) or perhaps I just got home and I want to see what good on TV (clickthecity.com!), this is where the iPad really outshines my laptop... Zero boot up time means that i am almost automatically online, unlike previously where I had boot up my computer, change my clothes, and take a crap (promise, that’s the last toilet reference) before I could get online!

I instantly loved the multi touch feature of the iPad when I started using the web. I can zoom in to sites which make it easy to read text heavy sites and it is a feature I found particularly useful if I can’t to highlight certain words to copy-paste into google for further research.

Although, for the first few days, I found myself using my laptop for browsing more than my iPad for one specific reason; tabbed browsing (which is the greatest invention since in internet IMO). When browsing may favourite websites, like say TechPinas, which have plenty of links, I really hate going back and forth between stories and the main page. So I normally just open the link in a new tab and will read it after open all the interesting stories on the main page.

For the longest time I could not figure out how to do this on the iPad, if it was even possible. Completely forgetting there was an online manual for the iPad, I just continued using my laptop for most things. Until one fateful day when I touched too long on a link and discovered this...



Instantly I learned two things. One is that I can open links in a new tab and two is that holding on something in the iPad is equivalent to a right click for us on the Dark Side and crtl-click for those of you who like to drink Steve Jobs overpriced Kool Aid. (Just kidding Steve, much love!)

Having found that out, I now use the iPad for at least 50% or more of my web browsing.
Why not all? Well, to be honest, there are some things my laptop does better than the iPad.
Point number 1, the 600 pound gorilla in the room... is Flash Support. Mobile Safari is a great browser, but sometimes u end up with this...



Yep, no “rich” Flash experience. So there are some sites you have to view in HTML or not at all.
Two, and more important to me is that it seems buggy when I view Facebook.
When I load an album of my friends (and you you we Filipinos love taking pictures)this happens...



I have no idea why, or if its a problem only I have, but it only loads the first 40 or so pictures of each FB album. As you can imagine, given how much time I spend on FB, this is a real bummer.

Luckily, I found a program called Friendly for Facebook, a free app in the app store which allows me view FB with no problems. Check out the screenshots from the app below.



It allows up to click on albums, zoom in on pictures and even has a feature where it opens the picture in a browser allowing you to tag, share, and comment.

Admited there are some things I can do on my laptop which I still can’t or don’t know how to do. I still can’t tag people in my status messages. You know, the old @name trick, mobile Safari doesnt seem to support this, niether does Friendly. And course, I can’t uplaod albums on my FB either, since i have no photos in here as I have no way to connect a camera to the iPad. I have to transfer pics via iTunes on my laptop, but since my laptop is open anyway, I’d use the laptop.

However, Friendly for FB solves most of my FB problems so my Ipad and I are happily surfing together again. Though there are still some times when I’d rather be using my laptop, though this is related more to the multi-tasking issue than a web browsing specific issue, for pure web browsing I can imagine using my iPad for 90% of all my needs.

Coming up: Email and Messenger in the iPad.