[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Following is my just-published roundup of current Web browsers under iPhone OS 3.0 with WM-related remarks as well. A goldmine for Windows Mobile browser developers – it’s always worth knowing what browsers on other mobile platforms are capable of, what features Windows Mobile lacks etc.

The One and only Real iPhone Web Browser Roundup

While the iPhone’s built-in Web browser, Safari, is a pleasure to use, it still has some missing functionality. Some of these:

-	Full screen mode (browsing the Web without the upper and lower status and command bars taking up any screen estate)

-	Orientation locking (to avoid Safari changing orientation when you move or turn your phone)

-	An easier way to switch between open pages (now, it requires sometimes several taps / swipes to switch to another opened Web page)

-	Background Web page loading (to avoid having to wait for a new page to be opened while going on reading the current one)

-	Allowing for more pages to be open without having to continuously reload them (albeit Safari in the latest, just-released iPhone OS 3.0 certainly helped this)

-	Configurable Web search engines

-	To be able to quickly scroll to not only the top, but also the bottom of the page (for example to check out the latest posts in forums, blogs)

-	Providing "faked" User-Agents to make Web servers think you’re accessing them from desktop browsers, and not an iPhone-based one

-	Viewing page source

-	Disabling image loading in order to speed up page loading times and drive down data use

Enter third-party Web browsers, which allow for the above. Let’s take a closer look at them – particularly because the existing, pre-OS3 roundups are heavily outdated – some of them have been published as early as this January – and no longer contain useful information.

First and foremost, as in my previous Web browser bibles for mostly Windows Mobile (see for example THIS), you’ll find most of the information you’ll need to know in the comparison & feature chart available HERE. It’s quite a huge one, so, it’s worth either printing it (in landscape mode) or viewing it on a desktop computer with as huge a screen as possible. After a quick introduction and evaluation of the reviewed browser, I devoted quite a lot of time to explaining what each row in the chart means and how the reviewed browsers behave in that respect. It’s in there that you’ll find a lot of additional information and tips.

First and foremost, there aren’t browsers for the iPhone not depending on the Safari / WebKit engine. What does this mean? There’re some fundamental restrictions (still, as of OS 3.0) plaguing Safari and, accordingly, all browsers based on it. The most important being the lack of text reflowing capabilities allowing for nicely reflow the text when you zoom into a page with pinching. Some other browsers (for example, later Opera Mobile 9.5+ versions) on other mobile platforms (in this case, Windows Mobile) do offer this functionality. This, unfortunately, also means there will still be some Web pages or forums almost impossible to read with Safari. Some of the examples are listed HERE (see "2.1 Real-world rendering tests"), in my article on how Safari compares to Windows Mobile Web browsers (and the multiplatform Opera Mini); for example, THIS Thinkpads.com thread.

Similarly, there isn’t full Flash (Lite) support either, something already existing on Symbian S60 (Flash Lite coming bundled / pre-installed with the Web browser) and Windows Mobile (a "hacked" version of Flash Lite 3 can be installed in some later Opera Mobile versions). This also means no online YouTube-alike works with iPhone OS 3 – not even the ones that do work with the Flash Lite 3-enabled Windows Mobile or S60.