[General Topics] Menneisyys:
In order to find out how many tabs can coexist, I’ve opened as many instances of these Web pages in different tabs and, after fully loading each tab, I’ve iterated over the previous ones to see whether they still have the Web page, or, do they start reloading pages. As you can see, in this respect, by far the worst (multitab-enabled) browser is Air Browser 1.1; all the other was able to keep much more pages in memory. Unfortunately, the new, OS3.0 Safari is in the lower half of the bunch (with only four pages), while some of the alternatives (most importantly, VanillaSurf) had no problems keeping eight pages in memory.

At the same time, I was also able to find out how many pages are needed to "crash" a given browser. Unfortunately, several, otherwise high-quality browsers (iCab Mobile 1.5, CaizerWeb 1.0.2 and Journey Web Browser 1.0) crash when you "overburden" them with too many tabs / mmory-consuming Web pages open.

No, don’t think, based on the test page’s length (600 kbyte) and consequent memory needs (which is, according to my measurements on the Windows Mobile platform, can range from 2 to 16 Mbytes – that is, much larger than the original HTML page itself), you can safely use these three browsers to browse only few, smaller Webpages concurrently. The figures I’ve provided only show when the browser crashed in a well-controlled environment with known Web pages. Upon casual browsing far smaller(!) pages, I’ve encountered frequent crashes too (far more frequent ones than Safari crashing – it still does! – under OS3), pretty easily ruling out these three browsers. On the other hand, VanillaSurf 1.2 has never ever crashed on me. Too bad it lacks some essential features…

Test page loading time: along with the memory usage tests (loading the large test suite), I’ve also benchmarked it loading the page in the first and, then, second, third etc. tabs. I’ve found out that loading the page in the first tab takes far more time than in the consequent ones; for example, with iCab Mobile, 18 seconds for the first page and between 7 and 8 seconds for subsequent ones (hence the 18/ 7…8 listed in this row). This must have been caused by the test pages, while physically different (and, therefore, loaded separately), sharing the same image resources. That is, the latter didn’t needed to be fetched again.

As you can see, interestingly, Safari has turned out to be the worst-performer of the (multitabbed) bunch. This means the related promotions (see for example BigBrowser+’s iTunes page and ad) are indeed true: if a developer states his or her browser can load pages faster than Safari, then, he’s indeed right.

Can you select where to open it in some kind of a runtime context menu?: when discussing Default "open to" definable? above, I’ve already explained some browsers (including Safari starting with OS3 – but not before) allow the user decide where a tapped link should be opened.

The ways of activating this context menu is different. For example, with Safari, a single, short tap opens the page in the current tab (unless the link forces the browser to open it in a new one), while a long (about one second) tap brings up a context menu where you can select whether you want to open the page in the current tab or a new one – or, alternatively, whether you want to copy the link address.

On the contrary, in iCab Mobile 1.5, you need to use short-taps (and not long ones!) to activate the full context menu of the browser (as long as you’ve set "Ask" for the default link target in Settings). If, on the other hand, you tap the links continuouy for at least one second, you’ll be presented Safari’s own menu, without the option to open the page in a new tab.

Titles of all tabs easily accessible?: I’ve shown how Air Browser 1.1 makes it easier to select the tab to switch to (as opposed to the several-taps-and-swipes-needed Safari approach). In this row, I elaborate on how the browsers behave in this respect – that is, do they have easily accessible and selectable lists of tabs.

As you can see, Air Browser 1.1, iCab Mobile 1.5 and CaizerWeb 1.0.2 are the best in this respect. VanillaSurf 1.2, the most recommended browser (because of its stability, not because of its feature set, in which it is definitely worse than some of the other browsers!), unfortunately, uses the same slow and awkward interface as Safari.

Max. number of tabs: here, I’ve listed how many tabs the browser have. As can be seen, (multitab-enabled) browsers generally support several tabs; the two exceptions being (the, otherwise, in no way recommended) iBrowseTwo 1.1.0 and Multi-Full Browser 1.1.0.

The Search group elaborates on local / global searching support. Its first row, Find in page? If not, compatible with my scriptlet?, tells you whether you can have the same functionality as Ctrl-F in esktop browsers. It might be very important to find a certain word on a huge Web page. Find in page, when implemented, allows for this.

Unfortunately, few browsers have this functionality – the biggest names (for example, VanillaSurf and Safair itself – while iCab Mobile does support it) don’t.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though – with Safari, you can enable this functionality with so-called "scriptlets". Please see THIS for more info and how they should be used.

Built-in Web search engine support?: in Safari, there’s a text input field to the right of the address input bar, which provides you with an easy way to quickly issue Google (or, if you reconfigure it in the system-level Settings, Yahoo) searches without having to go to Google (Yahoo)’s homepage first. Here, I’ve listed whether the browsers do the same.

Favorites: Access Safari favorites?: The new, Favorites group explains how the browsers handle favorites. Some don’t even have any favorite support (you will want to avoid these altogether), some are pretty advanced.

The first row in this group, Access Safari favorites?, explains whether the browser is able to operate on Safari’s own favorites (none of them are, except for, of course, Safari itself). In this row, I’ve also explained some of the niceties; for example, iCab Mobile’s excellent capabilities (export / import and reading the system-level Contacts database).

Bookmark name editable?: you, at times, may want to store a favorite with a modified name (not bearing the title of the page). Here, I explained which of the browsers are capable of this.

URL editable: you may also want to edit URL’s themselves. At first, this doesn’t seem very important. However, if you take Javascript scriptlets into account (see the link in Find in page? If not, compatible with my scriptlet? above for more info), this may become REALLY important.

Favorite folders?: examines whether you can define subfolders. Note that some of the browser that, otherwise, allow for subfolders, only allow them in the depth of one – I’ve also elaborated on this in the chart.

Support for reorganization?: when you have too many items, you might want to reorganize them – for example, bring the most used ones (along with, if you do use them, "find in page", "bottom of the page" etc. scriptlets) to the top so that you can quickly access them without having to scroll down a lot.

In addition to Safari, of the higher-quality titles, iCab Mobile 1.5, CaizerWeb 1.0.2 and Journey Web Browser 1.0 support this kind of functionality. Reorganization is done in exactly the same way in all these browsers: you tap-and-hold the icon (the three horizontal lines stacked) on the right of the favorite and, then, drag the record to its new position.

History? : This group lists whether there’s support for history (user-input addresses) and whether the stored data is actively used when you enter something starting with the same of containing some substring (URL autocomplete based on history?) and you can delete the history data (Clear history?), should you not want people see what pages you’ve visited.

Scrolling : Scrolling smoothness?: the Scrolling group elaborates on issues with scrolling. The first row in this group, "Scrolling smoothness?", elaborates on whether scrolling is smooth.

Unfortunately, all third-party browsers are definitely worse than Safari in that the scrolling, to some degree, stutters on them. The difference can be very small (as is the case of iCab Mobile 1.5 and VanillaSurf 1.2). Some (otherwise, high-quality) browsers, unfortunately, exhibit pretty bad scrolling stuttering; the most important examples of them are CaizerWeb 1.0.2 and Journey Web Browser 1.0. You’ll want to avoid them entirely if you find this problem really annoying.