Third-party browsers for the iPhone

23.01.2009

If you absolutely, positively, completely and totally detest the occasional page rotation in Mobile Safari, then perhaps iBrowser is useful--but even then, I'd recommend Incognito or QuickSurf, two browsers we'll talk about later that offer the same locking feature but with other capabilities.

Shaking Web: Shaking Web aims to do for mobile browsing what image stabilization did for consumer cameras--stabilize the image on the screen. Shaking Web--which only works on the iPhone, not the iPod touch--tries to account for the slight motion in your iPhone while on a bus, train, or (as a passenger) in a car by moving the web page around slightly, in response to the motions detected by the iPhone.

In theory, this could be quite useful. In practice, while riding in our car, the end result is more distracting than helpful. The page does move around, but it doesn't seem to be in sync with where the iPhone's actually moving, and the end result gave me a bit of a headache after trying to follow the bouncing screen with my eyes.

The browser itself is also quite limited, with no support for tabs, multiple pages, bookmarks, history, autocompletion, or any of the other niceties one expects in a web browser.

Edge Browser: Calling this program from Mobile Productivity a browser is something of a misnomer. What it really is a site-specific maximum-screen-real-estate Web site viewer.