Edit: I also like the 'flick' scrolling, the fact that it doesn't take 30 seconds to run javascript, the fact that it doesn't crash on overly complex sites -- but those were possibly hardware issues with the 700w.
These things are a good summary for me as well. The previous devices I had used took forever to render even half-way simple sites (and even then tried to go for the uber-simple "Mobile" versions and still took a day and a half), would run j/s slowly (if at all), and always seemed clunky when navigating (bad zooming, tiiiiiny scrollbar).
Really the touch-interface and the speed (well, EDGE is still meh, but over wi-fi things are nice) are what do it for me for the browsing on the iPhone.
Apple didn't invent the mp3* player, but they designed one with an interface so elegant it remained almost untouched for six years...
Apple didn't invent shit, they flat out stole the interface from Creative.
I believe the element that Apple actually 'stole' was the use of hierarchy in a navigation system on a mobile device. To me that sounds like a crazy patent to award anyone, but I haven't read it.
Well, I can use the G1 with my thumb, which was something that ended in frustration with my old 700w.
that may have more to do with the screen being inset or not. My HTC Touch Pro works fine with my thumb.
Possibly -- the screen was just plain inaccurate unless you brought out the stylus. Didn't help that everything in WinMo 6 was tiny.
Fats on
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I own both an HTC Touch and an iPod Touch 2nd Gen, so I have used both Opera Mobile (which is still the best Windows Mobile browser so far imho) and mobile Safari quite a bit. Technically the two have a lot of similarities, but there are definitely unquantifiable characteristics of Safari that just make it so much better to use then Opera Mobile. It's hard to explain, but Safari just "feels" right as a mobile browser. I'm not sure if it's the smoothness of the scrolling, how well and fast it renders pages, how simple it is to use even with just a finger, or how it handles multiple pages or what. And while Opera Mobile does all these things as well, Safari just does them so much better. After using it, it's difficult for me to use any other mobile browser without becoming extremely frustrated.
I'm honestly not the biggest Apple fan, and the iPhone is far from perfect, but mobile Safari is the one thing that Apple absolutely knocked out of the park. If the Pre's web browser can come anywhere close to Safari's level of sophistication, I will be thrilled.
Apple didn't invent the mp3* player, but they designed one with an interface so elegant it remained almost untouched for six years...
Apple didn't invent shit, they flat out stole the interface from Creative.
I believe the element that Apple actually 'stole' was the use of hierarchy in a navigation system on a mobile device. To me that sounds like a crazy patent to award anyone, but I haven't read it.
Plenty of other companies had better interfaces
Apple just had the first successful mp3 player, and so everyone was familiar with it.
Take the Zune interface, where you can navigate laterally in addition to horizontally...
I own both an HTC Touch and an iPod Touch 2nd Gen, so I have used both Opera Mobile (which is still the best Windows Mobile browser so far imho) and mobile Safari quite a bit. Technically the two have a lot of similarities, but there are definitely unquantifiable characteristics of Safari that just make it so much better to use then Opera Mobile. It's hard to explain, but Safari just "feels" right as a mobile browser. I'm not sure if it's the smoothness of the scrolling, how well and fast it renders pages, how simple it is to use even with just a finger, or how it handles multiple pages or what. And while Opera Mobile does all these things as well, Safari just does them so much better. After using it, it's difficult for me to use any other mobile browser without becoming extremely frustrated.
If you can try to quantify the "unquantifiable" I'd much appreciate it. I just didn't see it myself when using an ipod touch.
Also, are you using an HTC Touch or an HTC Touch Pro, just so I know?
Apple didn't invent the mp3* player, but they designed one with an interface so elegant it remained almost untouched for six years...
Apple didn't invent shit, they flat out stole the interface from Creative.
I believe the element that Apple actually 'stole' was the use of hierarchy in a navigation system on a mobile device. To me that sounds like a crazy patent to award anyone, but I haven't read it.
If you look at the Creative interface, and I think they still use it, it was essentially the same thing, and done in the same way. It did lack the scroll wheel though, Apple got that right (though I later grew away from the idea with the touch ones like my 4th Gen, inaccurate and frustrating - I much preferred the actual physical moving wheel).
I own both an HTC Touch and an iPod Touch 2nd Gen, so I have used both Opera Mobile (which is still the best Windows Mobile browser so far imho) and mobile Safari quite a bit. Technically the two have a lot of similarities, but there are definitely unquantifiable characteristics of Safari that just make it so much better to use then Opera Mobile. It's hard to explain, but Safari just "feels" right as a mobile browser. I'm not sure if it's the smoothness of the scrolling, how well and fast it renders pages, how simple it is to use even with just a finger, or how it handles multiple pages or what. And while Opera Mobile does all these things as well, Safari just does them so much better. After using it, it's difficult for me to use any other mobile browser without becoming extremely frustrated.
If you can try to quantify the "unquantifiable" I'd much appreciate it. I just didn't see it myself when using an ipod touch.
Also, are you using an HTC Touch or an HTC Touch Pro, just so I know?
It's the original HTC Touch running WinMo 6.1. Or at least I should say, it WAS an HTC Touch, as it died on my a few weeks ago. Which is why I'm very excited about the Pre, because I'm on Sprint and will likely actually get one when it's released. So yeah, I may not have been using the newest version of Opera Mobile or Windows Mobile at the time when I stopped using it, so I could certainly concede that it may have improved since.
I still doubt I could explain it well, but I suppose "responsiveness" is the best word I can use to describe why I prefer Safari of Opera or other mobile browsers. I do realize that part of that is that I'm using it on an iPod and not an iPhone, so any time I'm using it I'm always on WiFi instead of a 3G or Edge network, and that accounts for the increase in speed. It's not necessarily just that though, the interface itself is also quite responsive. The "pinch" gesture to zoom in and out is done really well, obviously for one. There were gestures on the HTC Touch, but it wasn't the same - it was more of a "do this action with your finger and then the phone will respond by doing something (and every now and then it won't). With Safari, and the iPod/iPhone in general I guess, you see the phone responding as you perform these gestures, and it feels very natural. Scrolling as well is quite smooth and responsive, for kind of the same reason. With Opera (again, the version I was using at least), you can drag the screen around scroll using that method and all, but it just feels sort of clunky. With Safari, it not only scrolls responsively as you drag the window around on the screen, but the "flicking" motion in particular always responds exactly how you would expect it to, to the point where you can predict exactly where a page will end up depending on how hard or soft you flick it around on the screen. These kind of touches make a big difference to me.
But again, it is simply a personal preference at this time, and I can certainly recognize its flaws as well (no flash, no cut-and-paste, etc). I'm not attached to it in any way, and as soon as something better comes along I'll have no problem jumping ship. For now though, I have yet to see a mobile browser that's as pleasant to use as Safari.
If you look at the Creative interface, and I think they still use it, it was essentially the same thing, and done in the same way. It did lack the scroll wheel though, Apple got that right (though I later grew away from the idea with the touch ones like my 4th Gen, inaccurate and frustrating - I much preferred the actual physical moving wheel).
I guess that's where my opinion comes from. Apple rarely ever invents anything outright (they hardly invented the wheel after all ), but they have a history of putting things together right first.
If you look at the Creative interface, and I think they still use it, it was essentially the same thing, and done in the same way. It did lack the scroll wheel though, Apple got that right (though I later grew away from the idea with the touch ones like my 4th Gen, inaccurate and frustrating - I much preferred the actual physical moving wheel).
I guess that's where my opinion comes from. Apple rarely ever invents anything outright (they hardly invented the wheel after all ), but they have a history of putting things together right first.
I guess I disagree.
The scroll wheel never made any sense to me. To this day, I see it as a marketing thing ONLY
Evander on
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
I agree, I never really saw the appeal of the scroll wheel. The touch wheel especially was really frustrating.
You guys don't like the scroll wheel / click wheel?
I agree that it could be fiddly at times, but I always thought the tendency to slightly overshoot was worth the usability advantage of being able to intuitively control your speed when scrolling through a long list. The Zune came close with its hold-to-scroll-faster behavior, but overall I thought the wheel was way better than scrolling with buttons.
I own both an HTC Touch and an iPod Touch 2nd Gen, so I have used both Opera Mobile (which is still the best Windows Mobile browser so far imho) and mobile Safari quite a bit. Technically the two have a lot of similarities, but there are definitely unquantifiable characteristics of Safari that just make it so much better to use then Opera Mobile. It's hard to explain, but Safari just "feels" right as a mobile browser. I'm not sure if it's the smoothness of the scrolling, how well and fast it renders pages, how simple it is to use even with just a finger, or how it handles multiple pages or what. And while Opera Mobile does all these things as well, Safari just does them so much better. After using it, it's difficult for me to use any other mobile browser without becoming extremely frustrated.
If you can try to quantify the "unquantifiable" I'd much appreciate it. I just didn't see it myself when using an ipod touch.
Also, are you using an HTC Touch or an HTC Touch Pro, just so I know?
It's the original HTC Touch running WinMo 6.1. Or at least I should say, it WAS an HTC Touch, as it died on my a few weeks ago. Which is why I'm very excited about the Pre, because I'm on Sprint and will likely actually get one when it's released. So yeah, I may not have been using the newest version of Opera Mobile or Windows Mobile at the time when I stopped using it, so I could certainly concede that it may have improved since.
I still doubt I could explain it well, but I suppose "responsiveness" is the best word I can use to describe why I prefer Safari of Opera or other mobile browsers. I do realize that part of that is that I'm using it on an iPod and not an iPhone, so any time I'm using it I'm always on WiFi instead of a 3G or Edge network, and that accounts for the increase in speed. It's not necessarily just that though, the interface itself is also quite responsive. The "pinch" gesture to zoom in and out is done really well, obviously for one. There were gestures on the HTC Touch, but it wasn't the same - it was more of a "do this action with your finger and then the phone will respond by doing something (and every now and then it won't). With Safari, and the iPod/iPhone in general I guess, you see the phone responding as you perform these gestures, and it feels very natural. Scrolling as well is quite smooth and responsive, for kind of the same reason. With Opera (again, the version I was using at least), you can drag the screen around scroll using that method and all, but it just feels sort of clunky. With Safari, it not only scrolls responsively as you drag the window around on the screen, but the "flicking" motion in particular always responds exactly how you would expect it to, to the point where you can predict exactly where a page will end up depending on how hard or soft you flick it around on the screen. These kind of touches make a big difference to me.
But again, it is simply a personal preference at this time, and I can certainly recognize its flaws as well (no flash, no cut-and-paste, etc). I'm not attached to it in any way, and as soon as something better comes along I'll have no problem jumping ship. For now though, I have yet to see a mobile browser that's as pleasant to use as Safari.
Pretty much this, Evander. I'm one of those people who said that Safari mobile is better than any other mobile browser I've used. I own an HTC Touch, and none of the browser options I've tried (IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Skyfire) have been as good as Safari. I have used a Touch Pro for a good amount of time, and I've found the browser to be pretty good, but still lacking. I could cherry pick quotes out of Dookie's post above that really represent my opinion, but I think that he's right on the money. A lot of it, I believe, is because the touch screen mechanism just isn't as good on the WinMo phones as it is on the iphone. Maybe it's just the way the page is rendered. Either way, as he said above, when I want something to happen on Safari, it happens (except for Copy-n-Paste, lolz). Even on Sprint's incredibly fast data network, dealing with a page trying to load up and choking on itself is FRUSTRATING. Not being able to properly view a page in its native form without my phone choking is FRUSTRATING. This is a problem that still afflicts WinMo phones, including the Touch Pro. Any time I've ever dealt with an 'object' on a page, which basically means every single page now as nothing uses vanilla HTML anymore, I've had a difficult experience. The more 'objects', the worse it is.
I've never really cared for scroll wheels. Even on my Wacom, I find them cumbersome. It isn't a motion that we regularly use in any other activity of our lives (running our fingers in circles), and it seems awkward.
It isn't a motion that we regularly use in any other activity of our lives (running our fingers in circles)
Yes it is.
o_O
Maybe if you're a video editor, scrolling through footage? I'm struggling to come up with other times in my life when I've made that gesture. It's certainly not common.
I enjoy the click wheel but I don't enjoy the battery crapping out after one hour of playback on a cold day, nor iTunes being total shit. I'm buying a Zune as soon as I can afford it.
Turning a wheel is intuitive since dials became commonplace, but turning a dial relating to navigating up/down or left/right goes against most standard UI practices. It remains "commonplace" however, so it's intuitive in regards to relationships with other devices that have kept that type of interface.
When it related to physically changing something or turning something (a belt for the radio needle or moving the contact point for the radio frequency) it was a necessary "evil" of UI.
I remember going through a ton of this type of discussion in my computer interface class.
Anyone who says they've tried Opera Mini and found it a cumbersome and difficult experience is doing it wrong. I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.) but it destroys any other available WinMo browser. Even on my launched-in-June-2007-and-has-no-RAM Mogul runs it flawlessly. It takes me no more than 2-5 seconds to load any page through Sprint's network, and it caches several old pages to make going backwards instant.
Every HTC phone I've used is perfectly responsive. 6800, 6900, Touch Pro, Touch Diamond. Opera Mobile feels a bit off, and Skyfire ran like shit on my phone, perhaps due to lack of RAM, and I can't wait to dump WinMo for the sweet sweet Pre, but really I cannot understand your issues with the touch screens or opera mini.
Turning a wheel is intuitive since dials became commonplace, but turning a dial relating to navigating up/down or left/right goes against most standard UI practices. It remains "commonplace" however, so it's intuitive in regards to relationships with other devices that have kept that type of interface.
When it related to physically changing something or turning something (a belt for the radio needle or moving the contact point for the radio frequency) it was a necessary "evil" of UI.
I remember going through a ton of this type of discussion in my computer interface class.
It's funny, I was actually thinking of a rope on a pulley.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
Have you used this particular Opera browser?
I mean, the only setting that I changed, personally, was homepage.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
Have you used this particular Opera browser?
I mean, the only setting that I changed, personally, was homepage.
It really isn't that good, guys. And he's kind of right. However, the user should still be able to modify things if they want to, and it's bullshit to lock them out of the option.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
This faggot right here wants that. When the only difference between the services provided to an iphone and my phone by the carrier is a $50 charge on my monthly bill you better fucking believe I'm going to toil and slave 20 minutes getting my browser running just as smoothly as safari.
If some cockjuggling thundercunt wants to spend an extra $1200 over two years for the convenience of not having to spend 20 minutes thinking about his phone so be it. Is WinMo absolutely godawful in its base design? Yes.
Is it a locked system? No. This means instead of Microsoft forcing you to use their UI, you get to do whatever the hell you want with your phone. While I appreciate the completely freedom that WinMo offers (some wonderful things have been done with it, but at its core it's still WinMo) I'm willing to give up the minor benefits for a slightly more closed and smoothly flowing platform like WebOS. I am not willing to go so far as to sign away all my rights and have a company say that it's illegal for me to do what I want with my phone, thank you very much Apple. A happy middle like Android and WebOS works for me, but Sprint has been slacking on Androidget.
Does Apple provide a nice easy to use UI? Yes, but the the sleek UI is also your prison. If something as rudimentary as copy and paste was left out of WinMo or Android you think a program wouldn't be out for it immediately? Do you think that Google or Microsoft would actively prevent such applications from running on their phone and calling you a criminal if you edit the software on your phone to be able to do that? Not that either of those companies is a pillar of morality, but at least they're not huge dicks about it.
JAEF on
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited February 2009
Opera Mini is nice, no doubt about it, but it still is not quite as nice as Mobile Safari. Plus, doesn't Opera Mini have less options than Opera Mobile? I seem to remember using Opera Mini for a long time but ultimately switching back to Opera Mobile because of several little kinks that annoyed me, but I can't remember specifics. So yeah, I guess this post is useless.
I will say though that, at this time, I'll take the slick UI of Safari over the customization of any of the browsers on WinMo. However, it would be nice to have both, and it annoys me that I can't.
I will say here that it does take some tweaking to get it working like it should (installing a seperate java base to get it fullscreen, allowing data permissions, etc.)
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
Have you used this particular Opera browser?
I mean, the only setting that I changed, personally, was homepage.
Opera Mini is nice, no doubt about it, but it still is not quite as nice as Mobile Safari. Plus, doesn't Opera Mini have less options than Opera Mobile? I seem to remember using Opera Mini for a long time but ultimately switching back to Opera Mobile because of several little kinks that annoyed me, but I can't remember specifics. So yeah, I guess this post is useless.
I will say though that, at this time, I'll take the slick UI of Safari over the customization of any of the browsers on WinMo. However, it would be nice to have both, and it annoys me that I can't.
When I was talking about customization I was not talking about browsers. I was talking about the interface as a whole. Which is a pretty big deal. To me, anyway.
WinMo out of the box a piece of shit? Absolutely. There's a reason that HTC slaps it with a pretty frontend, and that's just the tip of the Winberg. Unfortunately WinMo's ability to continue competing with the non-business tech consumer crowd is slowly disappearing, especially with thee introduction of WebOS and Android as moderately open platforms on the two nationwide budget carriers (hopefully soon to be more) and WinMo 7 not due out until next year at the earliest .
I've used Opera Mini plenty, and I don't see how anyone can compare it to Safari favourably if they've really used both a lot. One is a browser and the other isn't, Mini just downloads processed pages from opera corp and the pages look like they've been processed.
I guess it's nice to download shitty mobile versions of things IF you have a shitty low-dpi display like most cells have had for years, but you know, it's about a hundred times better just to be able to visit a page and be visiting the page.
iphone has lots of stupid features/lack thereof but Safari isn't one of them. Opera Mini is second best and it's a DISTANT second. Come on people, try not to let your distaste for a poster turn you into idiots...
Shitty mobile versions of things? I'm viewing full web pages. Javascript works beautifully. Browsing these forums is a breeze. If I zoom in in text to read it fits it to my screen. Navigation speed is incredibly fast both loading and scrolling through pages, again, on my almost two year old PDA. I guess it's shitty if you're using it on some generophone?
Obs is nothing but a troll but I'm very serious when I say Opera Mini is an incredibly capable browser.
No you aren't, opera corp is viewing full web-pages and reformatting them to fit your screen. Unless you mean the desktop view, in which case you're looking at a screenshot of the full page (also made for your phone by opera corp) that zooms to the rendered portion of the page when you click on different sections. This is also why it's fast: your 2 year old PDA isn't doing any work, opera corp is.
Yes, it's capable, no, it's not as good as Safari. Zooming / scrolling / changing rendered sections (something you don't have to do on Safari at all as the whole page is rendered locally) all work better on Safari, and by virtue of actually being a web browser instead of a redirecting service it's got a bit of an edge, too.
Yes, it works, I'm not arguing with you. Next to Safari it's what you want if you're going to have a mobile browser. But it's not Safari, it's not as good, and pages don't look it when you take the two programs and put them side by side.
I imagine on slow networks the server side rendering method gives it an edge, but 3g seems to load pages pretty speedily in my city regardless of which browser you're using so that's hardly a deal killer for me.
Maybe Obs is a troll (I really don't care, I learned not to get angry at people on the internet a long time ago) but one of the ways trolls make people look dumb is by convincing them to argue against a point that's true by adopting that point overzealously. He's hardly the only person touting Safari over Opera Mini.
Posts
Really the touch-interface and the speed (well, EDGE is still meh, but over wi-fi things are nice) are what do it for me for the browsing on the iPhone.
I believe the element that Apple actually 'stole' was the use of hierarchy in a navigation system on a mobile device. To me that sounds like a crazy patent to award anyone, but I haven't read it.
Possibly -- the screen was just plain inaccurate unless you brought out the stylus. Didn't help that everything in WinMo 6 was tiny.
I'm honestly not the biggest Apple fan, and the iPhone is far from perfect, but mobile Safari is the one thing that Apple absolutely knocked out of the park. If the Pre's web browser can come anywhere close to Safari's level of sophistication, I will be thrilled.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Plenty of other companies had better interfaces
Apple just had the first successful mp3 player, and so everyone was familiar with it.
Take the Zune interface, where you can navigate laterally in addition to horizontally...
If you can try to quantify the "unquantifiable" I'd much appreciate it. I just didn't see it myself when using an ipod touch.
Also, are you using an HTC Touch or an HTC Touch Pro, just so I know?
If you look at the Creative interface, and I think they still use it, it was essentially the same thing, and done in the same way. It did lack the scroll wheel though, Apple got that right (though I later grew away from the idea with the touch ones like my 4th Gen, inaccurate and frustrating - I much preferred the actual physical moving wheel).
It's the original HTC Touch running WinMo 6.1. Or at least I should say, it WAS an HTC Touch, as it died on my a few weeks ago. Which is why I'm very excited about the Pre, because I'm on Sprint and will likely actually get one when it's released. So yeah, I may not have been using the newest version of Opera Mobile or Windows Mobile at the time when I stopped using it, so I could certainly concede that it may have improved since.
I still doubt I could explain it well, but I suppose "responsiveness" is the best word I can use to describe why I prefer Safari of Opera or other mobile browsers. I do realize that part of that is that I'm using it on an iPod and not an iPhone, so any time I'm using it I'm always on WiFi instead of a 3G or Edge network, and that accounts for the increase in speed. It's not necessarily just that though, the interface itself is also quite responsive. The "pinch" gesture to zoom in and out is done really well, obviously for one. There were gestures on the HTC Touch, but it wasn't the same - it was more of a "do this action with your finger and then the phone will respond by doing something (and every now and then it won't). With Safari, and the iPod/iPhone in general I guess, you see the phone responding as you perform these gestures, and it feels very natural. Scrolling as well is quite smooth and responsive, for kind of the same reason. With Opera (again, the version I was using at least), you can drag the screen around scroll using that method and all, but it just feels sort of clunky. With Safari, it not only scrolls responsively as you drag the window around on the screen, but the "flicking" motion in particular always responds exactly how you would expect it to, to the point where you can predict exactly where a page will end up depending on how hard or soft you flick it around on the screen. These kind of touches make a big difference to me.
But again, it is simply a personal preference at this time, and I can certainly recognize its flaws as well (no flash, no cut-and-paste, etc). I'm not attached to it in any way, and as soon as something better comes along I'll have no problem jumping ship. For now though, I have yet to see a mobile browser that's as pleasant to use as Safari.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
I guess that's where my opinion comes from. Apple rarely ever invents anything outright (they hardly invented the wheel after all
I guess I disagree.
The scroll wheel never made any sense to me. To this day, I see it as a marketing thing ONLY
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
I agree that it could be fiddly at times, but I always thought the tendency to slightly overshoot was worth the usability advantage of being able to intuitively control your speed when scrolling through a long list. The Zune came close with its hold-to-scroll-faster behavior, but overall I thought the wheel was way better than scrolling with buttons.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
Pretty much this, Evander. I'm one of those people who said that Safari mobile is better than any other mobile browser I've used. I own an HTC Touch, and none of the browser options I've tried (IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Skyfire) have been as good as Safari. I have used a Touch Pro for a good amount of time, and I've found the browser to be pretty good, but still lacking. I could cherry pick quotes out of Dookie's post above that really represent my opinion, but I think that he's right on the money. A lot of it, I believe, is because the touch screen mechanism just isn't as good on the WinMo phones as it is on the iphone. Maybe it's just the way the page is rendered. Either way, as he said above, when I want something to happen on Safari, it happens (except for Copy-n-Paste, lolz). Even on Sprint's incredibly fast data network, dealing with a page trying to load up and choking on itself is FRUSTRATING. Not being able to properly view a page in its native form without my phone choking is FRUSTRATING. This is a problem that still afflicts WinMo phones, including the Touch Pro. Any time I've ever dealt with an 'object' on a page, which basically means every single page now as nothing uses vanilla HTML anymore, I've had a difficult experience. The more 'objects', the worse it is.
I've never really cared for scroll wheels. Even on my Wacom, I find them cumbersome. It isn't a motion that we regularly use in any other activity of our lives (running our fingers in circles), and it seems awkward.
Yes it is.
Maybe if you're a video editor, scrolling through footage? I'm struggling to come up with other times in my life when I've made that gesture. It's certainly not common.
When it related to physically changing something or turning something (a belt for the radio needle or moving the contact point for the radio frequency) it was a necessary "evil" of UI.
I remember going through a ton of this type of discussion in my computer interface class.
IF the iPod had actual analog volume and tracking control, THAT would have been impressive.
Every HTC phone I've used is perfectly responsive. 6800, 6900, Touch Pro, Touch Diamond. Opera Mobile feels a bit off, and Skyfire ran like shit on my phone, perhaps due to lack of RAM, and I can't wait to dump WinMo for the sweet sweet Pre, but really I cannot understand your issues with the touch screens or opera mini.
It's funny, I was actually thinking of a rope on a pulley.
No, you're doing it wrong just so you can do it right.
The ability to adjust options in not a bug.
Yes.
But when you can't even get something working halfway decently without messing with a bunch of options smacks of incompetence on the part of the designers, and a shift in responsibility to the user to get shit working right. Who the fuck wants that man?
Have you used this particular Opera browser?
I mean, the only setting that I changed, personally, was homepage.
Different people have different prefferences.
I have not.
If some cockjuggling thundercunt wants to spend an extra $1200 over two years for the convenience of not having to spend 20 minutes thinking about his phone so be it. Is WinMo absolutely godawful in its base design? Yes.
Is it a locked system? No. This means instead of Microsoft forcing you to use their UI, you get to do whatever the hell you want with your phone. While I appreciate the completely freedom that WinMo offers (some wonderful things have been done with it, but at its core it's still WinMo) I'm willing to give up the minor benefits for a slightly more closed and smoothly flowing platform like WebOS. I am not willing to go so far as to sign away all my rights and have a company say that it's illegal for me to do what I want with my phone, thank you very much Apple. A happy middle like Android and WebOS works for me, but Sprint has been slacking on Androidget.
Does Apple provide a nice easy to use UI? Yes, but the the sleek UI is also your prison. If something as rudimentary as copy and paste was left out of WinMo or Android you think a program wouldn't be out for it immediately? Do you think that Google or Microsoft would actively prevent such applications from running on their phone and calling you a criminal if you edit the software on your phone to be able to do that? Not that either of those companies is a pillar of morality, but at least they're not huge dicks about it.
I will say though that, at this time, I'll take the slick UI of Safari over the customization of any of the browsers on WinMo. However, it would be nice to have both, and it annoys me that I can't.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
but you'll attack it regardless?
WinMo out of the box a piece of shit? Absolutely. There's a reason that HTC slaps it with a pretty frontend, and that's just the tip of the Winberg. Unfortunately WinMo's ability to continue competing with the non-business tech consumer crowd is slowly disappearing, especially with thee introduction of WebOS and Android as moderately open platforms on the two nationwide budget carriers (hopefully soon to be more) and WinMo 7 not due out until next year at the earliest .
I guess it's nice to download shitty mobile versions of things IF you have a shitty low-dpi display like most cells have had for years, but you know, it's about a hundred times better just to be able to visit a page and be visiting the page.
iphone has lots of stupid features/lack thereof but Safari isn't one of them. Opera Mini is second best and it's a DISTANT second. Come on people, try not to let your distaste for a poster turn you into idiots...
Obs is nothing but a troll but I'm very serious when I say Opera Mini is an incredibly capable browser.
Yes, it's capable, no, it's not as good as Safari. Zooming / scrolling / changing rendered sections (something you don't have to do on Safari at all as the whole page is rendered locally) all work better on Safari, and by virtue of actually being a web browser instead of a redirecting service it's got a bit of an edge, too.
Yes, it works, I'm not arguing with you. Next to Safari it's what you want if you're going to have a mobile browser. But it's not Safari, it's not as good, and pages don't look it when you take the two programs and put them side by side.
I imagine on slow networks the server side rendering method gives it an edge, but 3g seems to load pages pretty speedily in my city regardless of which browser you're using so that's hardly a deal killer for me.
Maybe Obs is a troll (I really don't care, I learned not to get angry at people on the internet a long time ago) but one of the ways trolls make people look dumb is by convincing them to argue against a point that's true by adopting that point overzealously. He's hardly the only person touting Safari over Opera Mini.