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iPad Safari experience not good

Y

yoavcs

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 7, 2004
220
96
Israel
OK, let's get it out there. The iPad web browsing experience is sub-par. And it's because of Safari.

The main reasons are twofold:

1- there is a serious bug with the page cache in iOS Safari 3.2 (it's set at a miserly 26 KB, yes K) - which means if you ever open more than one page at a time, returning to the previous page will almost invariably cause a time-wasting refresh and page re-load. I honestly have no idea how Apple can refrain from posting a 3.2.1 just to fix this extremely annoying issue.

2- there is no way to open a page in a new tab in the background. So, if you are perusing a news site and want to mark 4-5 articles to open in separate pages, well, you'll need to go thru the whole gratuitous page opening animation every freaking time. And, with the aforementioned craptastic page cache, returning to your original page will more than likely cause a refresh.

It's annoying, and it makes the surfing experience so bad I've stopped using my iPad for surfing.

Yes, I know that there are other browsers out there I can use. They are so fugly I have a heard time bringing myself to do that... Easier to just use my laptop.

Seriously Apple, just release a patch. Even if it isn't in your pre-planned release cycle. Just do it!
 
1) That does sound very annoying. I wonder if it's due to the relatively small system RAM on the device?

2) This is annoying on the iPhone too.
 
Because its faster to scroll thru the list of items on macrumors.com, for instance, and open 4-5 interesting stories in the background before going on to read them.

Especially since with the iPad's non-existant page cache, hitting Back to return to the homepage to go and find the next story forces an annoying refresh/re-load of the page and wastes time. Computers are meant to wait for humans, not the other way around, and it quickly gets annoying.
 
To the OP, you are EXACTLY right about everything. I still love my iPad, but for the kind of forum browsing you mention, I use Atomic Browser and it works great. Still, I really wish Safari would get it together-- that page animation thing carried over from the iPhone is completely unnecessary in the larger screen.

FEIW, the iPhone 4 doesn't exhibit any of this behavior, so fortunately we'll be OK when the OS update arrives in the fall.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
Why do you have to open 4-5 tabs? Just click a link, read the story, and click on back.
Click to expand...

It depends on what you are doing and your preferences.

On my desktop, I usually have three or four tabs open at a time. But when doing certain photographic research of an adult nature, I have had up to 80 open at a time.

On the iPad, it is not unusual that I would have 4-6 open at a time, and I find that it can handle this without any problems. For intense picture browsing, I would use a browser with real tabs, like PERFECT, iCab or Atomic. Those can do background tabs as well.
 
It's not that big of a deal really. Safari is completely functional with little delay when opening pages. Boycott, sell your iPad, and buy a laptop. Problem solved.
 
antiprotest said:
It depends on what you are doing and your preferences.
Click to expand...
I frequently travel where I lose any sort of signal (in the deep darky depths of a tunnel, for instance), and it would be nice to be able to open a few pages and go back to read them after the signal is dropped. Going to a previous window just to see its content vanish makes me want to beat my head against the iPad.

I'll check out other browsers.
 
yoavcs said:
OK, let's get it out there. The iPad web browsing experience is sub-par. And it's because of Safari.

The main reasons are twofold:

1- there is a serious bug with the page cache in iOS Safari 3.2 (it's set at a miserly 26 KB, yes K) - which means if you ever open more than one page at a time, returning to the previous page will almost invariably cause a time-wasting refresh and page re-load. I honestly have no idea how Apple can refrain from posting a 3.2.1 just to fix this extremely annoying issue.

2- there is no way to open a page in a new tab in the background. So, if you are perusing a news site and want to mark 4-5 articles to open in separate pages, well, you'll need to go thru the whole gratuitous page opening animation every freaking time. And, with the aforementioned craptastic page cache, returning to your original page will more than likely cause a refresh.

It's annoying, and it makes the surfing experience so bad I've stopped using my iPad for surfing.

Yes, I know that there are other browsers out there I can use. They are so fugly I have a heard time bringing myself to do that... Easier to just use my laptop.

Seriously Apple, just release a patch. Even if it isn't in your pre-planned release cycle. Just do it!
Click to expand...

If other browsers are out of the question and your iPad is Jailbroken, you can try this...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/913055/
 
cmvsm said:
It's not that big of a deal really. Safari is completely functional with little delay when opening pages. Boycott, sell your iPad, and buy a laptop. Problem solved.
Click to expand...

Yes, yes it is that big of a deal. It is annoying and time-consuming.

As per the boycott suggestion: do you always over-react?

You know, it's ok to say Apple messes up sometimes but you still like their product more than others. Try it, it's liberating.
 
yoavcs said:
1- there is a serious bug with the page cache in iOS Safari 3.2 (it's set at a miserly 26 KB, yes K) - which means if you ever open more than one page at a time, returning to the previous page will almost invariably cause a time-wasting refresh and page re-load. I honestly have no idea how Apple can refrain from posting a 3.2.1 just to fix this extremely annoying issue.
Click to expand...

Finally the mystery is explained. I never understood why it reloaded pages so frequently. I'm equally frustrated at Apple's refusal to release a firmware update for the iPad after 3 months.
 
I too was frustrated with the reloading. Try The Atomic Browser app. It has tabbed browsing, bookmark bar, and doesn't have the annoying refresh issue. Behaves like a desktop browser, with lots of customization options.

It's my favorite app. $0.99

No, I'm not related to the developer. Just like the app.
 
BruiserBear said:
Finally the mystery is explained. I never understood why it reloaded pages so frequently. I'm equally frustrated at Apple's refusal to release a firmware update for the iPad after 3 months.
Click to expand...

The page cache is unlikely to have anything to do with how frequently Safari reloads pages when swapping between windows. The page cache is used so that Safari doesn't have to redownload content when you load pages from a web-site that you have already visited.

While Safari's caching and memory usage could be improved I haven't found it to be a deal breaker. In actual fact web browsing is easily my number one use for my iPad.
 
I also find the safari browser slightly annoying, I've tried a few other browsers and think that icab is probably the closest you can get to a desktop browsing experience on the iPad, I also love the fact that I can download YouTube videos directly to the iPad for offline viewing.

( just install the video download module )

Icab does feel slightly slower than safari though, hopefully an update will speed it up!
 
johnniewalker said:
?..I've tried a few other browsers and think that icab is probably the closest you can get to a desktop browsing experience on the iPad, I also love the fact that I can download YouTube videos directly to the iPad for offline viewing.

( just install the video download module )

Icab does feel slightly slower than safari though, hopefully an update will speed it up!
Click to expand...

I've switched to iCab also. I agree that it feels most like a desktop/laptop browser among the alternatives available (Atomic, Perfect, et al). The ability to download files directly is welcome. My main niggles are that the "close tab" buttons seem hard to hit precisely, and the "Increase text size" control is on drugs or something.

I haven't noticed the speed issue. They're all built on WebKit, aren't they?
 
Looks interesting, I'll give it a try.

And no, my iPad isn't jailbroken.

I know I can fix these issues by hacking it, I just prefer Apple come thru and support the product they sold me.
 
not likely

The Catalyst said:
Atomic Browser, problem solved.

Would absolutely love to see a Firefox app made someday.
Click to expand...

I would also like Firefox but it's not likely any time soon. From Mozilla Wiki:

We have no plans to release Firefox for iPhone/iPad/iPod. The iPhone SDK Agreement requires browsers to use Apple's own JavaScript engine, or none at all (like Opera Mini, which downloads pre-rendered pages from Opera's servers and cannot run JavaScript code on the iPhone). Because of this, we have no supported way to distribute Firefox's rendering and JavaScript engine to iPhone users.​
 
blackNBUK said:
The page cache is unlikely to have anything to do with how frequently Safari reloads pages when swapping between windows. The page cache is used so that Safari doesn't have to redownload content when you load pages from a web-site that you have already visited.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about.
 
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