Safari 'tab' refreshing driving me nuts

[MikeTemple]

I just got through typing a reply in here, and wanted to copy and paste a link from another Safari tab. When I switched back to the forum, the web page refreshed and lost all my edits.

Is it right that IOS 4 fixes this on the iPhone 4, because it's very frustrating!

 

[grapes911]

Is it right that IOS 4 fixes this on the iPhone 4, because it's very frustrating!

For the most part it does. Its stores the page in memory. Use enough apps, open enough web pages, etc., and it eventually has to release that memory to use it elsewhere, making the page refresh if you need it. But overall, its much improved.

 

[DannySmurf]

For the most part it does. Its stores the page in memory. Use enough apps, open enough web pages, etc., and it eventually has to release that memory to use it elsewhere, making the page refresh if you need it. But overall, its much improved.

It does have to release the memory eventually. But this could have been handled more gracefully, like saving the page to disk and reloading from there. A reparse from disk is much faster than a re-pull from the network. Other browsers handle this problem.

 

[grapes911]

It does have to release the memory eventually. But this could have been handled more gracefully, like saving the page to disk and reloading from there. A reparse from disk is much faster than a re-pull from the network. Other browsers handle this problem.

Why save it to disk? Seems like a waste. If you really waited so long that you ran out of memory, does it really mater? At least this way you get a non-outdated page.

 

[BeachChair]

I sold my iPad for this very reason. Honestly the current generation iPad looks ****ed in this regard. How is it going to handle multitasking when it can hardly hold 2-3 websites in memory?
The iPad is a good deal more starved for memory than a iPhone 3GS, probably close to as starved as a iPhone 3G.

 

[saberahul]

I sold my iPad for this very reason. Honestly the current generation iPad looks ****ed in this regard. How is it going to handle multitasking when it can hardly hold 2-3 websites in memory?
The iPad is a good deal more starved for memory than a iPhone 3GS, probably close to as starved as a iPhone 3G.

You're so wrong. Well, I suggest trying someone's iPad with iOS4 when it comes out. Until then, voila!

 

[Zerg]

FYI this has nothing or very little to do with memory and more how Safari is programmed. I didn't believe it at first but download and try Atomic Web Browser. It's pretty much what I use 95% of the time. I can have 5-10 tabs open and go back and forth through them without any refreshing.

About the only downside is the bookmarks won't sync in iTunes. They have implemented a semi-workaround where you can export your bookmarks to a file, launch the app and select something like import bookmarks, it then directs you to a url with a pin. You put in the pin, upload your bookmarks and it will pull them down into the browser. It's sorta dumb and a pain for sure but until Apple allows 3rd party browsers the ability to sync bookmarks, this is about as good as it's going to get. I'd at least give it a try. There is a lite version:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser-lite-fullscreen/id355513788?mt=8

I suspect Safari will get a rework when iOS 4 comes to the iPad later this year.

Cheers

 

[henneth]

I sold my iPad for this very reason. Honestly the current generation iPad looks ****ed in this regard. How is it going to handle multitasking when it can hardly hold 2-3 websites in memory?
The iPad is a good deal more starved for memory than a iPhone 3GS, probably close to as starved as a iPhone 3G.

Thats a pretty stupid reason to sell it. There are a few other browsers out there that allow many tabs, without refreshing them at all.

 

[nixiemaiden]

Has anyone had any problems with online shopping with this? I bought something on ebay yesterday and I think safari reloaded and reposted my data because ebay has 2 transactions like 20 seconds apart (I only hit the submit button 1 time). I'm just wondering if this might be what caused it or if something else happened.

 

[BeachChair]

Thats a pretty stupid reason to sell it. There are a few other browsers out there that allow many tabs, without refreshing them at all.

I've tried those browsers. Problem is they crash alot... because they use too much memory.

 

[BeachChair]

You're so wrong. Well, I suggest trying someone's iPad with iOS4 when it comes out. Until then, voila!

How am I wrong?

The iPhones, 3G and 3GS, have 320x480 resolution, that is 153,600 pixels.
The iPad has 1024x768, that is 786 432 pixels, or 5.12 times as many pixels.
That means whenever the iPad saves a tab or the homescreen in the framebuffer it requires about 5 times more memory.
Thats why the iPads safari reloads tabs much ofter than iPhone 3GS, and thats why there is a potential problem with multitasking where saved states and backgrounding apps would have to take up a share of the already limited free memory.

They might be able to fix that with caching on the flash storage, but so far it hasn't been a sollution they've seemed to wanna use.

 

[EssentialParado]

How am I wrong?

The iPhones, 3G and 3GS, have 320x480 resolution, that is 153,600 pixels.
The iPad has 1024x768, that is 786 432 pixels, or 5.12 times as many pixels.
That means whenever the iPad saves a tab or the homescreen in the framebuffer it requires about 5 times more memory.
Thats why the iPads safari reloads tabs much ofter than iPhone 3GS, and thats why there is a potential problem with multitasking where saved states and backgrounding apps would have to take up a share of the already limited free memory.

They might be able to fix that with caching on the flash storage, but so far it hasn't been a sollution they've seemed to wanna use.

WOW.

You realize the iPhone is viewing the exact same website the iPad is seeing, right? Unless you're looking at a mobile version of the page on the iPhone, the memory requirements for the webpages is identical between the devices.

Furthermore, iOS4 handles multitasking in the same way for Safari and other browsers as it does for games or most other frozen state apps.

 

[BeachChair]

WOW.

You realize the iPhone is viewing the exact same website the iPad is seeing, right? Unless you're looking at a mobile version of the page on the iPhone, the memory requirements for the webpages is identical between the devices.

That's not exactly how it works, first it renders the website, then it stores it in memory. A website rendered at a higher resolution takes more memory.

 

[yoavcs]

That's not exactly how it works, first it renders the website, then it stores it in memory. A website rendered at a higher resolution takes more memory.

Ummmm, let's see now, how should I phrase this. How about: NO. You are wrong.

And Safari isn't saving the tabs in the framebuffer, that's ludicrous.

Don't just throw around big words you read on the interwebs. If you don't know what you are talking about just ask.

As per the Safari problem: it is a bug in iOS 3.2 Safari's page cache which is set at 26 KB. A ridiculously small amount, and about 1/20th of what iOS 4 has on on the 3GS (on the iPhone 4 its even bigger due to more RAM).

This wasn't true for iOS 3.1, and is new to 3.2. It is a bug. On e of the few naggling iPad bugs that Apple doesn't seem interested in fixing with a point release. No idea why, the iPad is a success, it should be treated and supported as one.

 

[BeachChair]

Ummmm, let's see now, how should I phrase this. How about: NO. You are wrong.

And Safari isn't saving the tabs in the framebuffer, that's ludicrous.

Don't just throw around big words you read on the interwebs. If you don't know what you are talking about just ask.

As per the Safari problem: it is a bug in iOS 3.2 Safari's page cache which is set at 26 KB. A ridiculously small amount, and about 1/20th of what iOS 4 has on on the 3GS (on the iPhone 4 its even bigger due to more RAM).

This wasn't true for iOS 3.1, and is new to 3.2. It is a bug. On e of the few naggling iPad bugs that Apple doesn't seem interested in fixing with a point release. No idea why, the iPad is a success, it should be treated and supported as one.

Well I have my information from daringfireball.net. Where did you find out about this supposed bug?

Here is the excerpt about Mobile Safari and memory from John Grubers iPad review:

Safari------
...
There's one severe problem in Safari for iPad, though: memory crapping out. MobileSafari for iPhone has always allowed you to open up to eight pages at a time. It tries to keep them all truly open, in RAM, so that you can quickly switch between them. But when it runs out of memory it starts flushing some of the pages. It doesn't forget the URLs for those pages, and, in recent versions, it saves a static thumbnail image of the rendered page, but when you switch back to those purged pages, MobileSafari must reload the page -- thus, you must wait both for the contents of the page to download and for the page to actually render (which -- the rendering -- often takes longer than the downloading). It's very noticeable. Switching between unpurged Safari pages is instantaneous. Switching to a purged page takes as long as opening it from scratch.

Wolf Rentzsch, linking to [this complaint from Peter-Paul Koch][ppk], wrote [a brief technical overview of why Apple might have designed MobileSafari this way][wr]. (Keep in mind that iPhone OS does not use virtual memory; thus RAM is severely constrained.)

This purging problem got a lot better with the iPhone 3GS. The original iPhone and iPhone 3G only had 128 MB of RAM. The 3GS has 256. MobileSafari's ability to keep more pages in memory is probably my single favorite aspect of the 3GS.

The iPad also has 256 MB of RAM. But, in my use, iPad's Safari isn't able to keep nearly as many pages open as I can on my 3GS. In fact, sometimes it seems I can only have *one*, and every page I switch to gets completely reloaded. This is more than just annoying -- it can lead to data loss if you have unsubmitted form data sitting in an "open" iPad Safari page. I've run into this posting items to DF from the iPad -- my posting interface is a web page form. When I want to link to the current page, I invoke a bookmarklet which opens a new page with the title and URL fields of the posting form set to the title and URL of the page from which I invoked the bookmarklet. Often, though, I want to switch back to the page I'm linking to copy another URL or a bit of text to quote. Twice so far, when going back to the posting form, it's been purged and must reload from scratch -- in which case I lose anything I've already written. I never run into this problem on my iPhone 3GS when switching between just two open Safari pages.

The problem is also severe for AJAX web apps, which tend not to be designed with full page refreshes in mind.

I hope this can be improved significantly in an iPad software update, but I worry that it's endemic -- that because the iPad screen is so much larger than the iPhone's, that MobileSafari must allocate significantly more memory per page for the [framebuffers]. 256 MB of RAM simply may not be enough for MobileSafari to keep more than two or three pages in memory. If so, Apple really needs to consider some sort of caching or serialization scheme rather than completely flushing away purged pages.

 

[henneth]

I've tried those browsers. Problem is they crash alot... because they use too much memory.

I've been using atomic browser and i could count the number of crashes on one hand. At the moment I have 5 tabs open and it's fine.

Im with you on the ram. I think it cripples what could be a powerful device. The biggest beef is being on a page with lots of images, some end up being little blue boxes. Ultimate web surfing experience my ass.

 

[MRU]

New iPad 3.2.1 corrects safaris cache size finally.