Grazing is, in my opinion, the best alternative web browser for iPad which I reviewed here back in September. By combining a fast engine with a polished UI and a minimal (yet powerful) feature set, the developers of Grazing managed to release the finest example of what it’s possible to do with a 3rd party web browser on the tablet.

Today Grazing for iPad gets even better with a 1.1 updated aimed at improving overall performances and introducing a couple of new features highly requested by early adopters of the app. In the Settings, you can now turn on Ad-blocking, which works on domain basis and you can enable or disable at any given time. Also in the Settings, a TV Out option that allows you automatically output web pages when the iPad is attached to an external monitor or TV.

Another new feature is the sharing menu based on the popular Sharekit library: with a tap on a button in the toolbar, you’ll be able to share links on a plethora of social networks and online services such as Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, ReadItLater and many others. You can activate sharing both from the action popover or a link’s contextual menu.

The app feels faster and smoother, but I noticed a few issues with iOS 4.2 on my iPad. Perhaps the developers didn’t have time to test the app against 4.2, so we’ll likely see an OS compatibility update coming in the next weeks.

Available at $1.99 in the App Store, Grazing is a great app that keeps on getting better but needs one more update work smoothly on iOS 4.2 as well. Full changelog below.

What’s New in Version 1.1.0.4

Features:

- Ad Blocking - hostname-based ad blocking to improve performance, reduce memory load, and declutter web pages. Ad blocking can be enabled/disabled in the settings.

- Sharing - Grazing now includes the Sharekit library, which allows advanced sharing with Facebook, Twitter, ReadItLater, Instapaper, and a lot of other services. Sharing can be done from the Action menu or in the context menu for a link.

- TV Out - Web pages will be output automatically when iPad is attached to a monitor or TV.

Tweaks:

- Smoother scrolling and overall performance and memory handling improvements.
- Most settings are now accessed from the Actions menu in the application itself (instead of the iPad settings application).
- Memory Warnings can now be disabled from the settings.

- You can now access the Thumbnail View with a 4-finger tap on the web page.
- “New Tab” button added to thumbnail view.

- Tabs for links will open next to their parent tab to preserve context. (This can be disabled with the “Open New Tab Next To Parent Tab” setting.)

- Url scheme “grazing://” will open in Grazing on the iPad. See website for details on an “Open in Grazing” bookmarklet for Safari.

- App Store and iTunes applications can be launched from a contextual button when accessing appropriate sites. (App Store links will no longer throw you to the App Store immediately.)

- Typing immediately after tapping the URL bar will replace the current URL; if you’d like to edit the current URL, tap it a second time.

- Help button added to Action menu.

- Status bar at the bottom of the browser has been replaced with more visible status notifications.

Fixes:

- Touching the status bar should now consistently scroll to the top of the page.
- Email and bookmark features should now react appropriately to certain rotations.
- Assorted bugfixes and housekeeping.