You may be excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices, but seriously - what browser is this test unit running? Internet Explorer?
They need a better browser. They need a better user experience (judging from the reviews and videos on websites such as Engadget). Now, I’m curious to see an iPhone 4 Vs. Windows Phone 7.
[via Redmond Pie]
The iPad has no file browser. There’s no way to aggregate online services like Dropbox and MobileMe in one place by default. The iPad has no visible file structure to let users create folders, move files around, create new files in specific locations.
Still, is it enough to not come up with an app that overrides Apple’s limitations and allows you to build your own file browser? An app that is capable of collecting online services in a single interface, enabling you to download files from the internet and achieve a pretty good cloud-based workflow?
Actually, there are some apps with these features in the App Store, and I’ve tried many of them. Air Sharing HD is probably one of the best around, at least I used to believe until I stumbled upon the first release of iFiles for iPad.
Geeking out on all things security, Jeremiah Grossman details an interesting attack that could steal information stored in a web browser for use in autofill.
These fields are AutoFill’ed using data from the users personal record in the local operating system address book. Again it is important to emphasize this feature works even though a user never entered this data on any website. Also this behavior should not be confused with normal auto-complete data a Web browser may remember after its typed into a form.
All a malicious website would have to do to surreptitiously extract Address Book card data from Safari is dynamically create form text fields with the aforementioned names, probably invisibly, and then simulate A-Z keystroke events using JavaScript. When data is populated, that is AutoFill’ed, it can be accessed and sent to the attacker.
Unless you’ve been living under a giant rock for the past - well - few years, you should know that Firefox 4.0 is coming. A major new version of Mozilla’s browser with redesigned interface, new addon manager, new engine, lots of improvements and tweaks. Mozilla die-hard fans look at it as the ultimate program coming to a computer near them. We Mac users just think about how Mozilla badly screwed up with the UI on OS X in the past and wait with curious eyes for some stable version to actually ship.
Now, we have a nightly version (as usual, it’s dubbed Minefield) with the much-discussed tabs-on-top available for testing. You can also download a 64-bit enabled build for Snow Leopard.
So, how about these tabs?
So many developers have tried to build alternative browsers for the iPhone on top of Webkit. See, Apple gives you the tools to create your own customized browser, and I’m not blaming them for the attempt. I’m blaming them for the experience they failed to achieve, developing alternatives just for the sake of it. And people, the average App Store users, seem to appreciate this trend, perhaps because they’re willing to accept every single alternative some devs give them. Look at the success of Opera Mini for iPhone, and look at how bad it is when you compare it to Apple’s MobileSafari.
What I’m trying to say is, you don’t mess with MobileSafari. Sure you can try to add thousands of features, and you can also promote your app by saying that it does whatever MobileSafari doesn’t. Seriously, it’s fine. But you can’t really think someone won’t notice and eventually talk about your crap. That’s why we usually avoid to talk about these “alternative browsers” on MacStories.
Developers are now realizing that, with 2 million iPads out there, the tablet might indeed be a profitable market for “alternatives”. I won’t go into all the details, but just so you know - this thing has been the top paid iPad app for days. Is it possible to develop a decent alternative to Safari for iPad?
Let’s look for the answer in Life.
