- Safari
- You Can Make Flash Work: At Least Almost
- Social Media with the iPhone
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
You Can Make Flash Work: At Least Almost
If you really cannot live without displaying Flash video, you should take a look at the Skyfire Browser for the iPhone. This app costs $2.99 and solves the problem by converting a Flash video on a server. You then get a video back that the iPhone can play.
This does not work with all sites yet, but you can check on the provider’s server (www.bit.ly/site_check) to see whether a specific site is supported.
The Safari Function Bar
When you open the Safari app, you will see this:
When you first start Safari, the screen is still almost empty.
To demonstrate the basic functions of Safari, let’s first go to a website.
Surfing the Internet
Tap the address line at the very top with your finger. The keyboard appears, and you can now type the web address. As an example, we will go to the Apple website at www.apple.com. Enter this link and then tap Go to go there.
Enter the desired address in the address line.
If you have previously visited a website with a similar address, you will get suggestions. To accept one of these suggestions, tap it to open the corresponding page. Either way, you go to the page and will see the contents in an overview.
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You already know the address line (1). Next to it (2), you can see an input mask with which you can start a Google search directly. The main section (3) displays the website itself. With the two arrow keys (4), you can navigate between the pages you have already visited in this window, back and forward. The arrow with the little box (5) enables you to do other things with the website. (More on this later.) The book (6) takes you to your bookmarks, and at the far right (7) you can see the icon for working with several Safari windows.
Here is a tip right at the beginning that you will probably use quite often: Regardless of how far down you have scrolled on a web page, there is always a shortcut back to the top that saves all the hassle of manual scrolling upward. Simply tap the bar with the time displayed at the top of the screen. This takes you back to the top of the web page, and you can also enter a new address. You can use the same trick to display the address line again if Safari has hidden it for reasons of clarity.
Navigating Backward and Forward in Safari
In our example, the two arrow keys are not yet available and therefore grayed out. The reason is that there are not yet any other pages to which you can go back or forward. Once you have spent some time surfing web pages, it’s a different story.
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The arrow pointing to the left takes you back one page, and the arrow pointing to the right takes you forward one page. You can use the arrows to move comfortably through the entire history of your web exploration.
Do More with Web Pages
Each page you visit can be reused in various ways. You get the list of available options by tapping the arrow with the box in the Safari function bar.
These are the available options if you want to do other things with the currently active web page.
You can create a bookmark via which you can quickly access the web page again later. To read an article later, you can add it to the Reading List with Add to Reading List. Apart from the bookmarks, you can also easily retrieve a page later if you select Add to Home Screen. This creates an icon on the Home screen, which looks like an app but creates a link to the website.
This looks like an app, but it’s a link that you can put on your Home screen.
If you tap Mail Link to this Page, the Mail app opens and automatically creates a new mail containing the link. You just need to enter the e-mail address, and off the link goes.
You can also send a link via Mail.
The last two items allow you to inform the readers of your Twitter page of the link via a tweet. Right at the end you can also print the page via AirPrint.
Opening Multiple Pages with Windows and Tabs
With Safari on your iPhone, you can also work with multiple browser windows. Manage your windows by tapping the icon on the far right of the function bar.
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If you already have several open pages, you can switch between them by swiping left or right. New Page opens another browser window, and Done takes you back to the website. By the way, you can open a maximum of eight web pages at the same time. Any more than that, and you have to close one page first before you can open another one.
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You can also close a page by tapping the little x at the top left. You can delete any page. But once you have deleted the last page with any content, you will be back at an empty page.
To close a Safari window, tap the x at the top left.
Opening or Checking Links Within Web Pages
If you find a link on a web page and you do not just want to open the link, tap it and leave your finger on the screen.
Not all links are as reliable as the ones in this Wikipedia article. Sometimes it can make sense to check the link before you open it.
A new window pops up where you can see the link and also some options enabling you to choose what you want to do with it.
Now you can see the address of the link and decide what you want to do next.
Above the keys you can see where the link takes you. If you think it may be suspicious, go back by tapping Cancel. If the link seems to be fine, you can choose what you want to do with it, either Open, “Open in new page,” “Add to reading list,” or Copy.
Searching
The search mask to the right of the address line enables you to search directly via one of the three search engines Google, Bing, or Yahoo! You do not need to go to the search engine first.
Often you get suggestions even while you are entering your search terms.
The search terms are directly entered from the input mask, and the hits are displayed as soon as you tap Search.
Here are the results of your search.
You can decide which search engine you would like to use by choosing it in the Settings for Safari. In the section General, you will find the item Search Engine. Now you can choose between Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
In the Safari Settings (left), you can decide which search engine you want to work with (right).
In the Safari Settings (left), you can decide which search engine you want to work with (right).
Creating, Managing, and Going to Bookmarks
You have already come across bookmarks in the previous section. With the Do More button in the Safari function bar (that’s the icon that looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it), you can create new bookmarks.
Give the bookmark a name and decide where you want to save it.
If you want to create a bookmark, give it a name (1) and decide where it should be saved (2). This is relevant, for example, if you have sorted your bookmarks by topic into different folders. Then tap Save or Done to save your bookmark.
To navigate to a saved bookmark, tap the book icon. All bookmarks available on the iPhone are then displayed.
Here you can see the newly created bookmark. Tap it if you want to go there.
Editing Bookmarks
If you tap Edit in the bookmarks overview, you can manage your bookmarks. You can create a new folder (1), delete bookmarks via the white minus icon in the red circle (2), or change the order of the bookmarks by grabbing one bookmark at the three lines (3) and dragging it to the desired place.
If you tap a bookmark, you get to the same window as when creating a bookmark. There you can change the name and folder retrospectively if you want.
You can still change the name and place of a bookmark later.
Tap Done to save your changes.
History
The History shows you which pages you have visited in the past.
You can delete the list by tapping Clear. The arrow Bookmarks takes you back to the bookmarks.
RSS Feeds
The so-called RSS feeds are a godsend if you want to keep an eye on numerous news pages but do not want to trawl them manually for interesting news.
You can recognize an RSS feed from this symbol.
RSS feeds give you only a quick overview of what has happened since you last looked. The proper, longer news are summarized only in brief as RSS feed. This way, you can get an update of all available topics at one glance. If you want to know more about one particular news item, select it and read the article behind it.
This is the top news RSS feed of the Los Angeles Times. All news messages are summarized only in brief; if you want to know more, tap the message.
Reading List
You use bookmarks to go back to the same page, whereas the Reading List is useful for saving an article you want to read once later.
Adding Articles to the Reading List
To add an article, you are currently viewing in Safari to the Reading List, tap the Do More button (the box with the arrow pointing upward) in the center of the Safari function bar. In the menu that we have described earlier, you can then select Add to Reading List to add the article to the Reading List.
This is how you can add an article to your Reading List.
Go to Articles in Reading List
To go to the articles you have collected in your Reading List, tap the bookmark icon on the Safari function bar and choose the item Reading List in the Bookmarks menu.
Tap this area to go to the list of collected Reading List articles.
This displays the list with all the articles you have saved in the Reading List up to now. More recent articles are at the top of the list; older ones are further down.
These are the articles in your Reading List.
Above the articles, you can specify whether you want to see all messages or only those currently unread. If you want to read an article, just tap it.
To delete an article from the list, swipe right with your finger and confirm that you want to delete it. Gone!
Use the swipe gesture to remove an article from the Reading List.
Tap Done to close the Reading List.