In the days of pre-KK/4.4.x, I used a browser called XScope. It's been around for a long time. I used it for specific sites, where I allow it to remember passwords. It's slim, fast, no spying (as far as I know) and relied on Webkit/Webview.
With 4.4.x on, Google apparently removed some of the features in Webkit/Webview so that the many many browsers that rely on it can no longer 1) save passwords and 2) perform text reflow.
For further reading:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62799
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebSettings.html#setSavePassword(boolean)
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378
http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...-webviews-in-kitkat-probably-not-coming-back/
While there are many browsers with its own rendering engine and do save passwords, I also liked how XScope (and many others) DO NOT launch each page in "overview mode". Overview mode is where every time you click on the link, you're presented with the full width of the page. I would then have to zoom in to actually read the text EVERY TIME. It's very annoying and I don't understand why devs force overview with no way to disable it.
I am looking for a browser that, in 4.4.x, will remember passwords, DOES NOT force overview mode, and (a luxury) can reflow text.
I tried many, many browser, bu no joy so far (with the exception of one, see below).
Chrome - remembers passwords, but forces overview, no way to disable
Firefox - same
Opera - same (I hate how it forces to load the discovery pages)
Opera Classic - same
Dolphin - has a pw manager plug-in, but I am concerned about the privacy (along with Next Browser, UC Browser)
Web Browser (Ellen Wu) - None of the browsers below remembers passwords in KK
Habit Browser (very nice browser, it would be perfect if it remembered passwords)
Mercury Browser
Clean Mater Browser
Maxthon Web Browser
Boat Browser
Now Browser
Lighting Browser
Javelin Browser
One Browser
---and a host of others that rely on Webview. If the browser is less than a few MBs in size, you can assume it does.
I even thought about using Lastpass to fill, or its own browser. It does not fill into other browsers (except Chrome) and the built-in browser is weak.
Now then, I discovered that the TouchWiz/Samsung "Internet" browser DOES remember passwords AND allows one to disable page overview mode. It's bloated and has all the Samsung sync etc with it. It also does not work on AOSP.
Any bright ideas??
Thanks......................
2.5 years later, i'm still using xscope. i just bothered to do the upgrade to lollipop and it broke text reflowing, so i'm a sad panda looking for an xscope replacement too.
Nothing is as good as xscope... Nowadays though I use Lightning and Flynx along with DAP
Related
When I go to a page like msn.com It loads the mobil page. Is there a way to set it to load the regular page?
enter "about:debug" in the address bar,then go to setting>debug>ua string. Mine periodically resets and I have to do it again, but it works.
I have been using Dolphin browser....it works pretty good since I can set the user agent to desktop without worrying to set it again every time.
Ive been using Skyfire for at least 4 years and i think its the best mobile browser. Its extremely fast, loads full webpages, it is updated quite often and its free. I highly recommend it.
Keep in mind that this is for 3G Xooms only, but this is what I used: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1015857
I suggest everyone add to this thread so we can compile a list.
Then just bookmark the pages.
Dolphin Mini is the best browser hands down on the Xoom.You can set desktop browsing just like in Dolphin Hd..try it out
I noticed that Google has two different mobile versions of his pages. One for his default Android browser and one for the others. And the one for the others is much simpler. It's most noticeable when you try to display iGoogle. In the default browser you get fancy user interface with many features and widgets whereas in Opera Mobile 11, you get really simple HTML page with practically no settings. I set Opera to use the user agent of the default browser and suddenly I got the better mobile version too. And naturally with all functionality.
So I ask.. why Google does that? He thinks, that other browsers can't handle advanced features of his pages? Or is he simply trying to put off people from using alternative browsers? Or is there an official way turn on this better version? Because changing the user agent seems to break some other pages and even the Google search, although it looks much better and more modern, is for some reason displayed extremely wide.
I couldn't find anything about this weird behavior but maybe I just used the wrong keywords
Bump. I have wondered this too, and it forces me to use dolphin (which is essentially the default browser spiced up a bit). I like the google homepage with the default android browser because it uses my location. Withe firefox, its as if Im on a computer and is less helpful. Anyone have a solution/workaround?
Well, as I wrote before, I changed the user agent of Opera to the user agent of stock browser/Dolphin so basically Opera pretended to be stock browser and I really got the nice modern Google Homepage, including my location. However the layout was a little bit messed up, the viewport was strangely wide, so it was kind of useless. But I guess it's a problem of Opera. You could try it too in Firefox, but I don't know whether it is possible to change your user agent in mobile Firefox, maybe there is an addon for it?
Easiest way to get the stock browser user agent is to open stock browser, use Google to search "what is my user agent", go to first link and select and copy the text it displays. You can just past it then wherever you want to.
Btw. I tried Dolphin HD and I almost switched because I really liked the UI (Opera is a little bit old school I would say) but when it came to rendering real full webpages, Opera was way way faster than Dolphin. At least on my Nexus S.
I really like the Opera mobile also with the Google search from the stock android browser using the user agent. I really wish there wasn't so wide like others here have posted. Hopefully someone or Opera will come up with a fix.
The instructions found in the below post has seemed to fix all of the rendering issues I had with Opera Mobile.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1009719
I really wish that opera would fix the problem of Google search being to wide. I really like the opera browser but it is annoying when searching to have to scroll to the right in order the click the search button sometimes.
I've tested at LEAST 14 browsers and I have yet to find one that I would use exclusively.
My requirements are simple (and in no particular order):
- must be able to play flash
- must have a working adblocker
- must be able to share pages with other apps
- must be able to copy/paste text
- syncing bookmarks/passwords, etc. would be desired
- must keep open tabs INTACT when I leave the app (multitask). I don't care if the tabs reload after a certain time, but it must not lose my tabs!
That's it... but apparently, what one browser has in features, it lacks in features.
Here are some examples:
Stock browser:
Pros: plays flash, text selection works, syncs bookmarks, can share pages.
Cons: no adblocker, slow, unstable, tabs often get lost when returning back to the browser.
Firefox:
Pros: adblocker (second to none!), great interface, has session restore, syncs everything(!), can share pages, addon support.
Cons: no text handling (can't select text), no flash, fairly unstable.
Opera Mini
Pros: best tab handling if you don't leave the app for too long (I've had over 20 tabs restore for me no problem), very fast, low bandwidth consumption, text handling works, can share pages, can sync bookmarks.
Cons: doesn't display desktop versions of websites (major pain!), no flash, no adblocker.
Opera Mobile (see above, minus the great tab handling)
Maxthon
Pros: flash, sync feature (although I don't use Maxthon on PC, so it's less useful), can share pages, text handling works.
Cons: sync feature requires manually logging in each session, no adblock, often poor tab handling with multitasking.
Zirco browser
Pros: adblocker, flash (although not working right now), can share pages
Cons: no sync, poor tab handling, non-working text selection, flash not showing video only audio.
Dolphin HD
Pros: flash, text selection works, can share pages
Cons: no useful sync, no working adblock, doesn't handle tabs well with multitasking
I've tested many more, but these are the "major" ones...
Why can't I find a browser that can do the few things that I need??
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
You can remove ads by using AdFree but it requires access to root. This removes ads universally throughout the system.
zephiK said:
You can remove ads by using AdFree but it requires access to root. This removes ads universally throughout the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I've used Adfree before, but it's lacks the ability to turn off/on the adblocker at will - plus, I had issues with it blocking too well... LOL I prefer something integrated into the browser.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
hello guys, I wanna ask you about android gingerbread browser (not specifically for GB, but that runs well) that can browse and download on secure sites with troubled ssl certificates. but I maybe also gonna discuss about opera mobile a lot.
I've tried a bunch of top notch browsers, and Opera Mobile happen to be the closest to perfection.
on the first attempt most browsers fail to load the site, it just trying to load all the time. like trying to do something that they don't know how to do it.
for smarter browsers that notice the problematic certificate, it prompt an action and allow us to browse. but not with downloading. it seems like it only use the ssl-notice-and-allow intelligence to browse and left behind the downloading part. make it looks like a smart-stupid split personality for browse-download activity.
for firefox : F***ING LAG, don't bother trying.
On the other hand Opera Mobile use the intelligence for both activities. if not because of the utter crap download manager, the browser could be the best.
Opera, while developing some of their apps for android all this time, they still have no idea on how the download manager works on android. maybe they still stuck on java j2me environtment mindset.
They have NO DOWNLOAD NOTIFICATION for all of their apps. they also unaware of the android system's slaughtering for apps that running in the background. So when we downloading some files then we leave it for some while, when we go back to the apps there are 3 possibilities :
1 - the download still running good, lucky you
2 - the download interrupted and fail, this will likely to happen
3 - the apps killed and reloaded with failed download, the only special abilities that Opera apps have
The hell? How could I enjoy my multitasking device with these conditions?
any suggestions for good browser out there?
check with downloading idm from this link:
https://ssl-proxy.my-addr.org/myaddrproxy.php/http/mirror2.internetdownloadmanager.com/idman615.exe
tried apps :
uc browser
uc browser mini
dolphin browser
dolphin browser mini
maxthon browser
maxthon browser mini
miren browser
one browser
ninesky browser
Hi all,
I've been searching for a browser to use based on a few criteria. Obviously, speed is important. Also, I've realized that some browsers don't load gifs correctly, which is important since I browse reddit a lot. Battery drain was something important as well as security and privacy, ability to use bookmarks, and customizability. Flash isn't that important to me, but I didn't notice a difference in using a browser with or without flash. I'm using Zombie-pop and here are the browsers I've checked out.
Chrome. Well everyone says it's slow, but I've found it's okay if you don't tax it and load one page at a time. However, it has crashed multiple times and was fed up which led me to make this post. It doesn't load gifs correctly.
Opera - gif - no. Haven't used it too much, but was unimpressed.
CM - gif - no. Loved the fact it was so light but it felt really powerful and fast. Saved on battery a lot. I also loved that you could use dark mode which would of course save battery. You can also change the user-agent string as well if I remember correctly, which included iPad, iPhone, Android, desktop. IPad actually felt the best while browsing reddit and loading gifs become possible by pressing "play". Home content is cool, but not being able to put your bookmarks there left it to be desired, instead of selecting bookmarks.
Firefox - gif - yes. What I'm currently using. Fast. Can't port my bookmarks directly from chrome, but I'm going to try to export them on my desktop then import them to Firefox. Then I should be able to sync. Can use add-ons, but haven't tested it out yet to see if there is any slowdown.
Maxthon - gif - no. Would eat up a ton of battery, but blazing fast.
Dolphin - gif - yes. Heard it had privacy issues, does anyone know the details? Probably the most customizable. Fast. I also believe you can customize the UA-strings.
Stock Android - gif - yes. Selectable UA-strings. Android, desktop, iPhone, iPad, froyo-N1, honeycomb-xoom. Would take a couple of seconds too long to load, but would always eventually and would be fast overall. Pages looked great. Fairly customizable but since it's not being updated anymore security is a concern. Bookmarks would be available if signed into a Google account. Not sure about others.
Some of the info may be incorrect, but if anyone wants to chime in with their experience with any of the browsers mentioned or not mentioned it would be greatly appreciated.
I found Tint Browser pretty fast.