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Help In Need of a New Browser

sardonicus87

Member
Dec 16, 2014
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So, a while back I asked for browser recommendations. I ended up using Boat because it had everything I wanted.

Well, now the developer of Boat is basically non-responsive and Boat has begun crashing a lot.

I tried to do a Google search for Android browsers that was basically a comparison chart of features, but apparently, nobody has made one. Not that I can blame them, most of the browsers are Chrome rip-offs with a few unnecessary/novelty features (like "Doodles" or something).

So basically, I want a browser like Boat, but with stability. Sucks that, of all the ones I have tried, Boat is the only one that has all the features I want.

Necessary features:
• A REAL tab bar and full-screen support, not that side-list bullcrap like Chrome where you hit a button and have tiles of "tabs".
• Home page dialer/speed dial
• Doesn't crash

Strongly preferred to have features:
• Find text on page
• Open links in a new tab or in a background tab
• automatically extends and scrolls the page so that your soft-keyboard doesn't obscure the text box in which you're typing
• Quickly request desktop site and/or change your apparent device (though many sites now work around that and force you to their mobile site regardless of those settings, but a few I use often enough don't and their mobile versions are atrociously annoying)
• Ability to turn off gestures/talk/swiping menus
• Save passwords/logins

Features that would be nice but I can live without:
• Ability to change the theme/colours

Features I don't care about at all and will never use:
• Emojis
• Desktop sync (bookmarks, tabs, whatever)
• Games/mini-activities/friend-sharing-activities
• Swipe, gesture and talk features.
• Crashing all the time

I am still surprised there's aapparently not one chart that has the browsers along one axis, the features along another, and checks to tell you which browsers have what features. No real way to compare features unless you read out-dated blog posts.

Will update shortly with which browsers I tried and hated, since I need to check them all as they may have changed since I last tried them. But I can already start that list:
• Naked Browser
• Puffin
• Web Browser and Explorer by Litter Penguin (constant bombardment of adverts)
• Firefox (no true tabs, just more Chrome rip-off, no true fullscreen)
• Chrome (no true tabs, basically no options, no dialer, no fullscreen)
• UC Browser (no tab bar, no dialer, annoying default home page)
• CM browser (too loud/busy, no real tabs, tab browsing actually more annoying than cardstack)

The "Maybe Pile":
• Opera (though its tabbed browsing option [tablet layout] is ugly as sin)
• Dolphin is looking better than when they began their v11 stuff.
 
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Have you tried Firefox?
Fwiw, i use Boat and almost never experience crashes. Is there a specific thing that triggers this? Do you have flash/plug ins set to 'always on'? If so, this is likely the problem. I have it set to 'on demand' since the version of Android I'm on still (barely) supports flash.

(Android 4.1.x and up isn't officially supported by flash and is prone to cause browser crashes when loading pages containing flash elements)
 
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I have Android 5.0 on Verizon Samsung Galaxy S5 and it only recently sstarted crashing. Anything can trigger it, and I did have flash set to "on demand". Opening a link can crash it. Starting a video, stopping a video... basically anything other than browsing the Facebook in a single tab will cause it to crash lately (since the last few Android Web View updates).

I tried already uninstalling and reinstalling, did not fix the issue.

I honestly don't care if a browser "works for [you/others]" if it doesn't work for me.

But basically: no real tabs/using cardstack = instantly rejected (unless cardstack is optional and they offer a real tab bar).
 
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Dolphin.

Flash is built-in.

Real tab bar.
I actually used to use Dolphin back on version 9 HD and then hated version 10 and it kept getting worse, but I just checked it out and v11 is much better than it was the last time I checked it out. Thanks, still looking though. The UI is still a little loud/childish to me, but apparently, everyone is going this route and for me, it's like people that use Papyrus or Comic Sans font, just really gaudy and unpolished/unprofessional looking, but I guess I just have to deal with that just as I have to just deal with rampant horrible grammar on the Internet to the point that even chav's couldn't understand or decifer it if they read it...
 
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Have you pulled up the latest WebView update?

Others say that it's fixed their crashing issues in a number of apps.
I definitely have the latest update. All other browsers work except Boat. Boat has been getting worse on my Samsung Galaxy S5 (also up to date) with every update of WebView. Since WebView was updated, there's been no update to Boat, so it's weird and I haven't changed anything on my phone since then. I have restarted and everything.

Boat isn't just crashing either when this happens, it is totally locking my phone down to the point I actually have to pull the battery, as even a force restart doesn't work, and it is only Boat that does this.
 
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Check out "xScope Browser Pro - Web File"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sui.mRelease

The end of dreaded mobile CSS takeover.
1430721754221.jpg


I'm getting some Java errors but that could just be me.
 
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Dolphin doesn't look that bad. I prefer the look of the old Netscape and I'm not going to get it so I'll make the most of what's available.

BTW - Firefox is having an issue with signed extensions. FX is also deprecating HTTP, and trying to use HTTPS only for everything plus a few other changes. Complaints in the FX forums for PC browser and I suppose it's carrying over to the mobile browser. I'd leave FX alone until they straighten it out.
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/05/01/mozilla-deprecating-non-secure-http/
 
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Check out "xScope Browser Pro - Web File"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sui.mRelease

The end of dreaded mobile CSS takeover.
View attachment 86797

I'm getting some Java errors but that could just be me.
Is that on a phone or a tablet. I see from their images that they have both cardstack and tabs, just wondering if tabs are available on the phone or only on the tablet, don't want to pay $3 for nothing, you know? At first glance though, based on their images, it does look better than Dolphin to me...

Then again, it also talks a lot about ICS, KitKat, but no mention of Lollipop and hasn't been updated since 2013... that'st a tad unnerving as well.
 
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Is that on a phone or a tablet. I see from their images that they have both cardstack and tabs, just wondering if tabs are available on the phone or only on the tablet, don't want to pay $3 for nothing, you know? At first glance though, based on their images, it does look better than Dolphin to me...

Then again, it also talks a lot about ICS, KitKat, but no mention of Lollipop and hasn't been updated since 2013... that'st a tad unnerving as well.
I got it a while back and stopped using it for whatever reason, don't really remember.

Boat was my go-to browser for years but it started leaving me dissatisfied at Jellybean. But I still have sites or times where I prefer it. And Chrome for any Google site. Firefox for my PBS schedule lists. Naked Browser for this. Dolphin for that. I don't set a default, I jump around by sharing through Choose Browser if I don't like how a site responds to whatever I'm on.

1430752208166.jpg

I gave up on finding the perfect browser long ago.

And to answer your question, the xScope screen shot was made on my HTC One M8, default zoom at 2x, and default user agent set to Android lol. I don't own a tablet.

I may drop the xScope dev a line for all the good it will do.

At one time xScope was the hot thing but browser users are fickle and gravitate to the latest hot thing. Nothing else explains the rise of Chrome - it was a piece of featureless crap at launch and everyone raved about it.

Maybe the xScope dev got jaded. No idea.

It won't do everything. You have to put up with toast messages complaining about Java exceptions (probably OS version related, the same xScope didn't used to do that on the older OS - and bear in mind I'm on KitKat right now, I'll have to test later on stock Lollipop).

But I've found my solution to the annoying insistence that I can't get a desktop view on a lot of sites and that's good enough for me. :D
 
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I also never understood the popularity of Chrome. Me, I don't need a ton of browsers. I don't share pages or anything like that and don't need most features. My whole thing is that the IU is something I like and that it works. Like I use WPS Office for documents on the rate occasion I need to do something like that and it's mostly great, except it lacks the ability to automatically add paragraph indentations and a few other basic word processing necessities, but has a bunch of other pointless crap not integral to word processing or other things, but then, none of the others have those same necessary features either.

But I do know people are fickle with all sorts of crap on their phones and just love novelty. After getting used to Lollipop, there are maybe two changes I actually like but overall prefer Kitkat still. It seems any time I talk about something I don't like, lots of people come in to blame this or that or talk about totally unrelated crap to what my complaint is. Like when I complained about this single view design a lot of apps are going toward where they just put everything for an app into a single view rather than organising it by tabs aand people took that as me hating Material design, but that trend has NOTHING to do with Material. Nowhere in Material does it say to avoid using tabs or suggest putting everything in a single view. But now I am getting side-tracked...

But I do know people love flashy features more than functionality and efficiency. Seems a huge influx of idiots as well, look at the reviews of Android System WebView in the Play store. "Omg wut is this bloat u r making this of my phone I didn't ask 4 itz, y u force, this for ads, cannot delete screw u googlz".

eQ5nrKn.png


But given they love features and Chrome has basically none, I don't understand why they like it.

Really, I only had Chrome for one thing. For some reason, after the first of the recent rash of updates to System WebView, certain things stopped working. Like, on the Facebook, I can edit a comment, but not delete it. So I was using Chrome for that.

But yeah, it seems most of the browsers are basically identical, save for extra features that generally haven't anything to do with web browsing. A few are truly different, like Naked Browser which, I suppose, is good for someone with a really old phone or something. But mostly, the only difference between many of them is what kind of trendy crap extras they throw in and people are dazzled by that. Blows my mind. Like apologists for Windows 8/8.1. Yeah, maybe it is great for a tablet or phone, but not a desktop. Horrible for desktop productivity, and many recognise this and that's why they're giving you a year to get Windows 10 for free. But with Android, it seems there's a lot more of technologically unsavvy people per capita than say with a Windows machine and that apps are developed with them in mind rather than someone that's not an idiot.
 
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The vast majority of browsers are just skins for WebView.

Four that don't off the top of my head -

Firefox uses its own Gecko.

Chrome uses its own engine.

UC Browser and Opera when using cloud acceleration don't use the built-in WebView.

I pay attention to the nuts and bolts first, the eye candy last.

And your characterization of Android users as idiots is pretty much just offensive snobbery.

If Windows users are such geniuses, why are most desktops infected?

You want to talk about browsers, fine, you want to look down on people, keep it to yourself.

No one is impressed by that.

The point of advanced operating systems is to make technology accessible to everyone.

That includes everyone that just wants a working appliance as a smartphone.
 
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I didn't say Android users were idiots, just that there was an influx of people that don't understand technology as compared to times past to the Android system. I never even said Windows users weren't comprised heavily of tech unsavvy people, just that there's more tech savvy users of PC Windows per unsavvy people and seems to be a growing level of unsavvy people with Android compared to the savvy ones...

Like, there was a time when people that didn't know how to use a Smartphone went with Apple instead of Android, and Android was a haven for power users and tech savvy people, more so than today.
 
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