Android Web Browser Recommendations?

I have found that it is almost impossible for me to use Chrome intuitively on my Samsung Galaxy Note II.  The problem is that when I am scrolling around with my finger, Chrome almost always closes my browser window because it mistakes the scroll as a flick intended to shut down that window.  This has become entirely too common, and I can find no settings to disable this “feature” bug or even to adjust the speed required of a flick.

Hell, I want the flick to scroll my page (a long way) and this is counter intuitive to the way I use my mobile devices.  I would think that it would be counter intuitive to anyone, since this is exactly how we use our browsers on a computer when we flick the mouse wheel (or touch device) to scroll way down a long page.  It can’t be just my problem.

C’MON, GOOGLE!  Get with it.  To have to find the same page all the time is a pain in the ass and a waste of time.  I know how to get rid of a window.  Maybe you should bone-up on how users use their devices.  Really!

Anyways, I really need to find a decent browser that won’t exhibit the same misguided disrupting user experience.  I have tried many browsers, and if it weren’t for this vital flaw in Chrome I would say that it is the best browser out there.  But, this one thing upsets my user experience constantly, and makes using my phone extremely hard (when it obviously should not be).

So far, I have tried the following browsers:

• FireFox
• Dolphin Browser
• Opera Mini
• Skyfire
• One Browser
• UC Browser
• Plus, the standard “Internet” browser that the Galaxy Note II is shipped with.

For some reason or another, each of these has fallen way short of the mark of being a good browser.  Most often, the singular reason that it didn’t work for me is that it didn’t work reliably on my mobile device.  And I need it to work on a couple cheap tablets and my old Droid X as well, so that I can be in familiar territory across all devices.  Plus, I have to eliminate crap software because otherwise my cheap devices get bogged down and don’t run well (I can really only do a few things, one at a time, on the slower/cheaper devices, so that they wind-up dedicated to only a couple of tasks because they have little usable memory and therefore I can’t install much on them).

My biggest problem is that no browser works reliably on any device, much less across all of my devices.  The Droid X and my 7″ tablet only has a single core 1GHz processor while all of my other cheap tablets have at least a 2 core processor.

I use my mobile browser a great deal no matter which device I am on, though.  So it is essential to the operation of any mobile hand held unit that I will utilize.  And I am often inputting information on forms, so it should definitely support ‘https://’ (secure hypertext transfer protocol) connections and Secure Socket Layer (SSL)  security certificates, warning me if there are any issues with any of the certificates.  But above all, it has to be reliable and Chrome Browser just isn’t because I am constantly losing input data when I just want to scroll a bit farther down to the next screenful of the web page presentation.

So, my obvious question is that I would like to know form others what is the best all around web browser for multiple hand held mobile devices and tablets that is reliable?

Why FF4 is so Slow

After Twittering that FireFox 4 was incredibly slow I was met with disbelief on Twitter and elsewhere that I mentioned it.  I was told how fast FF4 is, now.

I seriously do not like FireFox because it was so pathetically slow and because it ignores good user interface experience strategies.  I was actually baffled how anyone would think that the thing was any faster, as it was so slow that it nearly crashed my Asus EeePC netbook.

Well, I finally fired-up that little Windows 7 netbook again yesterday and discovered what the problem is.  FF4 is allowing multiple and simultaneous video streams to run all at once.  What?  C’MON MAN!  Who the hell designs anything with multiple active video streams on the same page?

To further complicate this issue, FireFox 4 is allowing these simultaneous video streams to run even though the page it is loading isn’t active.  Huh?  C’MON MAN!  That is uncalled for.

Why would anyone want to load multiple pages at the same time, you may ask?  Why not?  If you are loading a page from an African web host (which have notoriously slow connections), you may load another website in another tab while you are waiting for the African website to load over seemingly slow dial-up speeds.

This isn’t even close to being every case.  I am a webmaster, a hostmaster and a web designer.  As a part of my daily duties I like to insure that my sites, as well as my client’s sites, are loading as expected each day.  So my “Home” page button is a collection of all the sites I have to check.  I need to ensure that the various hosting solutions I am offering are performing well, that my websites are loading quickly and correctly, that my sites have not been hacked, that the system is working correctly for myself & my clientel.

As it happens, a variety of those websites each have video on them, and as a part of the marketing it loads and plays by default.  Anyone may pause the play.  And until FF4, only one of these sites were streaming video when the web page they reside on wasn’t active (in focus).

But FireFox 4 has changed all that.  And because FF4 is loading all these different video streams in the background, the browser slows to a crawl.  As I press buttons, maybe something will happen, eventually.  The user interface is nearly useless.  The multiple videos that are playing are completely broken-up as the system races to deliver all the data, including those out-of-focus video streams on tabs that aren’t even viewable.  And it runs every single video stream as if they all needed to be run at the same time.

C’MON MAN!

As designers we can do much better jobs of designing apps that work.  The user is robbed of any ability to navigate.  The video stream is corrupted, the user experience is destroyed through excessive stupidity in implementation.

C’MON MOZILLA!  Get your head out of its ass.

Browser Address Bar Hijacking? -Not! Or IS it?

I love FireFox.  It works much quicker than anything else and is much more reliable.  And there are all those neat little plug-in add-ons that really increase its convenience, versatility & effectiveness.  There are many great and useful little add-ons that I have used reliably and loyally. Until now, when I just noticed that something has hijacked my browser’s address bar!

It must be one of those great little FF add-ons that has hijacked my FireFox browser’s address bar, and I find that extremely annoying and a bit troublesome.  Especially since I have now uninstalled every single add-on that I have ever installed, including things like the Norton security toolbar, except for the few web designer/developer add-ons that I have found to be trusted tools.  Still, the error persists.

Or is it MY MISTAKE?  I bet it is.  Yup, it is.  Heck, the same thing happens in IE.

What is happening is that I am entering a typo when I search and I am getting Search.com results for my typo.  What is the typo?  Any name, with an extra dot com.

For instance, let’s say that you are at your home page.  Then you decide to go somewhere else, but instead of following a link on your home page or selecting a bookmark from the menu, you know the address and so you use the address bar.  Let’s just say that your home page is a dot com (.com) tld (Top Level Domain).  So in order to save typing, you just select the sometextstring in http://www.sometextstring.com/ and with that text selected, you simply start typing in the domain’s actual name where you want to visit.  But, if you also type in the extension of .com out of habit, you wind-up with the address of  http://www.foosite.com.com/.

Although http://www.foosite.com.com/ is very obviously a typo domain, c|net was smart enough to grab the domain.  So now they get all this typo traffic,  which is significant.  So obviously this is what confused me, because then c|net uses the domain at search.com to interpret the referring URL into a search term, and it looks like some search engine has hyjacked my browser address bar via some toolbar or plug-in.  So I went and uninstalled nearly all of them.

But c|net doesn’t mention any of this on their Search.com site (that I can tell in my search, using their own engine).    Instead, they seem to blame this deliberate action on a malicious software, toolbar or add-on.  VERY DECEPTIVE, c|net.  This lack of honesty and these type of deceptive business practices is exactly what I hate about corporations.  It is not immoral to do this, it is actually smart.  But if you are hassling us by deceiving us as we land there and blaming other crap over the stunt you pulled on us, you are quite simply railroading us with lies, c|net.

One has to wonder why “com” was not a reserved word in the first place, like domain (you can not register “domain” in any tld or country code domain extension).  There are simply a few words that are reserved because of such mistakes on their authority or perceived use.  Why wasn’t “com” one of those, this all seems perfectly ridiculous to have overlooked it.

One also has to wonder why c|net, usually a pretty smart cookie, can’t treat it’s visitors and patrons with any sort of respect.  I had nothing but admiration for them before now.  Now it sticks as a craw in my butt that they cannot treat me with respect and offer me the very url I am seeking.  Instead, they offer advertiser crap that I don’t want and has nothing to do with the original intended URL.  Search engines are supposed to be helpful utilities, not deceptive ad engines.  Clearly, they are making gobs on the traffic they are getting, but they could make a great deal more by treating us respectfully and honoring our intentions, which is exactly what a real search engine does.

Where is the ethics department at c|net now, in the toilet?  Don’t they understand what is considered ill-will can be hurtful to them as well as their patrons?

I am absolutely astonished that c|net has stooped so low.  Not because they did this, but because they hid it and were not honest, open and forthright about it.  They could have been seen as saints, and instead they are seen as thieves and scum spammers.

Grow up and get real, c|net.