in reply to Re: perlmonks iphone app
in thread perlmonks iphone app

You can pull up the web site on the iPhone. But you'll have to zoom in to ensure that you click the correct link for the log in or any other link. It's a bit aggravating having to zoom in and out on the browser to be able to read and/or click the correct links.

As for other browsers on the iPhone, you'll have to jailbreak it in order to get something else. Apple won't let you sell an app in its iTunes store if the app's functionality already exists with the default Apple software. (I believe that this is the reason why Apple blocked Google Voice from being released.) Since Apple includes the Safari browser, I don't think that they would allow another browser to be installed. Of course, I could be totally wrong.

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Re^3: perlmonks iphone app
by marto (Cardinal) on Sep 01, 2010 at 08:01 UTC

    "You can pull up the web site on the iPhone. But you'll have to zoom in to ensure that you click the correct link for the log in or any other link. It's a bit aggravating having to zoom in and out on the browser to be able to read and/or click the correct links."

    Don't you have to zoom in to most pages, given that, IMHO, most sites aren't optimised for mobile devices? <joke>Who'd have thought the Apple marketing machine would mislead us into thinking their mobile browsing experience was as smooth as shown on TV!</joke>. For me a tap of the screen zooms in (percentage zoom is configurable of course) and the page is rendered so that I can easily read the text should I need to. Clicking links/voting isn't a problem even when I'm not zoomed in.

    "As for other browsers on the iPhone, you'll have to jailbreak it in order to get something else."

    I'm sure Opera is available for the iPhone without jailbreak. For me this is another win for the Android platform. Install what you like, it's your device.

    For the record, I'm using Cyanogem mod. Heck, someone has even ported Android to the iphone.

    Update: added "without jailbreak".

      Opera-mini is available, probably because of some media/industry pressure but also because it uses a proxy in the middle and a different protocol (i.e. not HTTP/HTML) to deliver content to the client.

      It would be more correct to say that all web browsers have to use the Webkit as the rendering engine. There are actually several web browsers available, most to add better functionality like real tabs, searching on pages, an option to use Google's Mobilizer, etc. and others e.g. to provide parental controls. One I use (mainly for tabs and in-page searching) is Mercury.

      Not sure how much control developers have over displaying content, dealing with font size issues, etc. when using the Webkit APIs. Seems like most developers like to punt that stuff over to Google Mobilizer.

      Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

Re^3: perlmonks iphone app
by Argel (Prior) on Sep 01, 2010 at 19:31 UTC
    As I mentioned in 858397, the rule is that all browsers have to use the WebKit rendering engine (and the appropriate APIs, etc.). There are several browsers available on the iPhone. I think Opera Mini was approved because it's not actually HTTP between the client and their special proxy server (they developed their own protocol to send the content to Opera Mini).

    Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks