A excellent thing about modern day smartphones is that you don’t have to settle for pre-installed apps like we when had to on our old cellphones. This makes them considerably like PCs, exactly where we could usually hunt down for new applications to attempt out.
Your stock Android browser might be sufficient, but there are much better Android browsers out there, and Dolphin is one of them.
At first sight Dolphin reminds me a lot of Chrome on desktop computer systems, with its tabs and main toolbar seeking very similar. There is even that recognizable plus button on the appropriate which permits very easily opening new tabs, and a little “x” button for closing them. The only factor you can’t do is arrange them by dragging and dropping, like in Chrome, as the horizontal swiping motion is reserved for scrolling through the open tabs. This makes it usable even in a portrait mode on a reasonably cramped smartphone screen.
In Dolphin Settings, readily available from the menu, it is even attainable to configure Dolphin to open hyperlinks in new tab by default, and to open them in the background (without having switching to them quickly). New tabs also have a “speed dial”, exactly where you can add shortcuts to web internet sites you check out often.
In Dolphin HD 6., which was released just not too long ago, there is a second section on the new tab called “Webzine”, and it allows adding columns from about 150 categorized news sources. Clicking on one of the columns opens the selected news internet site in a nifty “magazine” view for effortless flipping through and reading.
This view displays four titles per page with a short description in a distinctively magazine-like font, and of course the article image as nicely as a subtle color coding for each and every title. Instead of scrolling by way of the titles this view enables flipping through them each horizontally and vertically. The initial of these four-title pages has an exciting green bar on leading which says “drag to refresh” and points an arrow downward. In other words, refreshing the titles is a matter of dragging the page down.
The bottom of the webzine view shows a button to bring up the tabs so you can switch to other tabs (which could have their personal webzine views or common sites loaded), and a close button that closes the webzine tab altogether.
I’m very impressed with this, as it enables simple and clutter free browsing of latest news on a smartphone, fairly much removing any need for specialized news reader apps like Pulse. There’s just one particular complaint I have with regards to the list of news sources to add to a webzine column. The list is fairly large, but there is no way to jump to a specific category, and has to be scrolled by means of each time. A basic category menu with sources listed within them instead of all on a single page might help here.
One more great feature of Dolphin is the toolbar, and perhaps the greatest thing about it is that it truly is not one thing that permanently takes up screen actual estate when enabled, and isn’t even just a menu to be brought up at a click of some sort of a button. Rather it sits hidden on the right edge of the screen, and shows up with a swiping motion from that edge. The toolbar contains a full-screen button on top rated which hides the tabs and address bar, and a windows button on the bottom which shows all at the moment open tabs in a nice overlay view permitting you to close or zoom to either one particular.
Most intriguingly, the toolbar reveals an additional wonderful Dolphin function with its Add Ons button. Yep, just like Chrome and Firefox on the desktop, Dolphin supports Add Ons, and there’s a quantity of them to pick from. Clicking the Add Ons button brings up a list of Add Ons, as nicely as Themes, and clicking on a download button lands you on an Android Marketplace page from where the Add On or a Theme can be installed as if a regular Android app. When installed, the Add On shows up as a new button on the toolbar!
Speaking of themes, only 4 are listed so far for the HD version of dolphin blue, purple, red and orange. Take your pick or stick with the default one particular, which still looks great.
Moving to the left edge of the screen, we have one thing else “hiding”. A swipe from the left edge reveals a speedy access pane with bookmarks, history and most visited websites. A fast access button additional shows hyperlinks to settings, add ons, themes and gestures. Besides the Speedy Access button there is the Search button, and an Add Bookmark button (a star with a plus icon) which displays an Add Bookmark dialog. This dialog reminds a lot of what I’m utilised to seeing in Chrome and Firefox. You can set the bookmark name, adjust its URL, pick which folder to put it in, and opt to put it in a speed dial on new tabs.
Gestures help is pretty properly completed as nicely. There is subtle round hand button in the bottom left corner which when clicked shows a darker overlay on which you can draw a gesture. Gestures can be viewed and configured from the Gestures screen linked to from the above talked about Rapid Access menu. Every single gesture can be customized, and the gesture button can be put on either bottom left or bottom correct, or it can be hidden altogether if you do not want to use them.
I talked about Dolphin settings above, but it is worth emphasizing just how considerably of it can be configured. Right here is some of what you can set up in Dolphin:
- Dolphin’s User Agent
- Volume button behavior
- Avoid display from dimming when Dolphin is running
- Show a bookmarks bar on new tabs
- Conserve cache to an SD card
- Adjust text size and encoding
- Enable or disable javascript or plugins
- Allow browsing with out background
- Some privacy and security settings (accept cookies, don’t forget form information and passwords, allow place, show warnings)
- Set download directory
The entire browser can also be backed up and restored from an earlier back up, and bookmarks can be imported from another browser on the device.
All of this comes together to form a mobile browser that doesn’t appear to lack significantly of something compared to its desktop counter parts, giving you the energy and flexibility of a desktop browser on a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet. This could have numerous anticipate clutter or overall performance problems, but this does not seem to be the case with Dolphin. Nothing at all gets in the way, but everything is at your finger ideas.
Definitely worth a try if you own an Android smartphone or a tablet. You can download it at the Dolphin Browser internet website.
