Monday, April 11, 2011

Top Three Web Browser For Your Notion Ink Adam

     The Eden Browser is one of the many sore points that hinders that overall experience. The zooming and scrolling are incredibly slow to use. There isn't an easy way to search. There are a lot of alternative browsers readily available on the Android Market, so what's the problem? They're all made for phones. Below I will give you a rundown of browsers that will suit your tablet browsing experience.
Stock Android Browser (on Beast ROM)
 1. Opera Mobile 11
      This gets the top of the list for the simple reason that it is designed for use on tablets. All the controls line the top  to make everything in easy access. Flash works great. Tab switching looks nice, but it's a little slower than having your tabs always visible at the top. The settings, bookmarks, etc. all appear in a window instead of time wasting full screen. You have the option to hide the status bar if your prefer, but on Eden, the status bar is always hidden. This seems to mess with Opera making a white space appear above where the status bar should be.


2. Dolphin Browser HD
     While it is still made for a phone, it has a set of features that make it awesome for use on tablets. The interface is fairly barren on visible controls. Without hitting the menu kay you only have home, URL bar, and tabs visible. The tabs are fantastic for the large screen. Instead of having always present navigation button like Opera, Dolphin Browser has them hidden under the menu button.

     The Dolphin Browser has one feature that makes it perfectly suited for tablet use. You can change the user agent to have webpages view your device differently. As you can see in the picture below, the internet views the Adam as an iPad to make the webpages perfect for the screen size. Gmail's specialized iPad view is unlocked. Also available are the option to change the user agent to iPhone or default Android. Coming soon is the Dolphin Browser Pad that should combine custom user agents with a tablet suited UI.

3. Skyfire
     The key selling point of Skyfire is the ability to convert flash videos to HTML5 for easy mobile view-ability. This feature is all together unnecessary since the Adam has flash. Converting to HTML5 may be beneficial if you want to conserve bandwidth (or so it tells me). The UI doen't look terrible on the big screen, but it doesn't look good either.

     A lot of the buttons that are always visible are rarely used. The fifth button on the top is a quick switch for toggling between mobile and desktop view. While not as full-featured as the Dolphin Browser user agent equivalent, it is handier. Tab switching is another story. Hitting the tab switcher toggle brings up the tabs that blocks out the entire screen. Otherwise, the browsing experience isn't all that bad.
Skyfire Tab Switching
4. Firefox
     Firefox deserves a mention because it is a very good browser... on phones. On a tablet screen it just doesn't work. It looks as good blown up as the stock android browser. One advantage you would have is the ability to sync bookmarks with the desktop version.

5. Wrap-up
     What it all boils down to is the wait for Honeycomb on the Adam. Until the Eden browser improves or Honeycomb becomes available we'll just have to suffer or find alternatives.

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