Tagged: web browser

iOS web browsers: Why bother?

By now you’ve heard the news that Mozilla is finally in testing phase with Firefox for iOS. And you may have noticed that AdBlock (the popular desktop browser extensions) is releasing their own AdBlock Browser as well. Google has Chrome for iOS, and I believe iCab still has a heartbeat.

I have to wonder though, why bother? Until you can change the default browser on iOS; something Apple isn’t likely to allow any time soon, you WILL be using Safari at least once per day whether you want to or not. Simply because nobody is going to want to copy/paste URLs from email or text message just so they can be viewed in a browser other than mobile Safari. And let’s face it, Safari on iOS is a pretty damn good browser experience for 99% of users.

So I’m back to wondering what the ‘end-game’ is for companies that make web browsers for iOS. Why bother?

Raven: Site-specific browsing on the Mac

Raven is a site-specific web browser that allows you to be more productive by creating a dedicated browsing instance for each one of your web apps, such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, YouTube, and many more.

Raven

Raven offers site-specific browsing, putting the features of the
sites you interact with the most easy to access and use

Raven is not a standard web browser to replace Safari, Chrome or Firefox, though you easily could if you wished. Instead it focuses on improving the experience on the sites you interact with the most. For instance, clicking on the Twitter icon in the left sidebar slides open the controls for Tweets, DMs, @Replies and Search for easy access. The controls available depend on what each site offers.

Think of Raven as the Mac OS X Twitter app, only for a plethora of social and news sites. Raven offers bookmarking to Instapaper, a smart bar, history, and even a toolbar icon that loads the mobile version of the site right in the Raven browser window – so you can view the site just as you would on your iPhone.

Some of the sites that take advantage of Raven’s site-specific browsing are: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, MySpace, Quora, Linkedin, Digg, TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, CNN, New York Times, AllThingsD, The Next Web, Dribble, Instapaper, Dropbox, Hulu Plus, Flickr, Vimeo, and more.

Raven isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely a cool piece of technology worth checking out.

About The Graphic Mac

The Graphic Mac
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