Best Tablet Browser
- Thread starter cisfast
- Start date
jgumphress
Senior Member
- Sep 6, 2011
- 295
- 31
Is anyone using the Google Chrome Beta browser? I like the look of it, more like a PC. Although it still needs some fine tuning. Appears to be a little unstable at times. But it is a beta and a work in progress so I can't fault them. It is Google's browser on Google's Android so I believe they will have a great browser in the end.
I use the Chrome browser for editing posts in these forums. It handles the text edit windows better than any browser I have used on Android -- i.e., it never loses tracking between screen taps and cursor postion. Other than that, it provides nearly the same functionality as the stock browser, but without about:debug support (I have not been able to get that to work as it does on the stock browser). It does support a feature allowing you to send pages from the desktop Chrome browsers to the mobile Android Chrome beta. Neat gimmick, but I don't see the value since I can just put in the URL and get the same with any browser. Maybe I misunderstood the feature.
Dolphin still provides the best desktop like experience though. I have not seen any other browser even come close. If it didn't crash so often, it would be perfect.
Dolphin still provides the best desktop like experience though. I have not seen any other browser even come close. If it didn't crash so often, it would be perfect.
Douvie
Senior Member
- Jun 10, 2011
- 1,030
- 71
Going back to when I first got my tablet - I tried GOOGLE CHROME and firefox for ANDROID. I found both browsers sticky - sorry for the choice of words. I went back to the stock browser and put up with it ever since. I haven't tried others and now with flash not available for the other browsers I'm sticking with the stock browser.
I agree with you about Chrome, and never tried Firefox after reading the reviews. I use Firefox on on PCs only. Dolphin can be a problem at times also. Note that Flash does work with Dolphin though.
The stock browser tends to be my first choice for quick browsing because it is also the fastest that I have tried. They made it a little faster than it was in HC. Over the past week or so I've also found that it is the most stable that I've used on ICS. As I've mentioned before, it does waste CPU in the background under certain conditions, but not as much as Dolphin does.
Chrome does not typically eat as much CPU while in the background, but I have seen it crash more lately. At one point while I was using it, it apparently was responsible for slowing the system to a crawl, probably spinning on one or both cores. The tablet soon became completely unresponsive to pad input, and finally just crashed. Until that issue with Chrome, I had not yet seen an app do that to my a500. I'd had some apps slow the system down significantly, using upwards of 90% CPU while in the background, but never escalating to a system crash. I've been a little more careful with Chrome Beta since then. And what's up with that laggy blue/cyan background you see when you scroll down the page in Chrome Beta? I thought there was something wrong with the tablet for a second -- visions of Windows bluescreens. To be fair though, it does clearly carry "Beta" in the name.
I use Dolphin if I need more consistent "desktop" behavior though, and if I encounter sites where I need to change the User-Agent string (rare). I use Chrome Beta at this point only because it seems to work much better with edit boxes. I have not looked into trying to fix the text editing quirks I see for Dolphin and the stock browser.
Both Dolphin and Chrome Beta hang and crash more often than I would prefer, but are still useful at times.
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frapshake
Senior Member
- Apr 22, 2011
- 244
- 35
I've been using Dolphin HD pretty much since I got my very first tablet two years ago and I've always loved it even though it wasn't perfect, but it is really becoming a pain and disappointment to me lately, and I find myself using the stock browser more and more. There seems to be some incompatibilities with ICS. I have never been able to watch youtube videos full screen with Dolphin, and I always was able to before. Crashes I've never had before. Also, I've had some slow downs since ICS and when Mrhelper suggested installing Watchdog, it has alerted me several times that Dolphin was using more cpu resources than it should, and I didn't even have lots of tabs open. I've tried most other browsers in the past and wasn't impressed, so guess I'll go back to stock until Dolphin brings out an update to fix the most annoying problems.
I hear that! I have a hard time not using Dolphin though. There are some sites that just don't work as well with the stock browser as with Dolphin. I didn't even notice the youtube problem you mention because I always select the youtube app to watch youtube vids, which always seems very crisp and clean.
Dolphin and Chrome both crash more than the stock browser, but I did actually see the stock browser crash on me today also. I too notice that this seems to be more frequent with ICS. That's not based on any objective evidence or analysis though, just a seat of the pants suspicion really. I have been using the tablet for more diverse tasks since the ICS update, so for me personally, some of what I'm seeing may simply be exagerrated by changes in my own behavior, and possibly not directly related to the OS change.
It's actually very easy to avoid the Dolphin background CPU usage issue. Keep in mind that Watchdog by design only alerts on background processes. The alerts you are seeing occur when you switch to another app without closing down all active tabs in the browser. The browser apparently keeps doing some form of (pointless) work on open tabs in the background, and wastes CPU. I have not taken time to pin it down more, but I suspect it happens more often when the open pages have certain types of active/dynamic content. The stock browser does this also, but seems to use a bit less CPU in the process, but it does waste CPU also. Chrome Beta does not appear to do this, but it has its own quirks, and is otherwise generally not much different than the stock browser for typical browsing.
To prevent the Dolphin/stock browser background CPU usage problem, just close tabs and exit when done. If you park either browser for a while with tabs open, Watchdog may remind you if you don't get back in a short time.
Note that the stock browser tends to hide beneath the default Watchdog 40% alert threshold by wasting closer to 30% CPU, where Dolphin tends to hit 40% more often, so the symtoms in the stock browser are a bit lighter, and are less likely to result in alerts.
Again, this problem is with background process CPU consumption, and that's important because it can visibly slow foreground operations, making the GUI less responsive, etc. On a GUI-centric system like a tablet, you want as much CPU available as possible to instantly service the user taps, slides, etc., and permit the fancy graphics operations to keep up -- while concurrently doing some useful work for the active app.
Douvie
Senior Member
- Jun 10, 2011
- 1,030
- 71
What the new version number Icebike?
Firefox BETA in the market
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox_beta
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2
frapshake
Senior Member
- Apr 22, 2011
- 244
- 35
Mrhelper, I have a hard time not using Dolphin too, because it's been my "go to" browser for so long and to me, it worked much better than all the others I've tried, and I've tried most of the free ones, and the most popular ones like Opera, Opera Mini, and Skyfire more than once and always came back to Dolphin. But it seems to me, with each of the numerous updates to Dolphin HD, and the ICS update, things have gone wrong with my old friend and the stock browser has become more reliable for me now.
You gave good advice (thanks), and I've read your comments before about closing tabs down in Dolphin, and I was sure to do that most of the time unless I thought I would be going right back to to the webpage I was looking at, but if I waited too long, Watchdog let me know Dolphin was misbehaving. Very annoying to have to close all tabs. I didn't have to do that before ICS and it's one of the reasons I loved Dolphin.
You mentioned watching youtube videos with the youtube app, I am doing that now since Dolphin always froze my tablet whenever I tried to go full screen. I actually prefer watching them with the app now because it works great and they do seem to look better.
I'll keep Dolphin around in case I need it and hope another update comes out soon.
You gave good advice (thanks), and I've read your comments before about closing tabs down in Dolphin, and I was sure to do that most of the time unless I thought I would be going right back to to the webpage I was looking at, but if I waited too long, Watchdog let me know Dolphin was misbehaving. Very annoying to have to close all tabs. I didn't have to do that before ICS and it's one of the reasons I loved Dolphin.
You mentioned watching youtube videos with the youtube app, I am doing that now since Dolphin always froze my tablet whenever I tried to go full screen. I actually prefer watching them with the app now because it works great and they do seem to look better.
I'll keep Dolphin around in case I need it and hope another update comes out soon.
frapshake
Senior Member
- Apr 22, 2011
- 244
- 35
Thanks. I did try this last night and it wasn't for me. I watch a lot of youtube vids (not the stupid brainless ones) and one of the main features of a browser I want to have is the ability to play any youtube video, and Firefox Beta failed miserably in that test because if it won't do that, then it won't play vids on websites either. I don't care what anyone else says, I love my Flash and my browsers have to be able to handle it. That's why I never tried Chrome. But thanks anyway. It was worth a try.
