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Help In Need of a New Browser

Sorry for the confusion.

But that was the whole premise of Android's early success and of Apple's. Apple was marketed as easy and Android as more freedom with greater customization.

Granted, compared to many, I am basically a novice when it comes to tech stuff, but I know enough to find what I don't know about something.

But these days, the one-click easy rooting is almost a thing of the past. There's still more freedom on the development side with apps, but that freedom has come with some costs. Like lazy devs making horrible ports for Android, making bad apps then abandoning them when they're rejected, but that's all right because there's devs that are amazing and don't give up.
 
thermoplastics said:
I just found out about a new browser today called Polarity Browser. Not sure if it will fit all of your needs, but worth a look. Seems like it is based off of Lightning Browser.
Click to expand...

Why does everyone hate real tabs/tab bars? I get it, cardstack is novel and everyone wants to jump on the new thing, but at least give us the option to use that or something else. Now, everyone just jumps instantly on the new thing and you just have to like it. Cardstack probably works great for some people, but not me.

You know, I have SO much free time now, I should probably learn coding. It's always hard though because actual coders don't want to help because that means they have more competition in an already over-saturated field and it will also be a while before I have a computer to work with and I am assuming there's still no way to code Android apps from an Android device... also, I can never find good resources. They always give really simple examples, tell you to use ____ code, but don't really explain it. It's like looking at a dictionary when I need a grammar book.

EarlyMon said:
Blocks ads and trackers - I like that.
Click to expand...

That though, does sound awesome.
 
The Polarity Browser isn't using a card stack though, yeah?

I'm assuming that you mean the Chrome/Firefox look (which I believe was originally introduced by HTC long, long ago).

If you mean the slide-out on the left, welcome to the Google ui guidelines (one version of them anyway) with the idea that you give as much screen at all times to the web page as possible. That last bit is the real goal for most every dev but at the same time, providing controls.

With some, it's tabs (that hide) at the top and a browser navbar at the bottom.

The left-right swiping for the same thing is actually a Holo design rule introduced in ICS - fwiw.

It's taken a while to see it properly implemented on browsers but Lightning and Polarity do - so at least they had a hard target.

I like Holo in my other apps - a lot.

Not sure about browsers.

Weird lol.
 
sardonicus87 said:
I actually used to use Dolphin back on version 9 HD and then hated version 10 and it kept getting worse, but I just checked it out and v11 is much better than it was the last time I checked it out. Thanks, still looking though. The UI is still a little loud/childish to me, but apparently, everyone is going this route and for me, it's like people that use Papyrus or Comic Sans font, just really gaudy and unpolished/unprofessional looking, but I guess I just have to deal with that just as I have to just deal with rampant horrible grammar on the Internet to the point that even chav's couldn't understand or decifer it if they read it...
Click to expand...

Something you might want to bare in mind, not everyone on the internet has English as their first language. :) As an English expat living in China, I'm well used to "rampant horrible grammar" :thumbsupdroid:
 
Can't say I like having to push a button or swipe a screen to get access to fundamental web navigation - back, forward, reload/stop.

And I don't like browsers telling me that reflow and Flash have been removed from Android.

I know they have.

That's why I turned to Dolphin - precisely because text reflow is built-in. And now Flash.
 
Just like Xscope, there was a great browser back in the days called RockMelt, and then it disappeared...something about getting bought by a bigger company
 
DonMaxie said:
Just like Xscope, there was a great browser back in the days called RockMelt, and then it disappeared...something about getting bought by a bigger company
Click to expand...
Yahoo.

Rockmelt had a very short existence on Android.

Billed as a social networking browser at 2010 launch, they dropped the desktop version in April 2013 in favor of a web app (based on their iPhone offering), came to Android in June, they were bought 6 weeks after that and all products removed within a week.
 
I liked the browser, I remember I had it back in 2010, it was in a way better than using Facebook...you could be reading and still be connected to FB friends
 
Well, I don't know what they call it, but the "tabs" where you have to push a button and it shows the "tabs" stacked like in the Lollipop recent apps, or shows them side-by-side.

I also hate having to swipe for things because I so often use full-sites rather than their crap mobile equivalent, so I have to side-scroll from time to time. And, though I now have a huge phone screen (Galaxy S5), my fingers are wide and I use my thumbs. I am also shakey and have diminished mmuscle control (permanent side-effects from a medication I used to be on), so I always end up accidentally swiping out menus and stuff.

But about the English first language thing: I have noticed that, at least where I go on-line, it is the native English speakers that are impossible to understand and the people that speak English as a second language are nearly perfect in their grammar (like all of my German, Sweedish and Norwegian friends).

I mean, my issues are the reason I don't use a swipe keyboard, because I don't have enough control to use them and it would take me longer to write stuff out than it does with the traditional softkeyboard. Even tapping out things in landscape with my thumbs, I still end up double pressing letters offen and missing from the shakes and stuff.

And I can see how some might benefit from that tab over-view (whether they're stacked or lined up side-by-side to scroll through them), I don't. I usually have no more than 3 tabs open anyway, and I know what those tabs are.

On a side-note, I do love how most of the browsers now give you the option to turn off swiping menus.
 
Oh, and I know it's a tad off topic, but every time I open Chrome and begin to use it, "Google Play Services" crashes for some reason ("Google Play Services has stopped...").

Maybe it's a bug caused by Verizon's alterations to Lollipop or something, but maybe someone else eexperienced this occurence off-hand?

More on-point though, does anyone else have Lollipop (stock) and use Boat? I am wondering if the issues are specific to Samsung alterations, Verizon alterations or if it just is not yet compatible with Lollipop?

I told the dev about these issues before and got a response and there was an update after that, but it didn't fix anything. Some of the other things Boat is supposed to do, I believe, that it doesn't for me (and I have the paid version):
• Remember passwords

Crap, there were others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.
 
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Go into recovery on your S5 and clear the cache.

You won't lose any data.

Two things crashing that ought not and aren't for everyone else suggests an operating system caches problem.

Android uses caches to operate - just like a browser.

Anyway try it. See if Boat starts magically working for you again.
 
EarlyMon said:
Go into recovery on your S5 and clear the cache.

You won't lose any data.

Two things crashing that ought not and aren't for everyone else suggests an operating system caches problem.

Android uses caches to operate - just like a browser.

Anyway try it. See if Boat starts magically working for you again.
Click to expand...
You mean the boot recovery?

Because "backup and restore" doesn't have any chache clearing options...

EDIT:
Cleared the cache and now I can magically delete comments on the Facebook (that wouldn't work before). I don't know if it is working again yet in other ways but, we shall see.
 
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Cleared the cache and now I can magically delete comments on the Facebook (that wouldn't work before). I don't know if it is working again yet in other ways but, we shall see.

I noticed something else... on this site (and a few others), the button to quickly scroll to the top or bottom wouldn't show and scrolling wasn't ssmooth, but now it is.

I can't believe I didn't think about that after the OTA to Lollipop ages ago.

Now I feel like a dummy. o_O
 
And now the fast scrolling is back to not working on here again and scrolling on this site specifically is not smooth like others. And a refresh of the page and fast scrolling works again.

Otherwise, seems to be working. Still doesn't remember passwords though (and the option IS on).
 
Woop, spoke too soon. Boat still crashing when I have 2-3 tabs open and still crashing with videos. And by crashing, I mean locking up my whole phone to the point even a hard reset doesn't work and I have to pull the battery. No other apps are running when this happens (at least, not in the recent apps list).

I guess the only thing that fixed was my inability to delete comments on the Facebook and others, since for some reason it wouldn't allow the pop up confirmation "Are you sure?" thing. So that's the only thing fixed by clearing the cache partition. It doesn't crash on the YouTube videos anymore, unless I have two tabs open (one on the Facebook and the other on the YouTube). I rarely use the YouTube in the browser though.

Still, back to kind-of working. However all these things worked perfectly fine before the last rash of WebView updates and work perfectly fine in the other browsers I recently tried.

Poop. o_O
 
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sardonicus87 said:
Well, I don't know what they call it, but the "tabs" where you have to push a button and it shows the "tabs" stacked like in the Lollipop recent apps, or shows them side-by-side.

I also hate having to swipe for things because I so often use full-sites rather than their crap mobile equivalent, so I have to side-scroll from time to time. And, though I now have a huge phone screen (Galaxy S5), my fingers are wide and I use my thumbs. I am also shakey and have diminished mmuscle control (permanent side-effects from a medication I used to be on), so I always end up accidentally swiping out menus and stuff.

But about the English first language thing: I have noticed that, at least where I go on-line, it is the native English speakers that are impossible to understand and the people that speak English as a second language are nearly perfect in their grammar (like all of my German, Sweedish and Norwegian friends).

I mean, my issues are the reason I don't use a swipe keyboard, because I don't have enough control to use them and it would take me longer to write stuff out than it does with the traditional softkeyboard. Even tapping out things in landscape with my thumbs, I still end up double pressing letters offen and missing from the shakes and stuff.

And I can see how some might benefit from that tab over-view (whether they're stacked or lined up side-by-side to scroll through them), I don't. I usually have no more than 3 tabs open anyway, and I know what those tabs are.

On a side-note, I do love how most of the browsers now give you the option to turn off swiping menus.
Click to expand...
*Swedish (sorry I couldn't resist lol) :D
 
I don't think it's the "popularity" of the card interface as new, as compared to how this is easier on smaller devices. And yes, your "huge" S5 is still considered in the smaller category. I have 3 Android devices right now, a 4incher, a 5.5incher, and a 7incher, each with a different interface of Chrome on the same OS version (Kitkat). Chrome changes the interface for the device based on the screen size. My Galaxy V (work phone, 4incher) uses a "list" view of tabs when pressing the tabs button on Chrome. The Note 2 (5.5 incher) uses the card stacks, while the Galaxy Tab uses an actual tab row and is closer to a real desktop interface than for phones, which is from what I gather, what you would have wanted.

The basic thing here is that while you feel your phone is huge, majority of people appears to prefer having the "easier to navigate" card interface on their phones. In which case you are in the minority.

Anyway, a cursory search for the more popular browsers I'd choose to trust appears that for the phone interface, they all shifted to either a card based tab interface, or a list based one. Seems like you either stick it out with boat, learn to love Dolphin, or choose either one of the new more popular tab interfaces.
 
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