TUAW Tips: iPhone Safari Navigation Tricks

The iPhone offers some delightful navigation tricks in Safari. Here are a few of my favorites for you to enjoy and to use while scrolling though webpages:

Page down. When not using a zoomed-in display, double-tap towards the bottom of the screen. The page will re-center around your tap. Make sure not to tap a link!

Jump to the top. Double-tap the very top of the screen, just below the time display to pop back to the top of the page. (Thanks John C)

Zoom onto a single picture. Double-tapping images in Safari zooms them to fit your iPhone display. If the picture is linked to a URL, this can prove a little tricky but it works great for non-linked images. Double-tap again to return to the unzoomed display.

Zoom a column. You can zoom text columns as well as pictures. Double-tap on the column to fit it to the display. Double-tap again to return out of the zoom. Not only does Safari zoom block-quoted text independently of regular text but if you move your finger after the first double-tap-to-fit, it interprets the next double-tap as a re-center page command rather than a return-to-previous-zoom. Smart.

Stopping a scroll. After flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don't forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you're viewing.

Manual zoom. This is probably one of the most-advertised Safari features (along with the flip-the-phone-on-its-side-trick) but it's worth mentioning again. To zoom into a Safari page, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and move them apart. To zoom out, pinch the fingers together after starting with them apart.

Examining the URL. To peek at a link's destination, touch and hold the link for a few seconds. You can also do this with images to see if they are linked. If a link appears and you don't want to activate it, just slide your finger away until the destination text disappears.

Got some more tricks to add? Let us know in the comments.