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Mobile Safari in iOS 8 supports Animated PNGs
MacRumors is reporting that mobile Safari in iOS 8 includes support for Animated PNGs (APNG). What's that you say? You thought animated GIFs were the only game in town? Well, they really are, but who's to say how animated PNGs might fare in the future given that they offer richer color and greater transparency support. The Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG) file format is a non-standard extension to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) specification. It allows for animated PNG files that work similarly to animated GIF files, while supporting 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency not available for GIFs. Animated GIFs, in contrast, can only support 256 colors per frame -- though there are workarounds for this limitation, the resulting file size is not ideal. As it stands today, animated PNGs, with respect to web browsers, still aren't widely supported. Currently, they only work on Firefox and mobile Safari on iOS 8. The format, however, will be supported by Safari 8 once OS X Yosemite ships. If your browser supports animated PNGs, you should see a bouncing ball below. Browsers that don't support animated PNGs will nonetheless show the first frame of the file.
How to reorder Safari pages on iPhone or iPad
Apple's iOS 7 changed the way mobile Safari manages multiple open pages. The current version presents the list as a "fan." Scroll through it with a swipe of your finger to quickly browse all open pages. Did you know you can also reorder those pages? You can, and here's how. Simply tap and hold on the page you'd like to move for about a second. It will become slightly more pronounced in appearance while the others fade into the background bit. Now you can drag that page to any position on the list that you want. While we're at it, there are two ways to close a page. Either tap the "x" in its upper left-hand corner, or simply swipe it to the left.
The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for June 18, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
iOS 8 Safari can block ads from automatically redirecting to the App Store
One of the most frustrating aspects of the modern mobile internet is advertising that kicks you off the webpage you're on and forces you into the App Store. Oftentimes websites -- including TUAW -- aren't even aware that their ads are doing this obnoxious and vile act until it's too late and readers are already ticked off. Thankfully, the upcoming iOS 8 will fix this problem for Safari users. In the release notes for the latest iOS 8 Beta update comes this wonderful hidden gem: That's right folks, the days of intrusive spam ads kicking you out of the article you want to read and into the App Store for a product you don't want are almost over. HealthKit, time lapse video, and the other wonderful features of iOS 8 we've found out about so far are all exciting, but this? This will make Safari the go-to browser for a large chunk of iOS fans, if only so they can browse the internet in peace once again. We can't wait for the arrival of Fall.
Awesome Safari tip in iOS 7 you probably weren't aware of
Mobile Safari in iOS 7 introduced a number of new and interesting changes to the way users browse the web and access information. One such feature you may not be familiar with is dubbed "Shared Links." "Shared Links" allows you to quickly and seamlessly scroll through all of the links in your Twitter feed directly from within the Safari app. All in all, this provides a superior and more efficient way to peruse your Twitter links. Here's how it all works. Open up Safari and tap the Bookmarks icon located toward the bottom of the screen. This brings you to the "Shared Links" pane. From here, select the "@" tab located in the upper-righthand portion of the screen. You are then presented with all of the links from your Twitter feed. Note that only tweets containing embedded URLs show up here. Think of it as a streamlined Twitter feed. If I tap on one of the entries, I'm immediately whisked away to the desired URL, in this case an article from the WSJ tweeted out by the Huffington Post. As I scroll down, the end of the article lets me know where the next tweet is from, in this case a tweet from Bomani Jones about NCAA athletes unionizing. If I keep scrolling downwards, that story soon takes center stage. When I get to the end of this article, the next Twitter link is already there waiting for me. And so on and so forth. Altogether, this is a great way to browse through your Twitter feed if you're actually looking to do some web browsing. Not only does the scrolling provide a seamless way to jump from story to story, it's also always typically more enjoyable to browse in Safari than with Twitter's built-in browser. One final point: Even though you scroll downwards in order to access new Twitter links, be aware that you cannot scroll back up to revisit stories you've already read. Instead, simply swipe to the right as you would normally do in Safari.
How to search a webpage for a specific word in mobile Safari
One of the great, and yet little known, features in mobile Safari is that it allows you to search a webpage for a specific word. This feature is a lifesaver if you happen to come across a lengthy article, for example, and want to quickly skip ahead to a particular segment of the document. Here's how it all works. Let's say I hop on over to ESPN.com to check out the latest sports news. Here I see ESPN's splash page talking about the Red Sox playoff win. But let's say I need my football fix and want to quickly jump to any articles discussing Peyton Manning without having to scroll through the site's entire front page. So, to find any references to "Manning," I simply double tap the URL bar in mobile Safari, which brings me to this page. Next, I start typing my search query, in this case "Manning," into the Safari search bar. All I see next are listings of Google Search suggestions. But wait! There's more here than meets the eye. Scroll down and you'll soon see a section titled "On This Page" lurking below. The "On This Page" match indicates that there is one instance of the "Manning" string on the ESPN homepage. I give it a tap and I'm instantly whisked back to the area of the ESPN homepage where "Manning" appears. And to make things easier to find, it's conveniently highlighted in yellow. Pretty great, right? Now let's say I look for a phrase that appears multiple times across a document. For instance, upon typing "Brady" into the URL bar and subsequently scrolling down, I see that there are five matches on the webpage. I tap "Find 'Brady'" and am now taken to the first instance of "Brady" appearing on the webpage. To find other instances of "Brady," all I have to do is tap the rightward facing arrow located at the bottom of the display and I can quickly cycle through all mentions of the search string. All in all, this is a great search tool to keep handy when browsing through mobile websites where search functionality exists, but is somewhat buried underneath the surface.
iOS 7 video tip: View tweeted links in Mobile Safari
Today's video tip highlights a little-known feature in Safari under iOS 7. At any time while you're using the mobile browser, tap on the bookmarks button, then tap the "@" button to see links that have been shared via Twitter by people you follow. Once you've found a link you want to look at, tapping it not only opens the associated web page, but also displays the tweet it was linked from at the top of the mobile Safari window. As with all of our video tips, this one can be enlarged to full-screen for easier viewing.
Snoopy lets you examine websites with Mobile Safari
One of the weaknesses of mobile web browsers is the lack of a simple way to view a website's source information. Sure you could wait until you got home to examine how a site is built, but we live in the future. Waiting till we get home is very 2012. That's where Snoopy comes in. Snoopy is a bookmarklet that allows you to quickly view source, giving you a look at the doctype, the JS libraries the page uses, what analytics are used, a look at the raw source of the page and a number of other finer details. There are a few ways to get Snoopy to work in Mobile Safari. The simplest method is to simply drag the bookmarklet from the page, here, up to your bookmarks bar. Turn on iCloud or use an iTunes bookmark sync to your iDevice to have the link show up in your mobile bookmarks. If you use Google Chrome, simply save the bookmarklet to your Bookmarks Bar in your browser and then sync bookmarks between iOS and your desktop using your Google account. If you don't use syncing, there is another way available to get Snoopy installed that's a little more complicated. Head over to Snoopy's official page for a complete walkthrough of how to manually add the bookmarklet to Safari and Chrome. Get to Snooping.
Amazon's MP3 store 'optimized' for iOS devices via Safari, allows for easier track purchases
Roughly half a year after the launch of its Cloud Player for iOS, Amazon today announced that it has 'optimized' its MP3 store for Apple's mobile browser. Now iPhone / iPad / iPod touch owners can quickly buy music from the service via the mobile version of Safari. Purchased tracks will save to the Cloud Player and then can be downloaded to those devices, as well as the Kindle Fire, Android devices and Sonos systems. Those looking to pick up Yo La Tengo's new record for $5 can direct their handset to the source link below.
Reading TUAW on your iPhone 5 or iPad (or, yes, even another tablet!)
TUAW has had an iPhone/iPod touch compatible app for a long time. The development of the app is handled by our parent company AOL, not TUAW, so we don't have control over when the app is updated for things like the new iPhone 5 screen. Even more frustratingly, there is no iPad version of the TUAW app, and we don't know when one will be available. That's the bad news. The good news is that we have a mobile version of our website. Actually, we have two: http://m.tuaw.com and http://i.tuaw.com, both of which work extremely well on both the iPhone 5 and the iPad. However the full site has also been optimized to work quite well on the iPad, and m.tuaw.com will allow you to quickly jump to the full version of the site at any time. Our older site, i.tuaw is a more stripped-down experience. The easiest way to read TUAW on those devices is to add a shortcut to your home screen, which you can do with either of those two sites. I would recommend checking both of them out and seeing which one you prefer. They both offer exactly the same content as is found on our main site. While these instructions may seem obvious to those of you who are familiar with iOS, we continue to get a lot of questions about it, so I decided to make a quick "how to" guide to illustrate the process. Step One: Go to http://m.tuaw.com in your browser. It is important that you are on the main page of the site and not on any specific article. Step Two: Tap on the "Share Button" next to the address bar, shown here: That brings up a new menu. Look in the center where you see the TUAW logo over the words "Add to Home Screen": Step Three: Tap the TUAW logo and you get an "Add to Home" prompt like this. Step Four: Tap the "Add" button, and Safari hides itself to show your iPad or iPhone home screen: Now, whenever you want to read TUAW, just tap that button and it launches Safari to load the mobile version of our website. Here's one last feature of our mobile sites that you might like. Any time you are looking at a URL at TUAW.com, you can switch to the other version by tapping on the address bar and changing the "www.tuaw.com" to "m.tuaw.com" or "i.tuaw.com". So, for example: I'm going to use my previous article, "Lingon and launchd can keep crucial apps always running" as an example: www.tuaw.com/2012/10/30/lingon-and-launchd-can-keep-crucial-apps-always-running/ is the "full" version. m.tuaw.com/2012/10/30/lingon-and-launchd-can-keep-crucial-apps-always-running/ is the "mobile" version. i.tuaw.com/2012/10/30/lingon-and-launchd-can-keep-crucial-apps-always-running/ is the "iPhone/iPad" version. That makes it easy to switch between versions. In fact, if I am going to save an article from TUAW to Pinboard or Instapaper, I will usually switch to the iPad-friendly version of the page first. I even made a very simple bookmarklet to help. Bookmark this link -- iTUAW -- and use it anytime you are on a "www.tuaw.com" page and want to go to the "i.tuaw.com" version of the same page. (I don't actually know JavaScript; I pieced that together using Google, so there may be a better way to do this. It works for me in Safari.) Native apps do have many benefits, but for reading websites, these kinds of shortcuts are a good solution.
Google Maps Street View will be available via Mobile Safari in two weeks
According to many of our readers, if Apple's iOS 6 Maps software isn't suitably filling in for the old Google-powered Maps then the quickest workaround is simply using Google Maps as a web app. While we'll likely be waiting some time to find out if a standalone replacement from Google really is in the cards, The New York Times' David Pogue mentions -- while bemoaning some navigation related mishaps in the new app -- Street View imagery will be accessible that way "in two weeks." Hopefully users will find that makes the wait easier, but at least they're not making you carry around one of those backpacks to make it all work.
Tip: Making ITPC links work with the official Podcasts app
My iPhone 5 arrived last Friday, and because my old iPhone 4 had gotten so cluttered with apps, I decided that instead of restoring from an old backup, I would go ahead and just start over completely. Most of my important documents and logins are all stored in iCloud, so it wasn't a big problem to start from scratch. Doing so will allow me to cut back down on apps, making sure I only install the ones I'll use (at least to begin with). But one issue did present itself: Because I decided to no longer sync with my iTunes install on my Mac, I had to re-subscribe to all of my podcasts manually in Apple's new Podcasts app. Most of those weren't an issue -- I mostly listen to famous podcasts like Adam Carolla's show and the Thrilling Adventure Hour. But a few of my podcasts are harder to find: They come only through ITPC links, which is a special browser protocol that will automatically subscribe you through iTunes when linked (with authentication where necessary, usually for premium content). I tried clicking on the ITPC links for my podcast in Mobile Safari, but Safari, unfortunately, doesn't recognize the link automatically. For a while, I worried that I'd have to sync up to iTunes just to subscribe to the few podcasts that use this authentication. The solution? It turns out to be surprisingly easy: Just change the "itpc://..." specifier at the beginning of the URL to "feed://..." Instantly, when you load up that URL, iTunes will jump in and help you out. In fact, if you have the Podcasts app installed already (and if you regularly listen to podcasts, you should), the app itself will pop up, and load up the feed for you. It makes me wonder why the ITPC protocol itself isn't just supported in Mobile Safari, but nevermind. Changing the URL to "feed" will get you exactly what you're looking for.
Apple offers a peek into updated Mobile Safari, Photo Stream
During today's WWDC 2012 Keynote, Scott Forstall provided a peek at new features expected in Mobile Safari when iOS 6 ships. There's now an offline reading list in Mobile Safari, making it simple to capture web pages for viewing without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. That'll work great during those flights where onboard Wi-Fi is just a dream. And for the first time, you'll be able to upload photos to sites via Mobile Safari. Smart App Banners are another new feature that give the browser a way to link banners directly to websites. For example, if you go to a mobile site like Yelp and there's an app available, a tap on the banner will jump to the Yelp app on the App Store. Photo Stream, which was introduced with iOS 5 and OS X Lion, is getting a nice update featuring shared Photo Streams. Now you can choose to share your images or all of your Photo Stream to select individuals. Also in Photo Stream is the ability to create push notifications that link directly to photo albums so your friends will know when you've added new images.
Bing Mobile updated, news and maps get minor facelifts
How can you "be what's next" without having what's next on your phone? Bing is here to help you fulfill its tagline by updating its mobile site for any device that runs HTML5. If the update had a highlight reel to show off the newest features, here's what would be on it: a carousel-like interface in the news section that lets you swipe your finger left or right to switch to other categories; maps that show directions together in split-screen format; a search history complete with trending topics; and the ability to share images and links on Facebook. The new enhancements are now available to iOS, Android, and BlackBerry, so it's an easy jaunt over to your browser to check it out. Or, if you're reading this on your phone, give the ol' More Coverage link a quick tap.
Will iOS 5's Safari deliver better support for web editors?
One of the long-standing frustrations for anyone who's tried to edit blog posts or web documents using Mobile Safari is the absence of support for the HTML5 contentEditable attribute. The attribute, which began as an Internet Explorer 5.5 feature and later found its way into most modern browsers, is part of the suite of tools that made it possible for older versions of Google Documents and other inline editors to do their rich-text WYSIWIG editing magic. [Commenter Darren notes that Google Docs itself does not use contentEditable anymore, but instead does all the editing using a custom JavaScript editor. –MR] Unfortunately, up through iOS 4.3 there's no support for the contentEditable attribute in Mobile Safari, which means that popular web editing tools either don't work at all or have to provide severely limited iOS-specific versions. According to this thread on Hacker News, it looks like things may be changing in iOS 5; preliminary tests on the beta seem to show that the attribute is working as expected in the new version of Safari. If this does prove out for the final builds of iOS 5 (and that's a reasonably substantial 'if,' since we're still several months away from release), we could be looking at a dramatic improvement in support for virtually all web-based rich text editing tasks on the iPad. For those of us who have struggled with this issue for a while, it's welcome news indeed. Thanks to Gary Poster for his question.
Amazon Cloud Player now streams music on the iPhone and iPad
We're not sure how long this has been possible, but at launch, Amazon's Cloud Player refused to stream songs from your Cloud Drive in Mobile Safari, with the only alternative being selecting 'Download' instead of play. Now Amazon has quietly flicked the switch that allows Cloud Player to work properly in Mobile Safari, once you get past the "Your browser isn't supported screen," complete with background playback and control, meaning that you can pause the music and skip tracks right from the multitasking bar. If you haven't tried Amazon's Cloud Player, and you've got an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, perhaps now's the time to give it a test drive. You get 5 GB of free storage up front, and you can upload and stream any tracks you already have with it. Anything purchased from the Amazon MP3 store can be automatically added to your Cloud Drive without counting against your storage quota. What's more, Amazon will give you an extra 15 GB of free storage when you purchase at least one MP3 album, bringing your storage limit up to 20 GB. While any web app implementation isn't going to be as good as a really great native app, using the Cloud Player in Mobile Safari with background playback and control isn't a bad option at all -- plus it works outside the US, too. [via TechCrunch]
How to: Listen to your Amazon Cloud Player music on your iOS device
[H/t to Mashable's Christina Warren, who wrote this up yesterday. We independently arrived at the same place and had not seen Christina's writeup. - Ed.] Have you signed up for Amazon Cloud? It's a newly launched service that offers 5 GB of free online cloud storage and affordable paid plans up to 1 TB. Competing with Dropbox, Amazon Cloud takes measures one step further -- integrating with its online store to provide over-the-air media access, like SugarSync, Mougg and AudioBox. Unlike those latter services, however, Amazon Cloud provides media storage for free -- so long as you purchase that media from the Amazon store. Your Amazon music will not eat away at the free 5 GB that come with the basic plan. If you're hoping to play your Cloud music on your iPhone or iPad, you might be put off by the user interface, which offers an MP3 icon but no play/pause button -- the way that it does on your Flash-enabled home computer. Fear not. There is a workaround.
Mobile Safari's privacy settings give web marketers headaches
Those who make their money by working out who sent you to visit which websites via what adverts are scratching their heads and popping the Advil over what to do about Mobile Safari, which automatically blocks third-party cookies by default. This makes it difficult for ad servers, tracking systems and ad management tools to link visitors to ads that brought them to the website. This, in turn, makes it difficult to measure the performance of paid-search marketing campaigns. MediaPost reports that search firm Marin Software published a white paper about Mobile Safari and ad tracking last week. The paper says that Mobile Safari on iOS devices is a "major challenge" and that, on average, advertisers using third-party cookie-based tracking systems are undercounting conversions by 38 percent -- the actual conversion rates for iOS, minus for the third-party cookie based undercounting, were on average 23 percent higher than on Windows. With millions already using iOS devices and the iPad 2 and, later this year, a new iPhone bringing millions more into the Apple fold, this is becoming a big problem for ad companies.
iOS Safari receiving Google Instant Previews support
Formerly only for desktop browser searches, 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Google "Instant Previews" is being rolled out for mobile Safari users as well. This new service allows iOS Safari users to get a quick visual preview of sites within their search results without having to actually click through and wait for the pages to load. Previews of search results are displayed like a slideshow, allowing users to flick through the different pages in typical iOS fashion. Google has not formally announced the new feature yet and not every device has it as of this writing -- my own iPhone included. We first saw Google's Instant search service for iOS devices back in November, but this new "Instant Previews" version is definitely a step up from simply seeing textual search results appear as you type your queries. I am sure there will be fans and detractors of this new search preview, but do tell us -- is it live for you yet on your iOS device? [via Gizmodo]
Two arrested for iPad security breach
Two arrests have been made connected to the security breach that exposed thousands of iPad users' email addresses and other info last year. Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer (yeah, that guy again) have been taken into custody and charged with conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and fraud, for allegedly using a custom script (built by Spitler) called iPad 3G Account Slurper to access AT&T's servers, mimic an iPad 3G, and try out random ICC identifiers. Once a valid ICC was found, one could harvest the user's name and email address. Of course, the hackers maintain that this was all done to force AT&T to close a major security flaw, and we'll be interested to see what exactly the company does to make things right.
