It’s not like it was ever a bother to launch the apps to read the same material you have on your Kindle. It was never even a second thought until Amazon launched a new Cloud Reader web app that somehow makes the old app outdated. In addition, they launched a new Kindle Store web app to make shopping for ebooks even easier.

You can start off in this new experience by heading to the iPad-optimized Kindle Store page. Sure, you can get the same content at Amazon.com, but it’s doesn’t give you that same rich experience you’ve come to recognize from the iPad. Originally the Kindle app allowed you to buy new ebooks directly from the app, but they eliminated that option last year. Now you can once again have that rich experience, either on Safari or with a created app. It’s your choice.

You can begin this new experience by heading to the iPad-optimized Kindle Store page. Sure, you can get the same content at Amazon.com, but it’s doesn’t give you that same rich experience you’ve come to recognize from the iPad. Originally the Kindle app allowed you to buy new ebooks directly from the app, but they eliminated that option last year. Now you can once again have that rich experience, yet do so in in Safari.

This message lets you know that you might not have enough memory allocated to the web app. However, it guides you through the process of changing that and allowing more memory. Not that it’s a difficult process, as it just comes up with a message letting you know how much additional memory it will allocate, and asking if that’s okay.

Once enough memory is allocated to the web app, it opens up your Kindle library, assuming you have an existing Kindle account. Again, it’s optimized for the iPad, and scrolling through your entire Kindle library is a cinch. It’s now easy to switch back and forth from your library to the store, just as it was with the original app, as a link back to the store is provided in the upper right.

The text of your book is displayed in a very easy-to-read fashion leaving no distractions. Flipping through pages is made simple with swipes. Options are made possible with a long tap. This brings  up a menu across the top that includes bookmarks, and the pages are then indicated at the bottom. It tells you what page you are on and shows a percentage of how much of the book you have read. Sliding the bar left to right advances you through the book or returns you to earlier pages.

You can customize the experience to fit your own preferences and needs. The type size can be adjusted through five different sizes, and the background color can be changed from white to ivory to black. Forget your reading glasses? No problem; just set the type to extra large. When you have them again, return to the type to a smaller font size.

If you don’t like having to access the Cloud Reader and Kindle Store on Safari on your iPad, you can use the Sharing link in the Safari browser to make an app that will sit on your home screen. You can either make two separate apps or just one. You don’t’ have to be limited to just reading on your iPad, however. It’s still just as easy to switch back and forth reading your books on the iPad, iPhone, PC or Mac, and Kindle device, as the place you leave off reading is kept and synced. No matter which device you use to read your book the next time, it will  pick up where you left off.

However, depending on your browsing habits and needs, you may wish to do a little tweaking in order to get the most out of Safari. Read on below to see how to do just that.

Safari Extensions

Let’s begin by taking a look at the most obvious tweaks you can make to Safari, the Extensions Gallery. While unveiled with much fanfare by Apple, the Extension Gallery has failed to gain the sheer volume of extensions which can be found on Chrome or Firefox, for example. Still, what it lacks in numbers, it more than makes up for in quality, as is highlighted by these three choices of extension:

1. AdBlock

As one might imagine from its name, the AdBlock extension prevents advertisements from cluttering up your web page. While Safari users have always had this option with third-party apps, AdBlock is the most stable, secure and slick implementation of advertisement blocking software on Safari to date. Just remember to add your favourite websites to the whitelist so they still get supported by their advertisers.

2. ClickToFlash

Click To Flash prevents any Adobe Flash from being loaded within Safari as default, instead offering a grey box to click on if desired. This may sound a little tiresome but once one has set a whitelist to allow exceptions for those rare occasions when Flash is actually desirable, it makes web browsing much quicker and more stable. An additional benefit of ClickToFlash is that it’ll make use of HMTL5 when possible, meaning that websites like Youtube can actually be used without the need for Flash at all.

3. Facebook Cleaner

If like me, you find Facebook annoying but necessary, Facebook Cleaner may well be useful. The extension prevents those prompts to “like this” which turn up on many websites and also cleans up your actual Facebook page when logged in, by blocking most of the more annoying features of the site.

Customise Toolbar

I love Safari’s minimalist stylings, but the toolbar which Apple see fit to ship the browser with is a little too minimalist for my own tastes and I like to see a Home button, in addition to a New Tab button. If you’d like to add these buttons or just tweak the current layout, simply right-click on the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar”.

This done, you should be presented with the above screen, from which new icons can be dragged and dropped onto the toolbar.

Top Sites

The Top Sites feature in Safari can be very useful as it already is, but perhaps even more so if you take the time to set it up to your favorite websites. To do this, click on the small “Edit” button in the bottom left hand corner. It’s a somewhat laborious process to get everything just right, but once you have done so I believe it’s worthwhile and saves significant time.

Set Up Preferences

Opening up the Preferences window within Safari will show options for fixing many people’s pet peeves with Safari. One can prevent the app from opening downloaded files which Safari deems as “Safe” automatically and also stop that most contentious of features implemented in the latest version of Safari; auto-correction.

Conclusion

Besides the tips and tweaks mentioned above, making use of Safari’s additional features can be what sets it apart from other web browsers. It may not do as much as some competing browsers, but what Safari does do, it does very well indeed. Reading List can completely replace the need for a “temp” folder to come back to read articles later, while fullscreen browsing is finally brought to Apple’s browser for those users who are currently running OS X Lion.

Have you got any other tips for making the most of Safari? If so, please let us know about them in the comments.

Read on after the break to find out more about this iPhone-friendly demo of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

Getting Started

To get started with the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango interactive web demo, navigate to http://aka.ms/wpdemo on your iPhone’s Safari Browser. This will bring up the above help screen, which details how to navigate within the demo’s UI. Sliding left or right moves between screens, whereas moving the screen up or down navigates between the tiles. Once given time to fully load, the action was smooth on my iPhone 4 and offered a surprisingly responsive user experience.

Using The Demo

So once you’ve loaded the demo, what can you do with it?

Well, the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango demo already contains content for you to check out and see what it would be like to use the OS. Buttons respond to touch and tiles can be browsed by swiping left or right, up or down. The demo also offers hints as to what the user should do next with a glowing blue icon denoting the action a user may take.

Opening various tiles will uncover demo content which is already available and this can usually be interacted with, at least to some degree. For example, opening the Pictures tile brings up a screen from which the Camera Roll can be accessed, in addition to organising these pictures by albums, date and people (tagging is integrated into the UI).

Sharing photos is equally painless, as the demo walks through the steps needed to upload a photo from Mango’s Camera Roll to Facebook.

When testing Outlook, the interactive demo directs the user to import emails from a Hotmail account and the process seems very slick and easy, soon providing a shortcut tile to access said emails from the home screen and a fake phone call can even be made to lend an idea of what it’s like to make a call on the Windows phone.

Conclusion

When compared with other mobile operating systems which followed in the wake of iOS’s massive success, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango should be lauded for its re-imagining of what a mobile operating system can offer. It really is an original phone OS and even with the natural limitations of it being housed in a mobile browser, the experience is impressively slick.

Will it tempt this iOS user away from Apple’s operating system? Not likely, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft’s demo won them some new fans after this strong showing.

The biggest change to the Safari app is tabbed browsing, but it’s only available on the iPad where it has the landscape to pull lit off. This very much emulates the same tabbed browsing that you’ll find in the Mac version of Safari. Instead of having to flip back and forth through websites that you currently have open, they can now be left open in tabs. New tabs can be initiated by touching the plus sign next to the current tab. For anyone that does a lot of browsing, it’s a a definite advantage. With the iPhone version, however, you still need to flip back and forth between open sites.

Another big change to Safari under iOS 5 is the Reader. Reading articles can now be much cleaner and simpler. If it’s bothersome and too much of a distraction to have sidebars and ads surrounding and interrupting the article you’re reading, you can now eliminate them temporarily. Tapping the word “Reader” in the address bar brings up a clean version of the article with just the necessary text and pictures. All other ads, links, etc. are removed. Tapping the word “Reader” again takes you back to the regular web page. This option is available on the iPhone as well as the iPad, but it doesn’t show up with every page on the iPhone, unlike the iPad.

Similarly named, Reading List is actually quite different than Reader. Reading List allows you to save articles to read later when you have more time. Instead of having to bookmark everything you want to read, then either deal with numerous bookmarks or end up deleting them after you read them, you can simply mark it to be read later on this list. It can be accessed through the Sharing option to the left of the address bar on iPad and on the bottom of the screen of the iPhone by tapping “Add to Reading List.”

Items that have been added to the reading list, as well as bookmarks and history, can be accessed in the Bookmarks option that is on the bottom of the screen on the iPhone and to the left of the Sharing button on the iPad. Additionally, Safari will keep updated between devices. Items added to the Reading List, Bookmarks, and History will read the same on all devices. This is helpful if you leave off reading an article while on your iPad, then are out and about with your iPhone and want to finish reading the article.

Additionally, clicking on links now gives you an option of either adding the page to your Reading List or simply opening the page. This is also now an option in the Settings. You can choose whether to always open tabs in the background, or whether they should be opened up in a new page.

These changes should make it easier to bounce back and forth not only between devices, but also between mobile devices and the Mac. However, Safari on the Mac still has issues with certain web page elements, making it very accessible, but not always practical to use. If Apple were able to fix part of the Safari environment, and combine it with the practical uses of the mobile Safari, they could end up with a lion’s share of the browsing world.

That’s the knock against the Safari browser on iPhone. While the desktop version of Safari keeps being revised to include a lot of interesting features such as a graphic showing your top sites and Cover Flow, the mbile version used on iPhone has made very limited changes since its inception.

Thankfully there are other iPhone browsers out there that are better and came with fun and useful options.

1. Opera

While Firefox and Google Chrome don’t have apps for the iPhone, Opera does. Opera has its own verison of top sites, Speed Dial. It shows nine easily adjustable sites in the view. It also allows you to sync your bookmarks with your desktop version of Opera.

2. Mercury

This one also has a Speed Dial type of favorites menu. Plus, it works directly with Dropbox to transfer downloaded files through Dropbox. However, with the files I’ve tried, it didn’t send it to a download menu and just opened up the attachment for viewing instead. It has a lot of other extras, though, with a quick sharing menu to go straight to Facebook, Twitter, or Email, the ability to browse privately, themes, and more.

3. Mango

It’s a very basic browser, but still sems to offer more than Safari. One feature is AR mobile. It allows you to utilize the cameras to view your surroundings while you type and browse the Internet. It also has a very unique way to set and save tabs, allowing you to input the addresses in large tabs to flip through, instead of mini tabs that get confusing.

4. Vanilla Surf

The tabbing functions in Vanilla Surf allow you to manipulate them in much the same way you would on a desktop browser. You can control whether new tabs and links open in a new tab or same tabs, easily Clear History and Clear Cookies, and also to surf privately.

5. Private Browser With Fullscreen & Multi-Tabs

While Mercury has private browsing as an option, that’s the standard function of this browser. It forgets your sites visited, passwords, etc., upon exit. If you do private browsing as a rule, you might want to consider this one. However, it has no other big extras.

6. Secret Browser

The main function of Secret Browser is the same as Private Browser, to keep your browsing history known to you and no one else. Additionally, it has small ads at the bottom as it works to keep it free. But you can also remove the ads if you pay for the app.

7. 360 Lite

This one is really unique. It has two separate dials that include many of the options. Ideally, by having the options in these pop-up dials, it can make them quicker to access than paging through windows. However, it can take some getting used to.

Compare these browsers to Safari, and you’ll find Safari literally has nothing extra. The problem is that while the iPhone allows you to add all these great browsers, it doesn’t allow you to set them as the default browser. The only way to do that is by doing a hack. If you don’t want to jeopardize your phone in that manner, you can still use these other browsers; you just can’t go straight from clicking a link in an email to having it go live in your alternate browser.

Cookies are the bits of information that your web browser stores about the sites you have visited. Most of that data will be related to the information you have given out yourself, such as filling in a registration form or setting up a set of preferences. In most cases, the cookies should automatically expire and delete itself from the system once the expiry date is due. However, this is not true for all cases. Some of them do not expire and simply sit on your system for the rest of its life. They act as a kind of digital waste of space in your system, a waste of space that can actually present a security risk to revealing your personal data. So, if you want to minimize your risk, and potentially speed up you system, deleting cookies suddenly seems like a very reasonable idea.

Think of the fact that it is easy to do as just one more bonus that you get for being a responsible Mac owner. Let’s take a look at the process.

Clean Your Cookies in Safari

1. If it is not already open, take this moment to open Safari by double clicking on the icon on your dock. If you do not have a Safari icon on your dock, you should be able to find one in the Applications folder in your system.

2. In the menu bar above, choose the word “Safari”. The click on the word “Preferences”. Alternatively, if you prefer to use the keyboard to get to preferences then click on the Apple key and the comma at the same time.

3. Once the preference menu opens, choose the “Security” tab. This will bring you to the security options for Safari.

4. You will see a button labeled Show Cookies”. Go ahead and click on this button.

5. You will see a button labeled “Remove All”. Click on that button to clear all your cookies.

See, that was easy enough to do. Now, you have no good excuse not to get this done on a regular basis. You will notice that your browser runs faster and smoother than it did before. Depending on the age of the system that you are using, and how many cookies you had stored in your browser, you may even find that you system is running faster on the whole. There is nothing like cleaning out the gunk to give your system a shot in the arm.

Image credit: scubadive67

What is iOSFlashVideo?

Actually, it is not an application. Rather, it is a workaround enabling you to stream flash videos without downloading the videos you want to watch. Above all, it is offered for free. As long as you have a good internet connection, you can watch flash videos from the supported sites.

What are the supported sites?

Unfortunately, YouTube is not one of them. Nevertheless, you can still enjoy watching flash movies and flash video clips from other sites. Here is the list of the supported sites:

• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• Break
• DailyMotion
• Flickr Video
• MegaVideo

Important Note: When watching embedded videos such as those offered at MegaVideo, you need to install OPlayer or the OPlayer Lite.

Step 1: Launch ‘Safari’ from the Springboard.

Step 2: Point your browser to this site: http://www.iosflashvideo.fw.hu

Step 3: Add the site to your Bookmarks. Click on [+] button below your screen, then tap on “Add Bookmark” button.

Step 4: After adding the address to your bookmarks, click the “‘Save” button to continue.

Step 5: Now, tap on the “Bookmarks” button once again. This time you will be brought to your bookmark page. Tap on “Edit” button below your screen.

Step 6: You will be brought to a page where you need to choose a bookmark to edit; select iOSFlashVideo among the list.

Step 7: We will be editing the URL of the bookmark we saved in Step 4. We need to delete all the characters in the address BEFORE “javascript.” In other words, we will delete this: http://iosflashvideo.fw.hu/#.

Tap “Done” button when you finish.

Step 8: After performing the Step 7, you will be brought back to the bookmarks page; tap “Done” button until you get out of the bookmarks page. In this step you may need to tap on it twice.

Step 9: Now navigate through the supported sites and load a page containing a flash video. Once the page has loaded, click on “Bookmarks” button [+] and select iOSFlashVideo. After which, you will be able to stream the video you selected.

So far, this workaround works perfectly on any iDevice you may have; it works on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Since you will not be using any apps aside from Safari and OPlayer (whenever you are streaming embedded flash videos), there is not much problem you will encounter. However, if you can encounter some, please don’t hesitate to post it here so that we can update this post and look for common workarounds to fix such problems.

Installation

On most Macs, you either got Safari 5 with your computer, or your Mac updated it automatically for you. If it hasn’t though, or you’re on a Windows machine, just head over to www.apple.com/safari and use Apple’s standard download form to download the installer for Safari 5. Once you have downloaded and installed the browser, open up Safari.

Using Safari Reader

Once Safari opens up, open up your favorite news site, MakeTechEasier.com for example. Initially on most news sites, on the right side of Safari’s address bar at the top, you’ll see an RSS Button. Click this button and you’ll be shown the RSS feed for that news site. RSS allows you to do things like subscribe to your favorite blogs. Safari 5 takes the concept of RSS  step further though, by appealing its own formatting to make blog posts and news articles far more appealing to the eye.

Since you’re on Make Tech Easier, click an article you’re interested in. Once the page loads, in the address bar on the right side, that same RSS button should be gone, and in its place should be a Reader button, which should look like this:

Click the reader button, and up from the bottom of your Safari window will slide a simple, elegant reading layout of the article your currently have open, and everything else on the page will be shaded black, allowing you to more easily focus on what you’re reading.

I chose to look over my MakeTechEasier article from last week on installing and using iOS 4.2 on your iPad. With a great looking font, easily viewed pictures, and no distracting background, Safari Reader made looking over my post easier and more pleasant than usual.

Tips!

Now that you’ve got the Reader up, here a few tips to help you in using it:

• To change the font size of your Reader article, you can either use the magnifying glass at the bottom of the reader window, or on your Mac hit “Command and +/-” sign. You can also click “View” in the Menu bar, then Zoom In or Zoom Out.
• The control bar at the bottom of the Reader window does not house only magnification controls, but also sharing and printing controls. With one click you can email the article to someone, or print it out for later reference.

Wrap-Up

Safari’s Reader feature may not be something that you would use everyday, but its certainly something that can come in handy under certain circumstances, like prolonged reading on the computer, or a particularly long article. Is this something you use? Will you now? Or do you use an entirely different RSS reader? Let us know in the comments, especially if you know of something better!

Your iPhone comes with its default browser — the mobile Safari. The problem is, not all of the iPhone users love this browser. There are several good browsers you can use with your iPhone to make your browsing experience a pleasant one. Among these browsers are Opera mini, Skyfire, 360 browser, VanillaSurf, etc…

You may have used one of these, but how can you make your favourite browser the default browser of your iPhone?

How to Change iPhone Default Browser

Here is the tutorial you can follow to change your default iPhone browser. But first, you should know that this guide is intended for jailbroken iPhones only. As of this writing, Apple only allows you to change the default search engine but not the default browser. So, we will be utilizing a hack called Browser Changer.

The First Way

Step 1. Launch Cydia from the Springboard and click on ‘Sections’ tab.

Step 2. Scroll down a bit and try to look for ‘Tweaks’ option. Once found, tap on it and you will be presented with a list of packages.

Step 3. Choose ‘Browser Changer’ among the packages. Tap on it to open the package.

Step 4. Tap on ‘Install’ button to the upper right corner of the screen.

Step 5. You have to ‘Confirm’ your last action.

Step 6. When installation is complete tap on ‘Restart Springboard’.

Step 7. Once you have restarted the springboard, launch ‘Settings’ app and tap ‘Browser Changer’.

Step 8. You will have plenty of options as to what browser you want make as default.

The Second Way

Step 1. Launch Cydia from your Springboard.

Step 2. Tap on the ‘Search’ tab and key in “browser changer”.

Step 3. Now, open the package and follow the rest of the steps above.

The next steps would be easier since you just have to follow the steps already mentioned in the first way of installing and configuring browser changer hack.

That’s it! You will be able to open emails or browse the net using your favourite browser. Please note that in Opera mini, the automatic page loading on start up is not supported. It may not be a compulsory on your part, however, if you want to break the boredom of using the same browser over and over again, this tutorial may be a great help.

1. Twitter

If you’re in to Twitter at all, you are probably already imagining all the ways this could be useful. Frankly though, it even surprised me a little. While I expected the ability to be able to Tweet right from the toolbar, it goes a couple steps further. You can click the Tweet button to automatically Tweet the page you’re currently on, with the link already shortened for you, and then go ahead and continue writing your tweet. You can also quickly and easily see trending topics in real time, right in your toolbar, which was a nice piece of extra functionality I hadn’t expected.

2. MLB.com Toolbar

Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love my Philadelphia Phillies. I’m constantly watching their games, reading about the team, checking scores and standings, and going back and forth with my friends about the Playoffs and World Series, and there are a ton of people out there with a love of the game like me. I even used the Phillies own National League East standings in an article on creating your own widgets back in July.  You can imagine how excited I was to find out there was an official MLB.com extension. The extension adds a toolbar to your browser that basically acts as the ticker does along the bottom of ESPN on your TV, but only for the MLB. It shows current scores, along with stats, and links to game coverage.

3. 1-Click Weather by Weather.com

The usefulness of 1-Click Weather might seem obvious, but what may not be as obvious is its perfect subtlety. 1-Click Weather does just what it says, it gives you one click access to Weather.com’s weather information. The way it does so though is great, and most of all unobtrusive. Rather than installing a full toolbar that could show you weather info that you may or may not need, and reduce the viewing area of your browser, 1-Click Weather adds a little button to the left of your address bar that has a little current temperature reading, and with one click takes you to the full site in a new tab for a more in-depth look at conditions in your set area.

4. Gmail Counter

Gmail Counter too, seems obvious. But again, its the perfect implementation that makes this extension great. Like 1-Click Weather, it simply adds a small email button to the left of your taskbar that will have a count show up if you have unread email messages.  While the implementation is great, and the app works wonders, what may be the best part is the fact that myself, as well as many Gmail users I know, are basically addicted to the service. This means we have Gmail open literally anytime our browser is. Now though, we don’t need to waste the system resources on it. Just add the extension and check your email if it pops up and tells you you’ve got new messages!

5. Click to Flash

Click to Flash might be my favorite extension out of all of these. Look, there is no debating Flash’s usefulness on the web. It absolutely exists and is used in innumerable web applications. The problem is that there is also no denying that Flash can be buggy, and is at the very least a huge battery drain. This is where Click to Flash comes in, and it solves these problems cleanly, easily, consistently, and perfectly. Once you install the Click to Flash extension, anytime Flash appears in your browser, rather than showing the ad, it will block it before it even loads (speeding up website loading times across the web) and will display the block with the word “Flash” in it. Then, if you click the box, that Flash portion of the page will load. If you don’t, it won’t and it won’t waste your time or resources loading it up. Its an elegant solution to a complex problem that one day may not exist, but for now is a huge one.

So what did I miss? Do you guys have certain extensions you love that we should know about?  Is there an extension you’d like to see that doesn’t exist? Tell us in the comments!

Get all these extensions and more from Apple’s extensions site

I have discovered two ways on how to download files directly to your iPhone;

• By using an app called aDownloader
• By installing a Safari Download Plugin

Out of curiosity, I tried to use both and it seems to me that they serve the same purpose in almost the same way.

Note: The software mentioned here requires you to jailbreak your iPhone. If you have not done so (and wish to do so), here’s the tutorial.

aDownloader

aDownloader package will install its own browser which you can easily use to browse through the sites you want to download files from. You can save the downloaded files into your iPhone and open it anytime you want. And like other download managers which you may have been able to use in your desktop, you can simultaneously download multiple files; you can pause and resume the download process as well.

It supports the following file format: PDF, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, mp3, m4a, wav, mpeg, 3gp, mov, flv, jpg, png, gif, bmp, txt, html, xml, RAR, Zip.

Step 1: Launch Cydia and key in “aDownloader” to locate the package. Once found, just install it so that you can use it immediately.

Step 2: Once installation is done, just tap on aDownloader icon to launch it. Don’t be surprised because aDownloader will serve as another browser on your iPhone.

Step 3: When visiting a site where you want to download, just tap on the download link and the process will then be started by the app.

To view the status of your download, click on the “Downloads” tab on the lower portion of your iPhone screen and you will be presented with related information about your current downloads.

Step 4: When the download is completed, you can view the downloaded document by clicking on “Documents” tab just beside “Downloads“.

Safari Download Plugin

The Safari download plugin simply add another plug-in to your existing browser to enable downloads. This plugin is written by hanchu and is made handy for the built-in browser of your iPhone.

The supported files are: zip, rar, gz, lzh, hqx, dmg, dat, exe, tar, torrent, pdf, wma, wmv, avi, dll, db, flv, ppt, pps, msi, asf, iso, img, bin, rtf, 3gp, ipsw, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpg, swa.

The very first thing you will do is to add a new source where we can download the plugin from.

Step 1: Launch “Installer” from the Springboard and click on the “Sources” tab below.

Step 2: Tap on the “Edit” button, then the “Add” button to add new source.

Step 3: Now type in http://installer.iClarified.com in the field and tap on “OK” button. After which, tap the “Done” button to the upper right-hand corner of your iPhone screen.

Step 4: Tap on the “Install” tab to find and select the package from the source you just added. Select iClarified among the categories.

Step 5: You will be presented with different packages but the one that we are looking for is the Safari Download Plugin. Select and install it. There will be confirmation prompts; simply confirm your installation to continue.

Step 6: You need to reboot your iPhone to integrate the plug-in to the built-in Safari browser. Once your iPhone is up, you will be ready to download any supported files from any websites.

Step 7: Just launch your Safari and navigate through the websites you want to download files from. To download, just click on the download link(s).

Step 8: A window will then appear which contains two buttons: “Download” and “Change Filename” buttons. You’re good to go!

While this tutorial may not be new to you, I assure you that it will be helpful especially when you are fond of browsing the net using your iPhone. There are always time when you need to download something from the web and your iPhone is the only thing you have.

To download Youtube videos, you have to follow the tutorial here. After you have downloaded the files, you may also want to learn how to transfer from/to your iPhone.

Where do I start?

To show you how to do it, I’m going to use the League Standings table from the Philadelphia Phillies website.  Here’s a link to the site, so you can follow along! Obviously, I’m a huge Phillies fan. As such, I check at least once a day to see how they did in their last game, who their next is against, when it is, and how they’re doing against teams in their division. All this info is in one chart at the Phils’ site. But to open Safari, head over the page, find the link, and load it up is just way too much hassle. So here’s how to add it to the Dashboard.

First, pull up the page. It should look something like this:

Then, click the “File” menu, then click “Open in Dashboard…”. Your screen will dim, and you’ll see a box, like this:

Using the dots on the outline of this box, you can resize it, and perhaps more useful, you can drag it around, and it will automatically resize to parts of the page that you are likely to want to add to your Dashboard. I’m going to scroll down the page and grab the National League East section.

Once you’ve selected what you want to add to the Dashboard, just click the “Add” button in the top right corner. This will automatically bring up your Dashboard, along with your newly added web clip widget!

Don’t like how it looks after all? Or did you grab the wrong thing by accident? Don’t forget, deleting widgets from your Dashboard is as easy as calling up your Dashboard, then holding Option on your keyboard and click the “X” that appears in the upper left hand corner of the widget. In addition, as I said, not only do most operating systems have their own version of widgets, but there are even 3rd party apps that add extra widget functionality to many systems. If you prefer one of these, or even just covet certain features of them, be sure to sound off below!

Although it is not yet an official standard, HTML5 video is available on many websites, including YouTube, and most major browsers have preliminary support for it. Unfortunately, the browser makers have not agreed upon a standard codec, so you will need to know what will work in which browsers. This brief guide should help you navigate through the jargon and get a glimpse of what might be the future of video on the Web.

The Formats

There are currently three distinct video formats that are used in HTML5 video streaming:

1. Theora – the free and open video codec that was originally intended to be the only HTML5 specification.

2. H.264 – a patented video codec that Apple, Google, and others believed to be superior in quality to Theora.

3. WebM – a new free and open format that uses the VP8 video codec, which Google recently purchased and then released into the open source community. It now has the support of Google, Mozilla, Opera, and many others.

The Browsers

Mozilla Firefox – Current versions of Firefox (3.6.3) will display Theora videos only. Mozilla has no plans to support H.264 because of the legal implications of its software patents. For those who want to try the new Google WebM format, you can download a WebM nightly build of Firefox. Firefox also has support for fullscreen HTML5 video.

Microsoft Internet Explorer – The current version of IE (8) does not support any HTML5 video out of the box. Users who wish to try it must download Google Chrome Frame (available for IE versions 6,7, and 8). This plugin adds HTML5 technology to IE. Version 9 of IE is expected to support H.264 video by default and will also support WebM, but the user will have to download the codec.

Apple Safari – The current version of Safari (4.05) supports H.264 video out of the box, but does not support Theora or WebM, and there are apparently no plans to support either.

Google Chrome – Current Chrome versions (5.0.375.55) support Ogg Theora and H.264 video, and development versions also support WebM, making it the only browser to support all three. Users can try the development versions through Google’s Early Release Channels.

Opera – The current Windows and Mac version of Opera (10.53) has support for Ogg Theora video. Linux users must download the beta version of 10.53 to get support. 10.54 will support WebM video. Users can download the development versions to try it.

Other Browsers – Unfortunately, many websites are using browser detection to determine if they should send HTML5 video to the user. The result is that browsers like Konqueror, which reportedly have HTML5 video support, do not work without user agent switching. The Apple iPad also has HTML5 video support, and many major websites (NY Times, CNN, etc.) are specifically targeting the iPad and, therefore, still display Flash videos even to browsers that support HTML5.

The Websites

There are several good websites where users can try out the various incarnations of HTML5 video. Feel free to add others in the comments section.

SublimeVideo – This one is probably my personal favorite. 720p video, supporting Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE, iPad, and iPhone.

YouTube – Currently it offers both H.264 and WebM. Users must join the beta to view it. Videos with ads are not included.

Vimeo – Vimeo will show any of its videos in H.264 format.

Kaltura –  A demo of the movie Big Buck Bunny in the Kaltura player.

Although it is still unclear how HTML5 video will ultimately turn out, it is an exciting time to watch the development of this new technology. The ultimate goal of HTML5 is to make the overall Web experience better, and HTML5 video is one step in the right direction.

Lunascape is the first multilingual, triple engine browser developed in Japan. It combines the four main web browsers – Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. This mean that it supports the three layout engines, or rendering engines, that are used to create the four browsers listed above: Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (FireFox), and WebKit (Chrome/Safari). Currently, it only works on Windows.

One thing that I really liked about the browser is how customizable it is. When installing it, I am able to choose the default layout engine, or rendering engine that I want to use.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t quickly change to the other engines. In the lower-left hand corner, there is a globe icon that allows me to change the browser for that web page I am viewing.

You can even associate a web page with a specific layout engine, even if it’s not the default. This is especially useful when you need to test a web site/blog on various browsers.

You can even use Lunascape as a portable browser instead of having it installed on your system.

Lunascape allows you to import bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and various others. I found it a little strange that it didn’t allow you to import bookmarks from Safari or Chrome, since Webkit is one of the inbuilt layout engines.

Lunascape comes preset with four different skins – Default, Cool, Silver, and Simple. They are equivalent to the four browsers that Lunascape has. If you don’t like any of those, you can change the web skin to the 190 different web skins that were created by users. Users can also create their own skin and upload it into the skin library that Lunascape has online. There are some great skins in the library, so don’t forget to check it out.

The plugin library is not as vast. There is only one plugin available: Twitter plugin. This allows you to have the Twitter tool in the Lunascape browser. There should be more plugins available, or allow users to use the plugins from the other browsers. Looking in the Lunascape forum, it seems that users will have the capability of using Internet Explorer and FireFox plugins in Lunascape in the next release (currently in beta). Additionally, users are also able to register add-ons that they created for the browser.

Lunascape has a great built-in RSS Reader that allows you to add a single RSS feed or import an OPML file.

There is also a RSS Ticker that scrolls at the top of the browser with your RSS feeds.

It doesn’t seem that the RSS Reader and the RSS Ticker are associated with one another, which is a bad flaw. The best way to handle this is to allow you to pick and choose which feeds in your RSS Reader you want to be in the RSS Ticker. This will eliminate the redundancy of having to add an RSS feed to two different places, and not be overwhelmed with too many items scrolling at the top of the browser. A good thing is, the RSS settings are easily customizable and allows for the ease of subscribing to RSS podcasts.

In Lunscape, you are able to search different search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Ask, Technorati, Ebay, and Amazon. This is great because you don’t need to have more than one toolbar to search the different search engines.

Lunascape has various bookmarklet that have been taken from the three layout engines that you are able to use and customize to the way you want. They are sectioned off by Trident, Gecko, and Webkit, so you know where the bookmarklet came from. It gives you the capability of customizing the browser even more than you already can.

Overall, I have to say that Lunascape is a browser that web developers should use. There are a couple of issues with the browser, but nothing that takes away its customizability and usefulness.

Lunascape

Flash is not being used just for videos, it is also used around the Internet for creating casual games, advertisements and pretty much anything that you can think of.

In spite of all the advantages of the Flash platform, the problem with flash is that other than Windows, it really doesn’t run well on any other platform. Flash is also a notoriously heavy user of your system’s resources.

If you’re a Linux or OS X user like I am, you can forget about timely updates and can also expect your browser’s memory and CPU usage to go through the roof if you like visiting flash heavy websites. In my opinion, that is reason enough to get rid of Flash.

So, what do you do if you’ve had enough of the flash advertisements and videos making an appearance on every website that you visit ?

You give ClickToFlash a try !

ClickToFlash is an extension for Safari on OS X that blocks Flash from appearing on any site that you visit. With ClickToFlash loaded, this is how a site using flash will look like.

So, what’s the great deal about ClickToFlash, you ask ? You could have gotten rid of flash by just removing the flash plugin, right ? And to block advertisements, there are already some excellent freeware out there.

Well, I agree, but with ClickToFlash you don’t have to remove the flash plugin and that is the flexibility that it provides. The flash plugin will not be loaded up with every page you view of YouTube, for example, but you can still see the flash elements on the web page, if you want to, by just clicking on the element. So, to start playing the YouTube video above you can just click anywhere inside the gray area and the video will start playing.

Infact, in the case of YouTube, ClickToFlash also gives you an option to view the higher quality the H.264 video stream using QuickTime instead of Flash. Just right click the inside the gray area and select the H.264 option.

Isn’t that awesome ?

But, if you’re a heavy flash user, the constant clicking required to view the content on all your favorite sites might annoy you a bit. In that case, ClickToFlash provides an option to add certain websites to a Whitelist.

A Whitelist is a list of all websites which ClickToFlash excludes from blocking. Adding a site to the Whitelist is easy too, just right click the flash element on the particular site and select the Add to Whitelist option, as you can see in the image above.

ClickToFlash will then add the site’s URL to it’s Whitelist and the next time you visit that site, you’ll be able to enjoy all flash content as if ClickToFlash never happened to you ! I can already see myself making use of this feature for atleast a couple of sites.

So, do you guys find flash videos and ads annoying ? Have you ever though of ways to get rid of them ?

Note: A similar plugin for Firefox is Stop Autoplay

Not anymore. With Tabulate, you can now easily add ‘load in new tab‘ function to your iPhone’s Safari browser, without any hacking. (it works in iPod Touch as well)

Things you need:

• Mac/Windows
• Safari browser (The desktop version of Safari, not the one in your iPhone)
• iTunes

Go to Tabulate website. Drag the bookmarklet to the Safari bookmark bar.

Connect your iPhone/iPod Touch to the computer and fire up your iTunes.

In your iPhone device options, click on the Info tab. Scroll down and mark “Sync Safari Bookmarks”.

Click on Apply to sync your iPhone.

Once it is done, in your iPhone, connect to the Internet and load your mobile Safari.

On the page that you want to open the link in new tab, tap on the bookmark icon at the bottom of the screen. Scroll to Bookmark Bar ->Tabulate.

You will now see a orange icon at the top left of your Safari browser. This indicate that the tabulate is active on the current page.

Now, click on a link. A toolbar of 3 icons will appear. The first one represents “open the link in current tab“. The second one (the one with a plus sign) represents “open the link in a new tab” while the last one means to flag the link to open later.

That’s it. You just have to click on the second icon to open the link in a new tab.

In terms of browser choice, I love Firefox on my Windows. For Mac, nothing beats Safari. When Safari 4 beta comes out, I downloaded it and upgraded my Safari 3 in no time. But lo and behold, there are many changes – supposed to be for the better – that are not to my personal preferences.

I surely wouldn’t complain about the speed. To me it feels faster. Recent test showed that Safari 4 beta is the fastest among other browsers. It was done by Apple so it’s a subject of bias. But so far there’s no objection to the test result from other browser makers

The problem is, I missed several things from Safari 3 like the position of the tabs – which are moved to the top, the full title of the opened page which will be shortened as more and more tabs are opened, and the blue bar which show how far the page has loaded.

And I’m not alone; there are a number of people out there who don’t like a number of new features of Safari 4. After a little googling, I found several solutions to the problems.

Tinkering With The Terminal

The first discovery was the method to bring back Safari 3’s familiar environment by tinkering with codes through the Terminal. There are about 8 codes found in this Random Genius page, including how to undo the changes should you prefer to have the Safari 4’s look and feel back.

Safari has to be restarted every time any changes were made for them to take effect.

If you are familiar with Terminal, the codes will surely help you. I myself am not a coding guy and the thought of writing one (even it’s just a copied and pasted line) make me shiver with fear. So I move on and continue with the search.

With a little help from little apps

So far, I’ve found two apps that will do the same task: changing individual elements of Safari 4 beta and revert back the changes if needed. They are:

1. Safari 4 Buddy – about 220 Kb of size and has options to change seven elements including the option to undo the changes.

2. Safari 4 Modifier – about 2.9 Mb of size and has options to change nine elements including the option to undo the changes.

Both apps using checkbox style options and users just simply check or uncheck the elements based on preferences.

Whichever method you choose – either the Terminal coding or one of the apps – their goals are the same: to have a speedy and convenient surfing experience without having to deal with unwanted eye candy.

If you have opinion or experience to share about Safari 4 beta, please use the comment below.