

Android tablets: It's the browser - revorad
http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/android-tablets-its-the-browser

======
jsnell
Yes, Chrome on Android is a travesty, and this article doesn't even list all
of the major issues it has.

The fonts being screwed up is a "feature" -- Chrome tries to detect which
pieces of text are important and enlarge them (and the reverse for
unimportant). I don't think it'd be useful even if the decisions on what's
important worked well. And boy, the decisions really don't work well.

~~~
magic_haze
Interesting.. I had no idea it was the browser that did that - I always
thought it was something in HN's styling. My windows phone browser does
something similar (e.g., <http://imgur.com/ONCGHL8>), but the decision its
algorithm makes correlates with what I find useful most of the time. Does
anyone here know how chrome detects the importance of the text? (I'm guessing
it's based somewhat on the length of the text and how deeply nested it is in
the HTML.)

~~~
LeonidasXIV
I used Chrome for like a day untill I deactivated it (can't uninstall) and
continued to use the stock browser, just because it is so mind-bogglingly
ugly.

~~~
dhruvmittal
The thing that killed chrome for me was the way it uses the same UI as desktop
chrome for browser tabs. On my nexus 7 (I can't speak for larger tablets,
maybe it works there?), the tabs are simply too small for me to be precise
about any interaction I have with them.

------
PeterisP
Google needs to gift everyone at the Chrome team a random Android tablet, and
afterwards take away their main work computers for a day or two.

By the end of the month the browser situation on Android would be greatly
improved.

------
randomfool
My comparison is iPad Mini Chrome to Nexus 7 Chrome, have to agree that Chrome
on Nexus 7 is not up to par with iOS. But I do strongly prefer Chrome's UX
over Safari's.

Primary issues with Chrome on Nexus 7:

\- Scrolling performance is much slower, especially while loading larger
pages.

\- I have a _much_ harder time opening links on the N7 on pages like HN front
page where there are clusters of links with fairly small text. The pointer
algorithm seems to be all wrong.

\- Android Chrome's popup bubble when clicking links seems cool, and seems
like it would solve the previous issue, but it's completely erratic for me.
Often doesn't come up at all, unlike the article which says it always comes
up.

~~~
Tomdarkness
In Chrome for Android beta they've implemented some changes that are suppose
to improve scrolling, especially on large pages, and they've adjusted the tap
disambiguation popup. If you don't want to use the beta these changes should
filter down to the stable release at some point.

~~~
kevingadd
In my experience the tap disambiguation popup is worse in Beta, not better.
They managed to break it so half the time when it pops up, it's empty instead
of containing a zoomed version of what you tapped on so you have to tap away
to dismiss it and hope it works the next time you open it.

~~~
Tomdarkness
Yeah, I was more referring to the change in terms of when it pops up rather
than the obvious bug of it being mostly broken at the moment.

------
habosa
"2. This is the dialog box that comes up when I click a YouTube link in
Reddit. I've chose "Always" about 3,496 times thus far and it doesn't seem to
ever last for more than a day or so. Basically, any time any app updates it
seems to reset your default choices."

I thought the article was a bit hand-wavy in general but that's something I
agree with. I'm a die hard android user and I have this problem. Why do I have
to make the choice for EVERY SINGLE BOOKMARK? Can't you remember that I open
bookmarks in Chrome?

~~~
georgemcbay
Part of the issue here is that Android lets you map different url/domains to
different apps. Because maybe you want to open most URLs in Chrome but you
want to open reddit urls in some Reddit-focused native app. (Ditto Play store
URLs opening with the Play Market App instead of the default browser). This
should only really come into play when you've installed apps with registered
handlers for those URLs though.

Having said that, it seems like he's running into a bug where it isn't saving
this setting and I can see how in that case it would be hugely annoying to be
asked this all the time.

I'm a pretty big Android fanboy and my day job is currently Android
programming and I mostly enjoy it, but I've been kind of surprised at the
number of "how did they never notice this" bugs that have been introduced in
Android over the recent past, especially in the two Jelly Bean releases. It is
entirely possible this bug we're talking about now is phone-specific and isn't
a general Android bug (I've never seen it nor heard of it being a common
problem), but the amount of bugs introduced into the core OS over the past
couple of releases is somewhat worrying.

~~~
habosa
I understand how Android works with intents, and I actually think this is a
problem with how certain apps are declaring their AndroidManifest files and
how the system saves decisions. If I have bookmarks to mywebsite1.com and
mywebsite2.com and I select "Always" for one of the links from Bookmarks, it
will still ask which browser I want to use when the Bookmarks widget
broadcasts and intent for mywebsite2.com. I think the system is probably
saying "Use Chrome for all links to mywebsite1.com" when what I really mean is
"Use Chrome for all links launched from Bookmarks Widget". I think there
should be a new AndroidManifest property where you can simply declare "I open
all web links" not "I open <http://*/*> or whatever it is now. I understand
that it's useful that I have a choice to open wikipedia links in the official
app or in my browser but I see no reason to be asked for links that have no
specific app for them. It's a fuzzy distinction, but important.

~~~
codeka
At least for me (Galaxy Nexus), that _is_ how it works. I've set Chrome to
"always" and now any links I click on in whatever app open in Chrome.

Maybe is something specific about how the bookmark app I'd launching its
intents, though, because I don't use that app (I use a reddit app for
launching links mostly).

The exception is links to sites which have their own handlers (reddit,
YouTube, etc).

~~~
habosa
It works for me with most things, just certain apps break it. If you use the
bookmarks widget or have multiple Wikipedia apps on the GNex you'll see what I
mean. And it's (surprisingly) worse on the N7.

------
lucasr
Firefox for Android developer here. First of all, thanks for the feedback.
Just a quick reply/update on some of the points raised in the post:

1\. We're currently working on a new iteration of the tablet UI which will
replace the sidebar on portrait with a horizontal scrolling strip that goes
away when you select a tab (see meta bug 817675). The sidebar will not be
"stuck" by default anymore and will slide away once you select a tab (see bug
817728).

2\. We mitigate things like this with anti-phishing/malware protection and the
identity status icon. However, this is not guaranteed to cover every possible
case. Anyway, I filed bug 839994 to get some discussion going.

3\. I agree that the current approach is not ideal if you want to browse
through your desktop/mobile bookmarks very often. The current UI is more
oriented towards finding your bookmarks through the awesomescreen search. Two
points about this: the UX team is working on a new design for
bookmarks/reading list. It will definitely involve an overhauled UI for
accessing bookmarks. In the shorter-term though, we'll be working on a new
iteration of the start page that gives you quick access to your bookmarks from
there (no extra taps). Work on some of these changes has already started. For
instance, you can now 'pin' sites on your start page.

4\. This is fixed in Aurora/Nightly builds (see bug 786982). You can close the
last tab. You'll see the start page when you do so.

Hope that helps. We're an open source project. Next time, I strongly suggest
you to file bugs. We're happy to clarify and re-discuss design decisions
whenever necessary.

------
andor
_And worse? It's not fixable by anyone outside the core team of developers as
they've moved away from the standard XUL UI system to a pure Java wrapper. I
was going to get in there and whip up some add-ons because I really wanted to
use the browser and thought if I could just tweak a few of it's more ugly bits
it'd be somewhat usable. But after downloading the code and taking a good long
look, it turns out that all the bits that suck the most are outside anything
modifiable by add-ons._

Anybody can modify the browser chrome, not just the core developers. All
source code is public:

[http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/5835bc763be7/mobi...](http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
central/file/5835bc763be7/mobile/android)

Instructions for building:

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Fennec/Android>

~~~
kevingadd
You're totally missing the point. XUL allowed (and for Desktop Firefox, still
allows) people to customize UI with addons. The new Mobile Firefox's UI is all
android-specific Java you can't customize without compiling Firefox yourself
and deploying it to your phone, which is basically something that
0.00000000001% of the people on this planet will ever care enough to do - and
then their build will be outdated 8 hours later after new bug fixes get pushed
to trunk and their custom build doesn't automatically update.

------
habosa
I agree for all Android devices until the current generation. However, with
the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, HTC One X, and similar devices I find the Chrome
experience to be every bit as good as iOS. Maybe I haven't used iOS long
enough to catch the very small differences but I now consider the browsers to
be equal. The only area in which iOS still wins is startup/resume time for the
browser with a few tabs.

~~~
Cowen
Echoing what you're saying, on my Nexus S, Chrome is unbearably slow.

I would bet that the majority of Android smartphones -- the ones that aren't
the marquee, top-of-the-line products -- all have a similar quality of
experience with Chrome.

In a few years when Moore's Law catches up to the lower end of Android phones,
that won't be an issue, but right now I think we're still in a transition
period.

~~~
chaz
I'm pretty happy with Chrome on my Nexus 4. Only on this phone do I feel like
performance is close to where it needs to be. Nexus One, S, and Galaxy have
all been a little sluggish for their contemporary OS. iOS has always been
tweaked for its devices to deliver responsive performance, even if it wasn't
fast.

------
monsterix
I sincerely wish all the tablet browsers had the following things
offered/fixed asap:

1\. A full-screen option so that I can experience whatever website I am on
with full space and attention. Dolphin (my default browser) on iPad already
has this, and it makes good for inadvertent touches on the screen taking me
away from the page I am on.

2\. CSS property :fixed, should be fixed you know. Even on iPad the fixed
elements jump off the screen the moment you focus on text areas or input
boxes. Drives me crazy! And yes I don't want to hide and fade-in that element
(like with jquerymobile) just to fool the bug.

3\. Tablets probably do not require pinch-to-zoom like in mobile phones. This
could be contested, but seriously double tap screws the experience of clicking
buttons. You expect to login, but the site just jumps to a new zoom level.

4\. I played with libraries of text-editor, after text-editor, after text-
editor to get the experience right. Figured out that it was the iframe (i.e.
DOM within a DOM) that makes it a complete dud on iPad. Tap events bind to the
iframe after a significant, unusable, time lag. On other tablets it is worse.

The list can go on. I think the problem is of approach. Tablets shouldn't be
porting browser from mobile. It should have been from desktops to tablets. Or
something built ground up.

------
RivieraKid
The way Chrome messes with the font size is really frustrating. The fact that
this is a feature makes it even worse.

~~~
ajross
The font size weirdness is really only an issue on some sites, most notably
Reddit. They are treating it as a "known issue", not a "feature". You can go
vote (or whatever) for its resolution here:
[http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/static.py?hl=en&pag...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=known_issues.cs)

------
ippa
Bought two nexus 7 over christmas, one for me and one as a present. I've only
read good things about them.

Ended up returning them both due to the bad surfing experience. Laggy, bad
scrolling. Sometimes it felt like it missed my swipe as a whole and just got
stuck. Switched back to my ipad1 which is much better in that regard.

I liked the rest... but surfing is what I do most on a pad, so that has to be
perfect.

~~~
rednukleus
Did you try using a different browser? I've heard some people say that Chrome
performed poorly on their Nexus 7 for some reason, but switching browser
always seems to fix it. IRL every Nexus 7 I've seen is buttery smooth, so I
don't know what is causing the problem for some people.

~~~
ippa
No I didn't, maybe I should have. Chrome is so good otherwise so it felt
improbable that any other browser would be better.

With that said.. I don't understand how google could ship chrome in that
state. Or how the reviews (I've read) seems to fail to mention it. Maybe it's
just crystalclear when directly compared to an ipad.

------
rednukleus
Its strange, I've never heard anybody off the internet say that Android
broswers aren't as good as iOS.

On the internet, when people complain they are usually told to try Dolphin, so
I'm surprised it wasn't included in the article.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
Dolphin isn't great IMO. There are some real good ideas in it from a usability
standpoint, and then others that are just face-slappingly aggravating.

Chrome is the best browser I've used for Android and it has problems that
annoy me to no end as well. I don't think the author mentioned this, but one
huge annoyance is that the tab bar is _always_ visible no matter where you're
scrolled on the page. Vertical screen real estate in landscape mode is really
precious and having chrome stuck on top of the view at all times is pretty
frustrating. I love how iOS Safari handles this--you see the tab and URL
chrome when you're at the top of the page, and you can tap to quickly scroll
to the top of the page if you need it.

I agree completely with the author. One of my primary uses of a tablet is
using a web browser, and there just aren't really any excellent options on
Android right now.

~~~
eitland

        Dolphin isn't great IMO. There are some real good ideas in it from a usability standpoint, and then others that are just face-slappingly aggravating.
    

Would you mind leaving a short explanation? Dolphin has been my favourite for
a while now because it is well rounded and has brilliant Lastpass integration.

~~~
scubaguy
I think Dolphin is noticeably faster than Chrome and I appreciate the fact
that it supports plugins. However, I recently noticed that it auto plays HTML5
videos which is quite annoying, whereas Chrome requires a manual "start" (at
least on USA Today's mobile site).

------
Jabbles
_Posted Monday, October 15, 2012 2:26 am_

Things move quickly, I don't know how relevant this is now, especially with
the latest (last week's?) version of Chrome for Android.

------
hack_edu
Really, I've consistently credited having a real browser in Chrome was the
best part of modern Android. The Google account synchronization especially.

------
liljimmytables
The one thing I really like about the default android browser is the fact that
it has private tabs. I'm uncomfortable with leaving some things on a portable
device that facilitates being left around, picked up by strangers, et al. I
can't fathom why it's not more popular on mobile browsers, including most of
the third-party Android ones.

~~~
rimantas
Mobile Safari has private browsing mode, but it is quite hidden and not as
convenient as incognito tabs in Chrome.

------
pauljonas
Oddly, I prefer the Nexus 7 Chrome browser experience over iOS iPad. Yes,
there is some choppiness in that Android Chrome seems not to properly format
via viewport on some sites but the big griefs are absence of "full screen" and
no easy goto top of page function (like you can in iOS). Other than that, I
prefer Chrome on Android:

* I like its tabs model better and the OS integration (easy to bounce between apps as the browser is a utility that is often popped in and out from another app)

* Most important, it uses the OS wide font size setting and this to me is the biggest advantage over iOS -- it probably just a factor for someone with poor eyesight like me, but I need bigger text and pinching and zooming on page parts just not a joyful exercise.

------
yareally
When I got an Nexus 7 finally, I just added the old stock browser for Android
to it. It's not too hard to do really (assuming you are rooted/bootloader
unlocked [required]). If you're unlocked and rooted, it just takes a few
terminal commands to add the old stock browser back.

Tap to zoom works much better on the old browser and the quick controls for it
are a feature I can't live without.

I wrote a small guide[1] on how to do it on one of the Android forums for
anyone else that prefers the old browser over Chrome on Android.

[http://rootzwiki.com/topic/30834-how-to-install-the-stock-
br...](http://rootzwiki.com/topic/30834-how-to-install-the-stock-browser/)

------
danboarder
I would have agreed with this article 6 months ago, before I found X-Scope
Pro, which brings the features to Android that I had missed in iOS, including
natural full screen mode options, copy/paste tools, and more.

See
[http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sui.mRelease...](http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sui.mRelease&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dx+scope+pro)

That said the default Android browsers need a lot of work.

------
kyriakos
Galaxy S3 and Nexus 7 experiences: Chrome on S3 is the fastest browser I've
used on a mobile device. Works fine on Nexus 7 as a main browser I haven't
noticed any lag (at least nothing that I could notice).

Regarding the bar in the middle of Techcrunch page are we certain is a problem
with the particular browser and not the website?

------
artificialidiot
So, does anyone consider the fact that most of the mobile web is optimized for
whatever apple ships? It is not surprising to me that small annoyances in web
pages exist in everywhere but ios. I have no comments on browser chrome
though, they all have annoying behaviours in general.

------
corresation
I've been a pretty vocal fan of Android for years, but I was oddly in limited
company when panning Chrome for Android when it came out. It seemed that every
Android advocate, and even its worst critics, were falling over each other to
declare it a new panacea.

It was a marked setback from the already weak native browser (I use Android
phones, tablets, and iPads. There is no doubt that later versions of iOS shot
it far in the lead for browsing). It seems to be a universally single-threaded
browser. I'm not talking about the native limits of JavaScript...but rather
every part of the browser. If a page has an HTML5 video...there's a several
second pause of the entire browser while it considers existence. Layout,
loading things...everything seems to stall the main thread. It is abysmal.

------
lazyjones
He's mostly right on the browser issues, but as a non-native speaker it annoys
me when he gets 1 out of 7 occurrences of the possessive pronoun "its" right.
It's probably the most contagious mistake bloggers make.

------
Kluny
While I don't disagree with any of his points, I did notice the part where he
mentioned not getting a job at either Firefox or Google. A little bit of anger
might be seeping through.

~~~
russellbeattie
You're not wrong.

~~~
nmb
Appreciate your honesty. :)

------
nmb
pasting my comment on the article itself. admittedly this only addresses one
of the author's points: On any Jellybean device, if you go to Settings >
System > Developer options, and check "Show touches" to do just that, it goes
a huge way towards reducing confusion when you're tapping things. Having that
visual feedback means you never have to wonder if you tapped something, or
what you tapped on. It's hard for me to use an Android device without it now.

------
bungle
I'm really happy with Chrome Beta on Android. Easily beats all the
alternatives. YMMV.

------
pjmlp
Happy native apps user.

------
prostoalex
>>> Apple doesn't allow any other choice of browser except for those using
it's core WebKit engine

1) Not true. <http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/mobile/ios.html>

2) "Its".

~~~
garrettlarson
"Rendering and the Javascript engine are provided by iOS through UIWebView." -
<https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq>

~~~
prostoalex
You're right, I didn't realize that.

