Palm Pre Touch Phone » browser

Searching using wildcards

Adam Marks — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:27:37 +0000

Note that this only works on webOS 1.4.5 and below. This functionality appears to be disabled in webOS 2.0 and above

While searching for contacts in webOS is already an easy task using Universal Search and searching by a contact's initials, it can get even easier by using a wildcard in your search. By substituting one or more "%" in the beginning or middle of a search as a wildcard, you can perform even more complex searches. For example, searching for "w%os" finds "WebOS Internals", but also other contacts with a "w" and then an "os" later in the name. And just as Universal Search looks in a person's nickname and company name, these wildcards can also be used to search those, so searching for "%Experts" would return anyone with "Smartphone Experts" as their company. Unfortunately, it only appears to search for contacts within Universal Search, and not apps, but this functionality is usually somewhat consistent across the rest of webOS. Keep reading after the break to see how this differs in various areas of the OS.

Roundup: The Option Key

Adam Marks — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:13:11 +0000

The Option Key currently comes in two forms: Orange or Silver, depending on if you are on the original Pre or any other webOS device. Regardless of the color, that single keyboard key is quite versatile, allowing you to do quite a number of different thing throughout the operating system. In this week's Tip Roundup, we explore some of the many uses you will find for this Option Key. Keep reading after the break to reexamine all those uses

Bug fix: Get past the gray space in the browser

Adam Marks — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:33:59 +0000

Have you ever been browsing the web on your device and come across a big gray area that you can't get past on the page? You probably tried refeshing the page, closing and reloading the web browser, or going back and then forward, but you just can't seem to get to the rest of the page. Luckily, there is a really easy fix for this that works almost every time. If you rotate the phone to landscape mode, that will almost always give you access to the rest of the page that was blocked by that gray space. Then, just rotate the phone back to portrait mode to continue reading. Continue reading after the break for screenshots

Bug fix: Get past the gray space in the browser

Adam Marks — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:33:59 +0000

Type to search in the browser

Adam Marks — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:02:25 +0000

While you can perform a quick search of Google or Wikipedia directly from Universal Search, the web browser has a mini-version of Universal Search built in that allows for a similar action. From anywhere on a website within the browser card, you can just start typing on the keyboard to bring up a search bar on the top of the screen. There are 4 search options that you can take advantage of once you start typing:

If you enter in an actual web address URL and press either the Enter key () or the Arrow icon () on the screen, the browser will load up that website.
If you enter a search term (as opposed to a URL), you can either press the Enter key () or you can tap on the top row labeled "Google" to initiate a Google Search.
If you tap on the Wikipedia row, you will initiate a search of the mobile Wikipedia site
In the final area, you will see any of your browser bookmarks followed by your browser viewing history that matches against your search. You will see any website with that search in the URL address or website name, sorted in the order of the most recently visited site. You can drag the search menu up to reveal additional history items

Option + tap in the browser

Adam Marks — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:32:12 +0000

Did you know that you can press the Option (Orange/Silver) key and then click on links or pictures in the browser to bring up a pop-up menu with some options on how to interact with those areas? The options are different depending on which one you click on Option + tapping a link will bring up the following options:

Open in New Card: Opens a new browser card with the specified link
Share Link: Opens a new email message with that link
Copy URL: Copies the URL of the link to the clipboard

Option + tapping a picture will bring up the following options:

Share Image: Opens a new email message with a link to the picture and also attaches the picture as an attachment
Copy to Photos: Saves the picture to your device. See this tip for details

Accessing a roll-over dropdown menu in the browser

Adam Marks — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:14:14 +0000

Many websites (including the full PreCentral.net website) are not built with a mobile browser in mind, often using dropdown menus that are only accessible by rolling your mouse cursor over a certain area of the screen. Since the mobile web browser doesn't have a mouse, you need another way to access these menus. Luckily, the browser does allow for a press-and-hold method to bring down these menus. Unfortunately, when you lift your finger from the screen after the dropdown menu appears, the browser then registers that as a tap and loads up any link that was tied to that dropdown menu (for example, the "articles" link in the attached screenshot). There are 2 simple ways to combat this behavior:

Instead of a press-and-hold, double-tap on the screen to access the menu. This may result in an odd zoom-in due to the double tap, but just pinch-to-zoom out and you will be able to access the drop-down menu as needed
Still use the press-and-hold method to bring down the menu, but then just drag your finger slightly in any direction across the screen. This movement will tell the browser not to load up the link from the initial tap, allowing you to then select whatever option you need from the dropdown menu.

Thanks to emusician in the forums for this tip

PreFox: Firefox on your Pre

Derek Kessler — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 04:00:09 +0000

We haven’t often lamented the built-in web browser on our webOS phones, but in all truthfulness it is lacking in some areas and hasn’t evolved all that much since the initial release of webOS. With the appearance of default web browser selection (continually grayed out) in webOS, it became clear that Palm intends to open up the market to additional browsers. What we’re seeing now is among the first for webOS, and it’s called PreFox.

As the name would imply, it’s Firefox for your Pre. Specifically, it’s a port of Mozilla’s mobile-bound Fennec browser to webOS. Shoehorning it into the appropriate packing was a five month ordeal for developer Dave Townsend of Fractal Brew, and there’s still plenty of work to be done to make it fully useable. The developer notes that testing has only been done on Sprint Pre, and that it wasn’t until more recent releases of webOS (specifically the versions that support C and C++ coding) that it was even possible to make it work at all. There are still some bugs (notably the Too Many Cards error) to work out, but it does work.

Townsend notes that work on PreFox is slowing at this point due to the nature of finding and identifying bugs. To that end, a request for additional beta testers has been put out, with instructions for installation and bug reporting available at the PreFox website. PreFox is, of course, in rough beta form, so while it is functional, it’s not yet to the point of serving as a full replacement browser for your webOS device (it is very very slow and sometimes crash-prone). That said, it’s still plenty promising with tabs, rudimentary extension support, and more; we can’t help but be interested.

Source: Fractal Brew; Via: Alice Carback on Twitter

Email search

Adam Marks — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:26:59 +0000

Trying to find a single email if you have a large number of messages in your inbox or any specific folder can be a tough task if you just try scrolling through all your emails. You are able to sort your email folders in webOS, but that is also not the most efficient way to find that one email. Instead, Palm built in a way to search your emails by "just typing", similar to how the memo search functionality works (which is also absent from a direct search in Universal Search). Unfortunately, there are a few limitations with this functionality, as listed after the break:

Use the Gesture area to scroll in the browser

Adam Marks — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:39:03 +0000

Web browsing on a webOS device is usually a great experience, but one complaint we often hear is about the lack of keyboard shortcuts for things such as paging up and down. While there are no built-in keyboard shortcuts for the browser, webOS did add the ability to use the gesture area to scroll up and down a full page, but only while in landscape mode. So, to take advantage of this feature, make sure you are browsing in landscape mode and then just perform a Forward Swipe to scroll down one page or a Back Swipe to scroll up one page. Note that if you have Advanced Gestures enabled, the Full Swipe will still perform a quick switch between your open cards without first going into card view.