First Look: Life, a web browser optimized for the iPad

Developer Saied Ghaffari's company, It's About Time, should be well known to TUAW readers. We highlighted the widget iPad app the company created, which regretfully never made it to the App Store. Apple essentially banned all widget apps, so Saied and company decided to try something different: creating a web browser optimized for touch navigation on the iPad.

The result is the Life Web Browser. Ghaffari's team looked at the shortcomings of Safari and alternatives such as Perfect Browser before beginning design. Safari doesn't provide tabbed browsing, and tapping any link opens a new window that must be loaded prior to viewing. Perfect Browser adds tabs, but Ghaffari's team found that tabs weren't exactly the best interface for navigating an iPad browser. In addition, tapping a link opens a new tab and the user must wait for that tabbed window to load.

Life is built upon WebKit, the heart of Safari, so any features that are added to future versions of Safari should make it into Life. But that is where the resemblance ends.

Life comes preloaded with a number of popular websites and will automatically remember your favorite sites as you use the app. While you're looking at the home page in Life, you'll notice the edges of two other pages, one to the left and another to the right. To navigate to these other sites, you can use the left / right arrows at the bottom of the page (which conveniently have the name of the sites on them), touch one of the edges (this works well when you're holding the iPad in both hands), or swipe right or left using four fingers. You swipe through sites as if you are swiping through pictures in iPhoto.

Other gestures work as usual: a one-finger swipe for scrolling a page and two fingers for zooming in and out. Three fingers navigate back and forward on one page.

The "side pages" are loading while you're looking at a page. When you're ready to move to one of your other favorite pages, they're already loaded and ready to view. Want to view a page in full screen mode with no buttons or the address bar? Tap the full-screen button at the bottom of the screen to toggle full-screen viewing on and off.

The Q (queue) button is the key to another powerful feature. Let's say you're checking out TUAW. Tap the Q and then tap on post headlines or links. As you do this, you'll see pages added to a "stack" for the site. Those are the individual posts and linked pages being loaded behind the scenes. When you're ready to start reading, tap the up and down arrows at the top of the page to move through the stack. Most of the time those pages will already be downloaded and ready to view.

You can share a page with someone without leaving Life Web Browser by tapping the email link button. The address bar works for entering URLs and Google searches, and Google suggestions appear underneath the address bar.

Another feature of Life Web Browser is picture bookmarks. Add a page to your bookmarks, and you see a thumbnail image of it in the bookmarks. There's a video tutorial that appears when you launch Life the first time, and it remains in the bookmarks for future reference.

With a user interface designed specifically for iPad, Life is sure to be a popular web browser for the platform.

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Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/life-web-browser/id377598600?…

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Developer Saied Ghaffari's company, It's About Time, should be well known to TUAW readers. We highlighted the widget iPad app the...

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JClark

Who pissed in your corn flakes?

How about you try commenting like an adult, and leave the name calling on the play ground.

June 19 2010 at 12:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brendan

Incorporate ad blocking into it and it would be a little more awesome than it already is!

June 19 2010 at 7:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Laurence Gonsalves

Does this have a JavaScript interpreter? If so, how does it get around the "not interpreters" clause of the App Store policy?

June 18 2010 at 9:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

noah nickels

Reeder and now this, finally app developers are getting it! Love this! Tabs are for a desktop.

June 18 2010 at 4:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Michael Murdock

Interesting on your comment about the safari bookmarks api. That being said, check out foxmarks as they are able to import safari bookmarks and since everyone who has a mobileme account...is there not some way you can talk through mobileme to grab their bookmarks and synch them? iPad based Safari is doing the same thing it appears as my bookmarks there are synched to what I have in my bookmarks bar on my mac.

Just a thought to check into. Great demo video. Nice job with the app as well. Will be purchasing in just a bit.

June 18 2010 at 12:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

koreyel

Worst thing about Safari on the iPod (besides no ad-block) is accidentally tripping a link and having your read interrupted by a page load. This has happened to me way too many times. That's more irritating than ipods that won't obey the power-off press, or fumbling to make a USB connection (who designed that shit?)...

So what is wanted in a ipod browser is a slick way to shut off accidental page loads until you are done with your read.

June 18 2010 at 12:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I'm confused. From the video it looks like it automatically loads your bookmarks and swipe between them. Instead, I choose my first bookmark, swipe, then up comes a CNET page not in my bookmarks with no other bookmark loaded for easy swiping. The voice over alludes to the idea that 80% of surfing is to the same sites, so how come bookmarks aren't utilized in this way? Or am I missing something?

June 17 2010 at 6:26 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Saied

Thank you everyone for your kind words/suggestions. We've worked so hard creating Life Web Browser and making it the best web browsing experience on the iPad (so far).

@ alphacrumb - good idea
@Mark & Alex - Yes - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/life-web-browser/id377598600?mt=8
@Spark & evelez84 - : ) Thank you.
@pax copia - To swipe websites, you grab the slices on the left and right. The website you're looking at works normally even if it's ultra wide.
@Prometheus25 - Hope it works now
@Eric Taylor & Karim - Karim nailed it on the head. We're bringing touch features to web browsing as opposed to bringing desktop solutions to a touch screen. Tabs need the preciseness of a mouse. More features will follow.

@everyone - So glad you like the adjacent (background) loading feature. Safari bookmarks are a private API so there's no way we can access it. At the moment, Life Web Browser 1.0 is great for browsing the sites you visit 80% of the time. Better than anything else out there. Swiping and queuing are awesome unique features. Other browsers out there are on 3 and 4.0. I think we have a great first start and hopefully when we hit their level of versions, we'll be even better.

Please know It's About Time is a company that is driven by ideas. If you have any suggestions, whether it be a simple UI change or a big addition, complaint, anything. Please drop us a line - hi@ItsAboutTimeProducts.com - Thank you all.

June 17 2010 at 5:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

5 replies to Saied's comment

Hobbes

It looks really cool and I don't mind the 2 bucks it costs.

I'd like to know if there is a way to sync bookmarks or import the ones I use in Safari. If anybody knows and would like to share the information that would be very appreciated.

I really liked the demo and moving through web pages by swapping left or right makes total sense. Looks like a solid app.

June 17 2010 at 4:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Karim A.

Just as the article headline says, the Life browser is optimized for the iPad. I've tried Atomic Browser and yes it does have more features, but the interface is designed for a mouse and keyboard with tabs and very small close boxes. Life is the first browser that has been designed exclusively for the iPad's touch interface.

This is the first version of Life and I'm sure they will be adding more useful features and enhancements in the future, but I love what I see so far.

June 17 2010 at 4:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply