News
Third-party browsing apps appear on App Store
By Charles Starrett
Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Wednesday, January 14, 2009
News Category: iPhone Applications
In a shift away from its prior policy of barring third-party web browsing applications on the basis that they duplicated existing functionality, Apple has allowed a small group of third-party browsing apps to appear in the App Store. Amongst the new apps are Edge Browser (Free), which clears up screen real estate by removing the address and navigation bars, Incognito ($2), which lets users browse without leaving a history of any kind, WebMate:Tabbed Browser ($1), which stores all clicked links in a queue, letting the user read them one-by-one as they’re ready, and Shaking Web ($2), a browser with a vibration-reduction like algorithm designed for use while moving.
With at least one submission date going back to October, it appears that Apple had a special list of such applications for possible future release; these standalone applications all appear to be based upon Apple’s own Safari browser, which has also been incorporated in various ways into other, more complex applications to eliminate the need to switch between an app an a separate browser for certain features. It is unclear what these standalone browser releases mean for full-scale browsers such as Firefox and Opera, which were previously thought to be blocked by the iPhone SDK agreement. [via Mac Rumors]
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1
An iPhone version of FireFox would be awesome, but to be honest I can’t see it happening.
Posted by NFreak007 on January 14, 2009 at 9:09 AM (PDT)
2
Browsing without a history would have its uses I guess. I could certainly do with Apple giving me a way of organising my videos so that more, eh, sensitive videos weren’t on view as I scroll through them.
Posted by BeefJerky on January 14, 2009 at 9:31 AM (PDT)
3
NFreak Mozilla have been dabbling with Beta mobile internet browsers for some time now so it wouldnt be that unlikely for them to produce one for the ipone, whether or not they do is another question. Though I for one would like to to have alternatives to Safari.
Posted by Johnathan on January 14, 2009 at 11:36 AM (PDT)
4
Um, these apps all appear to just be new wrappers for WebKit. It’s a whole different story if Apple lets a third-party HTML engine on the platform (such as that used by FireFox or Opera).
Posted by dave on January 14, 2009 at 2:35 PM (PDT)