iPhone: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition

Chapter 11. The Web

The iPhone’s Web browser is Safari, a lite version of the same one that comes with every Mac. It’s fast, simple to use, and very pretty indeed. You see the real deal—the actual fonts, graphics, and layouts—not the stripped-down, bare-bones mini-Web on cellphones of years gone by.

In iOS 7, Safari has been substantially revamped and revised. It’s still not quite as good as surfing the Web on, you know, a laptop. But it’s getting closer.

Safari Tour

The Web on the iPhone can be either fast (when you’re in a WiFi hotspot or on LTE), medium (in a 3G or 4G coverage area) or excruciating (on the EDGE cellular network). Even so, some Web is usually better than none.

Tip

You don’t have to wait for a Web page to load entirely. You can zoom in, scroll, and begin reading the text even when only part of the page has appeared.

Safari has most of the features of a desktop Web browser: bookmarks, autocomplete (for Web addresses), scrolling shortcuts, cookies, a pop-up ad blocker, password memorization, and so on. (It’s missing niceties like streaming music, Java, Flash, and other plug-ins.)

Here’s a quick tour of the main screen elements, starting from the upper right:

• Search/address bar. In iOS 7, a single, unified box serves as both the address bar and the search bar at the top of the screen. (That’s the trend these days. Desktop-computer browsers like Chrome and Safari on the Mac ...