iPhone: The Missing Manual, 11th Edition

Chapter 13. Safari

The iPhone’s web browser is Safari, a lite version of the same one that comes on the Mac. It’s fast, simple to use, and very pretty. On the web pages you visit, you see the real deal—the actual fonts, graphics, and layouts—not the stripped-down mini-web on cellphones of years gone by.

Using Safari on the iPhone is still not quite as good as surfing the web on, you know, a laptop. But it’s getting closer.

Safari Tour

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.)

Now, don’t be freaked out: The main screen elements disappear shortly after you start reading a page. That’s supposed to give you more screen space to do your surfing. To bring them back, scroll to the top, scroll to the bottom, or just scroll up a little. At that point, you see the controls again. Here they are, as they appear from the top left:

• Reader view (). In this delightful view, all the ads, boxes, banners, and other junk disappear. Only text and pictures remain, for your sanity-in-reading pleasure. See “Reader View”.

• Address/search bar. 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 ...