back to article Dolphin Browser HD

There’s not much wrong with the stock Android web browser but if you fancy something a bit more capable you might want to consider Dolphin HD as an alternative. Dolphin HD Dolphin HD Dolphin HD: browse with tabs Now before I go on, this recommendation is not about page rendering speed. If you want to download Dolphin, …

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  1. launcap Silver badge
    Coat

    The Dan Marino of browsers?

    What? You mean slow-moving and unable to become a champion? Or playing in a style-challenged combination of colours?

    :-)

  2. Lloyd

    I liked Dolphin

    The reason I chose the default Android browser over it was the text shuffling (you know when you resize a page it jiggles the text around so you can still view it all, no idea what it's called), if Dolphin had that (and it may well do now, I've not used it for a while) then I'd go with it.

    1. Code Monkey

      Text-jiggling

      The lack of text-jiggling is a deal-breaker for me but it looks like one to follow closely...

      1. Steve Evans

        @Code Monkey and Lloyd

        You should give it a try then, I just loaded it up and tested it for you...

        Text-jiggling operational.

        1. Code Monkey
          Thumb Up

          @Steve Evans

          Cheers will play with tonight

    2. a33a
      Boffin

      Mystery solved :)

      I believe the term is "Text Reflow"

      ;)

      1. Rattus Rattus

        @a33a

        "Text Reflow" might be the official term, but I like "Text Jiggling" better.

        OT: I tried Dolphin a long time ago, but dropped it in favour of the standard browser because I just couldn't find enough advantage in it to justify all the space it took up. I didn't really see the utility in the gestures, but now I can see their use. I'm installing it again to give it another try.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Steve Evans

      re: new version

      I just downloaded and installed from the QR, and the side swipe works.

      Incidentally, Firefox mobile does this too.

      1. Levente Szileszky
        Thumb Down

        RE: new version

        "Incidentally, Firefox mobile does this too."

        Yeah except current Firefox Mobile beta is on the tune of ~40MB and slow as a dog (provided it did not freeze to death at startup, taking the entire Android OS with it.)

        Unfortunately current FF Mobile beta is a pile of oozing sh!t, period.

  4. Sam Liddicott

    Opera mini

    opera mini saves download time and bandwidth because it doesn't download the whole page, just what it needs to render. It saves much more than the mentioned half a second.

    No more 0.5MB "CNN front-page" downloads for me

    1. Matthew Collier
      Stop

      But...

      ....Opera are compressing the stream on the fly for mini, which also means they have a very good insight into everything you do via the browser.

      Even if you don't care about your privacy, I'd not trust my security like that to someone else!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dan Marino?

    Who?

    1. David Simpson 1
      Holmes

      NSS

      Not that I pay much attention to American sports but according to Ace Ventura Pet Detective Dan Marino played for the Miami Dolphins, hence the use of his name connected with DOLPHIN.

  6. andy gibson

    Dan Marino who?

    I vaguely remember the name as a "football" star who did a cameo in The Simpsons, but other than that it's pretty meangless to the rest of the world who doesn't follow the US girly version of Rugby.

  7. CompuGuide

    "User Experience Analytics"

    I could find no way to disable the above. The agreement seems to imply that it is a take it or leave it option:-

    "By participating user experience analytics, you allow an agent running in the background. It will collect the user experience data to help our future improvements"

  8. Paul Shirley
    Unhappy

    Dolphin never quite get their act together, always something serious broken

    "For anyone with oodles of bookmarks, the facility to create nested folders for them is almost reason enough to start using Dolphin."

    ...and the complete inability to delete or reorder them is almost enough reason to stop.

    This is pretty typical for Dolphin. I try it, I try to like it but they simply can't stop tinkering with the UI and never, ever bother documenting how to use the latest release. Documentation only needed because they keep doing things in non-obvious ways! So right now I can find several different processes meant to edit bookmarks, non of them supported or appropriate for this build, they even removed long press support present in the previous version.

    It's massively improved over the 1st versions I had sitting barely used on my phone more than a year ago and in many ways it behaves more like a standard Android app than ever before. And it's still just broken enough to annoy me. Meanwhile I'll go kill that 'read sensitive system logs' permission it wants while I decide whether to dump yet another Dolphin release.

    1. LomaxFairchild

      "...and the complete inability to delete or reorder them is almost enough reason to stop"

      You can actually do it - though it took me a few minutes to work out how:

      Swipe left to book marks

      Tap Quick Access

      Tap Bookmarks

      Brings up orderable list (tap-hold to delete)

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Al Taylor
    Alert

    Text

    does indeed reflow - or jiggle - in Dolphin HD.

  11. Mark York 3 Silver badge
    Pint

    BBC IPlayer Playback

    Is supported (with Adobe flash , TV Flash).

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Bookmarks

    "...the complete inability to delete or reorder them is almost enough reason to stop."

    Deleting / moving / reordering bookmarks is a easy as falling of a wet log, at night, in a strong wind, while drunk and juggling a dozen greased ferrets.

    Open app, menu - bookmarks - quick access - bookmarks and wallop, Hell, you can even batch move bookmarks between folders - not all desktop browsers can do that!

    Don't shit on an app because you can't be arsed working out how to use it!

    1. Paul Shirley

      OK, hidden not non-existent

      I'm shitting on it because the 3 different descriptions of how to do it *issued by Dolphin themselves* all described different methods and none work on this release or reached the actual editable list. And maybe I'm dim but hitting a button labelled 'Bookmarks' when I'm already on a bookmark list makes no sense to me. Particularly when the creator tells me to look for one labelled 'Edit'.

  13. Michael Habel
    Thumb Up

    I love this Browser

    But, I think that the Author forgot to mention that this Browser is like the only One, that has proper Flash support built in. No not even Firefox for Android has it.

    This coupled with the fact that you can change the User Agent (i.e. to Desktop), thus bypassing the Providers less useful Mobile Webpages for the Full Version.

    Then you'll quickly understand why this is a MUST HAVE APP.

    1. Pessable
      Meh

      Not so Flashy

      Strangely enough, I love Dolphin apart from the fact that Flash seems unreliable on my HTC Desire HD. For Flash (e.g. BBC video weather forecast) I usually have to open Opera.

  14. bumpy

    Annoying

    I tried it, but every time I load it it asks me to re-accept the license agreement. AND fails to retain my home page. Other than that, a nice browser but not my primary one.

  15. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    It also does animated GIFs

    The built-in browser does not, which is an issue for my weather radar sites. They also fixed 3 bugs yesterday that were bothering the hell out of me, including the inability to use "about:blank" as the homepage.

  16. AlexV

    So how are they making their money now?

    No longer ad-supported, and free? I understood the old model of free with ads, or pay to remove them, but if it's free without ads, then how are they financing it? It's not an open source project as far as I can tell either.

    It makes me nervous. I'm not paying, so I must be the product not the customer - but who is the customer and what are they buying?

  17. SteveBalmer
    FAIL

    @Alun Taylor

    Opera Mini is not a quarter of a second quicker, it's in the region of 5-6 seconds, 300% quicker.

  18. SteveBalmer
    FAIL

    LOL at author

    who can't tell a browser from a skin.

    DolphinHD is just a skin on the bundled Android browser, and therefore loads pages the same speed, and has all the same quirks.

    EPIC REVIEW FAIL OF THE WEEK.

    There are only 4 webbrowsers for Android. (and DolphinHD is not one of them),.

    Opera (Mobile and Mine)

    Firefox (sucks worse than your mum)

    NetFront (never tried if, but if it's as bad as the PS3 browser, then no I won't be bothering soon)

    Android Stock browser.

    1. Ian Yates
      WTF?

      When a browser is not a browser

      I don't know what El Reg or Dolphin did to upset you, but arguing what is and is not a browser is a bit odd.

      Yes, Dolphin renders pages using WebKit and some native API calls rather than reinventing the wheel and rolling their own rendering engine - that's hardly the same as a skin on the native browser.

      Are you saying the all WebKit browsers are not browsers because they didn't invent WebKit themselves?

      Personally, I use DolphinHD (a browser) on my Transformer because it provides an actual desktop-like browsing experience, which the bundled browser comes no where near.

  19. Swedish Chef

    Was buggy on my Desire

    I liked Dolphin Browser (even paid a couple quid for it), but for some reason it became increasingly frustrating to use on my HTC Desire. Maybe the bugs have been fixed in the meantime. If you're looking for an alternative to the stock Android browser, you might want to take Miren Browser for a spin - it has all the Dolphin goodness plus some unique features, and I find it to be much more responsive on my HTC Desire.

  20. Dave Lawton
    FAIL

    Support fail

    I tried this browser last year, when it didn't have nested bookmarks, found a few other issues, reported them to the support team, who couldn't even be bothered to reply, let alone actually help.

    Could never understand why it couldn't be the default browser, instead it used to ask to be the default for every page opened. That might be an Android issue, but I don't think so since FF4 doesn't do it.

    95% Na, more like 60%

    Gave up on it at that point.

  21. Michael Habel
    Stop

    It seems to me that none of these Browsers are worth a damn!

    Ok I'm gonna throw out a quick question to the Opera Fanboys, in hopes of an answer.

    How does one enable Adblock on Opera Mobile or Mini.

    I really couldn't give a toss about which version, I just want a decent Browser that enables Flash that kills off all those pesky Pop-up / Banner Ads.

    Sadly nothing I found on (or for), Android seems fully capable.

    As it finally dawns on me that Dolphins ABP is broken (it's listed as "installed", but falls to initialize under D-HD5, so Ads' go unchecked.

    Could use Firebadger, but would have to forgo Flash, which is a NO NO!!

    If I had wanted a Flash FREE Device I'd had bought an iDevice like the other iTards!

    And the Default (Chrome?) Browser can not be permanently fixed to report itself as a Desktop (UserAgent), plus there seems to be no Plugins (See ABP), for it either.

    Granted Opera seems like a decent browser, and having barely managed to workout how to change the UA for it.

    I can not for the life of me figure out how to get rid of those retched useless datawasteing Banner Ads.

    Help?

    1. Ian Yates
      Thumb Up

      Opera Mobile

      Settings > Advanced > Adobe Flash(tm) > Click to play

  22. Michael Habel
    Facepalm

    Perhaps I was unclear

    Sorry for the confusion.

    The question wasn't about Flash, I know that Flash works in Opera.

    The Question was about how to BLOCK POP-UPs & BANNER ADs, presumably with some modified urlfilter.ini and then getting the Browser to ignore the blank Image Placeholders.

    giving One a mock Adblock Plus effect [e.g. Firefox Mobile 4 and or Beta 5] on a Browser that actually works.

    Dolphin HD 4 seemed to be able to do that, since the current Update to 5 has broken that, and had its Adblock Plugin removed from the Marketplace, I've been in search of a Browser that can actually do this, AND FLASH.

    Why is it that People need to flip a b!tch about this?

    These are the things that should be standard in EVERY WEB BROWSER made today!

    1. Levente Szileszky

      RE: Perhaps I was unclear...

      "The Question was about how to BLOCK POP-UPs"

      Never seen any popup in mobile browser - they all block them by default for years now.

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