Learning to Share

When you happen upon a webpage you wish to visit later, there is a way to get a copy of the URL from the iPhone to other places.

We've noted before that the iPhone lacks a copy/paste buffer for sharing information between applications. In those places where this is most painfuly obvious, such as the Notepad, the designers make an email option available. The Safari browser has this option also but the location is not intuituve.

While you are in the browser looking at the webpage you like, tap the address bar as you would if you wanted to enter a new address. When the keypad appears along with it comes a "Share" button in the top left corner of the screen. Tap it to create an email message with the URL already entered in body of the message. This is especially useful when you are trying to work with one of those long-ish URL's like so...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji5LErOpziWYa53CqPqnn0UY5Ucikxm9Si0wVIlC9UD6O8fYNYd-zZb76nzJNThxKkw7-9TRvzyr_pSjZSO7IklOQIk0f3OoV-ftGIbeXCpZ3lIKEzCRR_TzYQa2ee_DcyGuPEHa54HnAN/s200/safari_icon.png

Username, Password in the Website Address

For me, the most unpleasant surprise with Safari on the iPhone was discovering that it does not offer to remember any passwords.

However, for those few small, private sites that still use Basic authentication I can create a bookmark that includes my login credentials. This is a bad idea. I would not recommend it to anyone else but I do it myself in some cases because it makes things easier. Make a bookmark like this:

http://username@password:www.sitename.dom/

Sites using token based authentication have been giving me mixed results. In most cases, as long as I don't actually navigate off the site or close that instance of the browser window I remain logged in to the site. I can go back to the start screen, do something else and return to the logged on session. There does appear to be a time limit beyond which this no longer works. I have not a found a case of 'Remember me on this computer' failing to work indefinitely so this incarnation of Safari appears to be liberal about accepting cookies.

The most pleasant surprise for me was the way reader.mac.com/mobile handles xml files. The mac.com reader does an excellent job of rendering the feed. If you haven't seen it yet, try this link with Safari on your iPhone:

http://echo3.net/i/links.xml

Another pleasant surpise for me was the mobile version of Reuters news site. It is a compact, appealing layout that handles photos perfectly and easily unfolds into much deeper content.

Here is a very short list of links worth checking out with Safari on your iPhone:

http://mobile.reuters.com/
http://www.google.com/notebook/
http://www.google.com/calendar
http://mail.google.com/mail/x/