Exploring the browser

We start our cyberexpedition with a quick tour of the Safari browser. Take a gander at Figure 4-1. Not all browser controls found on a Mac or a PC are present, but Safari on the iPad still has a familiar look and feel. We describe these controls and others throughout this chapter.

Blasting off into cyberspace

Surfing the web begins with a web address, of course.

Here are a few tips for using the keyboard in Safari (see Chapter 2 for more help with using the virtual keyboard):

• Because so many web addresses end with the suffix .com (pronounced dot com), the virtual keyboard has a few shortcuts worth noting. Press and hold your finger against the .? key, and you’ll see that .com option as well as other common web suffixes (.us, org, .edu, and .net). Some options appear only if you’ve selected an international keyboard (as discussed in Chapter 2).
• The moment you tap a letter, you see a list of web addresses that match that letter. For example, if you tap the letter E (as we did in the example shown in Figure 4-2), you see web listings for eBay, ESPN, and others. Tapping U, H, or M instead may display listings for USA TODAY, The Houston Chronicle, or The Mac Observer (shameless plugs for the publications where Ed, Bob, and Bryan, respectively, write).
• In iPadOS, each key on the virtual keyboard has two values. Tap, and you get the darker letter, number, or symbol. Swipe down on a key, and you get the letter, number, or symbol in gray, at the top of the key.

Siri can lend a hand, um, voice, as you surf. If you call upon Siri and ask the voice genie inside the iPad to open the Safari app, Siri obliges. If you mention a specific website to Siri — “ESPN.com,” say — Siri opens the site or at the very least your designated search engine (Google, Bing, or Yahoo!), as discussed later in this chapter. And that web page will open in a new tab, so you don’t lose whatever pages are already open.

When you tap certain letters, the iPad has three ways to determine websites to suggest:

• Bookmarks: The iPad suggests websites you’ve bookmarked from Safari or other browsers on your computer (and synchronized, as we describe in Chapter 3). More on bookmarks later in this chapter.
• History: The iPad suggests sites from the history list — those cyberdestinations where you recently hung your hat, including websites you’ve visited on your other Apple devices. Because history repeats itself, we also tackle that topic later in this chapter.
• Smart search field: When you type an address in the search field, you see icons for sites you frequent most often, and you can tap any of those icons to jump immediately to those sites.

You might as well open your first web page now — and it’s a full HTML page, to borrow from techie lingo:

1. Tap the Safari icon docked at the bottom of the Home screen.

   If you haven’t moved the Safari icon, it’s a member of the Fantastic Five on the dock (along with Messages, Mail, Music, and Files). Chapter 1 introduces the Home screen.

2. Tap the smart search field (refer to Figure 4-1).
3. Begin typing the web address, or URL, on the virtual keyboard that slides up from the bottom of the screen.
4. Do one of the following:
   • To accept one of the bookmarked (or other) sites that show up in the list, merely tap the name. Safari automatically fills in the URL in the address field and takes you where you want to go.

   • Keep tapping the proper keyboard characters until you enter the complete web address for the site you have in mind, and then tap the Go key on the right side of the keyboard.

     You don’t need to type www at the beginning of a URL. So if you want to visit www.theonion.com, for example, typing theonion.com is sufficient to transport you to the humor site.

Safari in iPadOS is a desktop browser first — even more so than it was when iPad ran Apple’s iOS. When you pull up a website on your iPad, it no longer defaults to the mobile version, because Apple takes steps behind the scenes to make sure your iPad is requesting the full desktop version of every website.

You can still pull up the mobile version of a website, though we can’t imagine why you’d want to. Simply tap the AA icon in the smart search field and tap Request Mobile Website in the pane that appears. This action affects only the current site.

Zoom, zoom, zoom

Zooming in can let you read and see what you want, without enlisting a magnifying glass. Better yet, it’s easy to zoom in, and we show you how.

Try these neat tricks for starters:

• Unpinch the page to zoom. Sliding your thumb and index finger together and then spreading them apart (or, as we like to say, unpinching) zooms in and out of a page. By way of example, check out Figure 4-3, which shows two views from Apple’s web page for the 2019 Mac Pro. In the first view, you see what the page looks like when you first open it. In the second view, we’ve zoomed in to get a closer look at the ventilation holes — and come on, we’re all thinking they look like aliens.
• Press down on a page and drag it in any direction, or flick through a page from top to bottom. You’re panning and scrolling, baby.
• Rotate the iPad to its side. This action reorients from portrait view to a widescreen landscape view. The keyboard is also wider, making it a little easier to enter a new URL. However, this little bit of rotation magic won’t happen if you set and enabled the screen orientation lock feature, which we describe in Chapter 1.

Reading clutter-free web pages with reader view

It’s all too easy to get distracted reading web pages, what with ads, videos, and other clutter surrounding the stuff you want to take in. Reader view can remove most of those distractions, but you need to activate it first.

When you first pull up a new web page that has reader view available, the URL bar briefly displays Reader View Available. To activate reader view, tap the AA icon, which appears to the left of the URL, as shown in Figure 4-4. If Show Reader View is blue in the pane that appears, tap it to switch to reader view. If Show Reader View appears dimmed, reader view is not available on this site.

Looking at lovable links

Because Safari functions on the iPad in the same way browsers work on your Mac or PC, text links that transport you from one site to another typically are underlined, are shown in blue, red, or bold type, or appear as items in a list. Tap the link to go directly to the site or page.

Other types of links lead to different outcomes:

• Map address link: Tapping an address might launch the Maps app.
• Email address link: Tap an email address, and the iPad opens the Mail app (see Chapter 5) and populates the To field with that address. The virtual keyboard is also summoned so you can add other email addresses and compose a subject line and message. For this feature to work, your Mail app must be set up (see Chapter 5).

To see the URL for a link, press your finger on the link and hold it there until a preview of the linked web page pops up, along with a list of options (see Figure 4-5). You can use this method also to preview where a linked image will take you.

As for the link options shown in Figure 4-5, here’s what three of them do:

• Open in New Tab: Opens the link in a new tab.
• Copy: Copies the link’s URL to your iPad’s Clipboard so you can paste it elsewhere.
• Share: Tap to open the same sharing options presented when you tap the share icon.

Not every web link cooperates with the iPad because it doesn’t support some common web standards.

Tabbed browsing

When we surf the web on a Mac or PC, we rarely go to a single web page and call it a day. In fact, we often have multiple web pages open at the same time. Sometimes we choose to hop around the web without closing the pages we visit. Sometimes a link automatically opens a new page without closing the old one, whether we want it to or not.

Safari on the iPad, like the desktop version of Safari (and other browsers), lets you open multiple pages. After you have one page open, you have two ways to open additional web pages in Safari so they appear on the tab bar at the top of the screen (rather than replace the page you’re currently viewing):

• Tap the + icon near the top-right corner of the browser. A tab named Favorites appears, as shown in Figure 4-6. Now type a URL, tap a bookmark or an icon for a favorite or frequently visited site, or initiate a search, and the result will appear on this tab.
• Hold your finger on a link until a list of options appears (refer to Figure 4-5), and then tap Open in New Tab.

To switch tabs, just tap the tab you want to view. To close a tab, tap the gray x-in-a-circle that appears on the left edge of the active tab.

You can manage tabs in one other way. Tap the view open tabs icon in the top-right corner of the browser (labeled in Figure 4-1 and shown in the margin) to summon thumbnail views of your open web pages, as shown in Figure 4-7. You can tap the X on any thumbnail to close it. From here you can also go into private browsing mode (discussed later in this chapter) or check out iCloud tabs, the topic we’re about to dive into.

Surfing your iCloud tabs

Although the iPad is your likely traveling companion just about everywhere you go, we know you also browse the web from your smartphone or personal computer. If that smartphone happens to be an iPhone and the computer is a Mac (or a Windows PC running Safari), you can take advantage of iCloud tabs, a feature that lets you resume reading web pages you started looking at on those other devices. Tap the view open tabs icon (shown in the margin) to bring up tab view.

Doing the splits

When you rotate an iPad running iPadOS in landscape mode, you can display a split view in Safari, with two web pages each claiming half the screen. For instance, maybe you’re trying to decide between two cars or exploring different places to go on vacation.

In typical Apple fashion, you can arrive at this split view in more than one way:

• Drag a tab to the left or right edge of the screen and release.
• Tap and drag any link in a web page to the left or right edge of the screen and release.

To exit split view, drag the gray handle in the middle of your display to the left or right edge of the screen and release. If you drag to the right, the window on the left side takes over the entire screen. If you drag to the left, the window on the right side takes over your screen.

Book(mark) ’em, Danno

You already know how useful bookmarks are and how you can synchronize bookmarks from the browsers on your computer. It’s equally simple to bookmark a web page directly on the iPad. Follow these steps:

1. Make sure the page you want to bookmark is open, and then tap the share icon (shown in the margin) at the top of the screen.

   You have many options beyond bookmarking when you tap the share icon (refer to Figure 4-1, though not all the options are visible in the figure), as you discover later in this chapter.

2. Tap Add Bookmark.

   A new Add Bookmark window opens with a default name for the bookmark, its web address, maybe a logo, and its folder location.

3. Give the bookmark a name and folder location:
   • Accept the default bookmark name and default bookmark folder: Tap Save.
   • Change the default bookmark name: Tap the x-in-a-circle next to the name, enter the new title (using the virtual keyboard), and then tap Save.
   • Change the location where the bookmark is saved: Tap the suggested Location field, which likely shows Favorites, tap the folder where you want the bookmark to be kept so that a check mark appears, and then tap Save.

To open a bookmarked page after you set it up, tap the bookmarks icon, which is to the left of the smart search field. (Refer to Figure 4-1.)

If you don’t see bookmarks right away after tapping the bookmarks icon, make sure the leftmost of the three tabs at the top of the bookmarks menu is highlighted. The other tabs are for the reading list and your history.

If the bookmark you have in mind is buried inside a folder, tap the folder name first and then tap the bookmark you want.

Altering bookmarks

If a bookmarked site is no longer meaningful, you can change it or get rid of it:

• To remove a bookmark (or folder), tap the bookmarks icon and then tap Edit. Tap the red circle next to the bookmark you want to toss off the list, and then tap Delete.

  To remove a single bookmark or folder, you can also swipe its name from right to left and then tap the red Delete button.

• To change a bookmark name or location, tap Edit at the bottom-right corner of the Bookmarks window. Tap a given bookmark, and an Edit Bookmark window appears, with the name, URL, and location of the bookmark already filled in. Tap the fields you want to change. In the Name field, tap the gray x-in-a-circle and then use the keyboard to enter a new title. In the Location field, tap the location name and scroll up or down the list until you find a new home for your bookmark.
• To create a new folder for your bookmarks, tap Edit and then tap New Folder. Enter the name of the new folder, and choose where to put it.
• To move a bookmark up or down in a list, tap Edit and then drag the three bars to the right of the bookmark’s name to the bookmark's new resting place.

If you take advantage of iCloud, the web pages you’ve bookmarked on your Mac and on your other iOS devices will be available on the iPad, and vice versa.

Saving to your reading list

When you visit a web page you’d like to read, but just not now, the reading list feature is sure to come in handy, including when you’re offline. Here’s how it works:

• Saving a page for later: Tap the share icon and then tap Add to Reading List. Or, if you see a link to a page you’d like to read later, press on the link until a list of options appears (refer to Figure 4-5) and then tap Add to Reading List. The first time you add an article to your reading list, you may be asked if you would like to automatically save reading list articles for offline viewing. Tap Save Automatically or Don’t Save Automatically, as you want.
• Reading a page on your reading list: Tap the bookmarks icon and tap the page in the reading list, as shown in Figure 4-8.
• Keeping track of what you’ve read: Tap Show Unread to display only those items you haven’t read yet. Tap Show All to show all the items in the reading list.
• Removing items from the reading list: Swipe the item from right to left, and then tap its red Delete button. If you swipe a little farther to the left, you can tap Mark Read instead.

Finally, don’t forget you can share your reading list (and bookmarks) among your computers and iDevices with iCloud, as described in Chapter 3.

Clipping a web page

You frequent lots of websites, some way more than others. For example, perhaps you consult the train schedule several times during the day. In their infinite wisdom, the folks at Apple let you bestow special privileges on frequently visited sites, not just by bookmarking pages but also by affording them unique Home screen icons. Creating one is dead simple. Follow these steps:

1. Open the web page in question, and tap the share icon (shown in the margin).

2. Tap Add to Home Screen; you may have to scroll through the options to find it.

   Apple creates an icon out of the area of the page that was displayed when you saved the clip, unless the page has its own custom icon.

3. Type a new name for your web clip or leave the one Apple suggests.

4. Tap Add.

   The icon appears on your Home screen.

As with any icon, you can remove a web clip by pressing and holding down on its icon until it starts to wiggle. Tap the X in the corner of the icon, and then tap Delete. You can also move the web clip to a more preferred location on one of your Home screens or on the dock.

Letting history repeat itself

Sometimes you want to revisit a site you failed to bookmark, but you can’t remember the darn destination or what led you there in the first place. Good thing you can study the history books.

Safari records the pages you visit and keeps the logs on hand for several days. Here’s how to access your history:

1. Tap the bookmarks icon and then tap the history icon (clock) at the top of the pane that appears.

2. Tap the day you think you hung out at the site.

   Sites are listed under such headings as This Morning, Thursday Evening, or Thursday Morning, or segregated by a specific date.

3. When you find the listing, tap it.

   You’re about to make your triumphant return.

To clear your history so no one can trace your steps, tap Clear in the bottom-right corner of the history list. You can clear the last hour, clear only the day when you tapped Clear, clear today and yesterday, or clear all your history. Alternatively, starting on the Home screen, tap Settings ⇒ Safari ⇒ Clear History and Website Data. With both methods, per usual, you have a chance to back out without wiping the slate clean.

When you clear your history from settings, your history, cookies, and browsing data will be removed from all the devices signed into iCloud. If that was not your intention, tap Cancel.

Saving web pictures

You can capture most pictures you come across on a website — but be mindful of any potential copyright violations, depending on what you plan to do with the images. To copy an image from a website, follow these steps:

1. Tap and hold down on the image.

   A preview of the image you have selected appears, along with a pop-up menu offering the following options: Share, Add to Photos, and Copy.

2. Tap Add to Photos, as shown in Figure 4-9.

   Saved images end up in your Photos, where they can be synced back to a computer.

   Tap Copy instead, and you can paste the image into an email or as a link in a program such as Notes. Tap Share to display the regular Sharing pane.