iPad: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition

Chapter 12. The Web

The iPad’s Web browser is Safari, a version of the same one that comes on every iPhone and every Mac. It’s fast, simple to use, and very pretty indeed. In iOS 8, Safari gains a handful of slick new features (take a picture of your credit card, anyone?). Safari on the iPad 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, account names, passwords, and credit cards), 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.)

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.

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, tap the Web site name at the top of the screen. Or scroll to the top, scroll to the bottom, or just scroll up a little. At that point, here are the controls, as they appear from the top left:

• , (Back, Forward). Tap to revisit the page ...