Swipe Browse Presents Just An Address Bar, Swipe Navigation
Swipe Browse ($0.99) by Akshat (Ash) Bhat reduces the interface of an iOS browser to nothing but address bar. In place of forward and backward buttons are the simple gestures of swiping left and right.
Attempting to be an alternative to the Safari app, alongside other browsers such as Terra and Dolphin Browser, this app is by far the most minimal.
The app's default homepage has two YouTube videos on it to show navigating via the swipes and refreshing the page by tapping twice. Swiping to the right will go back a page, while the left is used for going forward.
The trick is finding the right touch for it. You'll find the right touch somewhere between deliberate and accidental.
While the idea is a good one, I think a couple of features need to stay in the address bar, such as favorites and an ability to add a home page. Dolphin Browser is able to tuck those features away on the sidebars.
Swipe the bars open or closed, and the features are available without needing to stay visible all the time. Dolphin Browser also has the ability to draw a symbol on the screen, which can be set to load a page you have attached to it.
The app will open onto the last page you visited, until you force quit it, when it will go back to the default home page.
I'll let you decide how you'd like to implement this into your browsing habits, though the force quitting aspect doesn't do much for erasing your history the moment you simply leave the app.
This app is interesting with its approach to browsing, though it may be pared down too far. For incidental browsing, where you don't care about saving bookmarks or doing any tabbed browsing, this app works.
Though at $0.99 it is more expensive than free browsers that offer more functionality.
