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Posts Tagged ‘Search Window’

Finally! "Find in Page" Comes to Mobile Safari

What important web browsing feature is sorely missing from mobile Safari, the iPhone’s built-in browser? If you’re like us, you probably said the ability to search for text within a web page. We’re accustomed to using this feature in the grown-up web browsers on our desktop and laptop machines, but sadly, it’s lacking when we switch over to the mini-browser built into our mobile phone.

Until now, that is. In yet another case of “there’s an app for that,” there is, in fact, a new iPhone application that adds the “find within a page” feature to the iPhone browser. And it’s well worth the 99 cent fee to finally have this function at our disposal again.

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Find in Page for iPhone

The application “Find in Page” (iTunes URL) released last month in the iTunes App Store is essentially a browser bookmarklet that adds an extra feature to mobile Safari. Not only does “Find in Page” locate all instances of a word within the displayed web page upon launch, it also counts them, highlights them and lets you move from once instance to the next (and back again) by tapping arrow buttons. Of course, there are other free bookmarklets out there that provide similar functionality, but this one feels very much like a part of mobile Safari itself. It feels built-in.

The key differentiating factor that makes this pseudo plugin stand out from the rest is the semi-transparent toolbar that appears at the bottom of the screen once the bookmarklet is activated. From here, you can access the arrow buttons, word count information and you can pull up the search window again if you want to edit your current search or start a new one. Also, if you perform multiple searches, you can do so without having to reload the page – a definite time-saver. Finally, an “X” button closes the toolbar when you’re finished.

Although this small application may not sound as exciting as some revolutionary new feed reader or a brand-new interface for Facebook, it’s arguably going to be one of the most useful applications you’ve ever installed on your iPhone. For that reason, we think it’s well worth the 99 cents the developer is charging for the app. We’ve certainly paid far more for applications we’ve used much less than this. However, for those of you who balk at paying anything for apps, especially for ones that are essentially just a bit of code, you’ll be happy to know that a free “lite” version of this tool will be coming mid-month. Stay tuned the App Store for its release. Otherwise, you can grab the paid version here.

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Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon

Filed under: Features, Reviews, Friday Favorite

Today’s Friday Favorite is a new one to me, but it’s been around for a while. I just picked up the latest version of HistoryHound from St. Clair Software — more famous, probably, for Default Folder X — and have been using it constantly for days. Its hotkey already has its own spot in my muscle memory. Here’s what it does:

HistoryHound indexes bookmarks, history and cache from all of your browsers, with presets for Camino, Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, iCab, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, Shiira and URL Manager Pro. It means being able to bookmark willy-nilly in any browser and know that you’ll be able to quickly locate noteworthy sites again, in any application.

Not just the bookmarks, though; in the background — with a very low footprint — HistoryHound starts indexing the full text of each page. Then you can search for exact or fuzzy matches, or with Spotlight-style boolean keywords for any text on the landing page. Search comes in two flavors: a tiny popup panel which can be assigned to a hotkey and provides a list of matches as you type, and a full, Webkit-enabled search window with page previews and a multi-column result list.

Continue reading Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon

TUAWFriday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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