Sunday 30 November 2014

Surf in Panoramic Mode

Browsers usually show one web page at a time. This is a similar situation on every browsers that I have tried and used. Although this is absolutely OK for everyday internet surfing, but sometimes this is not enough for some situations.

Ever done internet shopping and comparing prices from websites? To do this, we usually toggle from the opened tab to see similar items from different websites. There's nothing wrong with it but personally, I want to see these items side by side. Although there is a way to get round to it like opening two browsers and minimizing both windows to sit side by side . This takes a few more click and it seems like it is unnatural thing to do. Has the browser makers did not think of this and make an update so that we have this function  when we browse?

A new comer in the browser wars has acknowledge this shortcoming and made a new application that can do exactly like this.  And not only that, it is also  fast and worth a try

Download Polybrowser here.

Features.


1. Tab Browsing

Like the popular browsers, it supports multiple tabs(1) that can be opened in one browser window. The tabs can be dragged and positioned as you wish to keep your searches together.

2. Stiched Web Pages

The versatility of the stiched style of web pages is you can control the size of any of the windows so that the screen can accommodate more sites. This is useful when comparing like in shopping or researching for information. It is easy to change the width by dragging the middle of the stich(2) to either way. You can then navigate to each window by using the sliders(4) or by the arrow keys on your keyboard. The slider at the bottom of the screen will let you see all opened tabs like viewing a panorama picture.




3. Supports Multiple Search Engines

The program uses it's built in search engine, PolyFetch, which is powered by google but with a different interface. If you are not comfortable using it, you can easily change(3) it to popular engines like google or bing by customizing it.

4. Easy Access

Recently visited sites are usually tucked away on popular browsers. Polybrowser cleverly shows all visited sites on it's home tab. You can easily pin, launch or delete this pages(5) by clicking the corresponding button that appears when you hover your mouse over the thumbnail. Another clever thing that it does is it groups (6) similar websites into one speed launcher shortcut automatically.




Early Experience

Poly browser is still on it's early stage and it will need improvements as it goes. And here are some.

Polyfetch. It seems like it defaults to US contents. When I search for iphone 6, the search results show US apple store and other telecommunication companies in the US. As I am in the UK, this is not at all relevant to me. To get around it, I did put UK at the end of my search word.

Compatibility to Blogger. Whilst doing a post on the blogger flatform, I opened up two polybrowser tabs that show my edit page and a link site. Copying the link from the other site is not a problem but going to the edit page of blogger to paste it will not let me do it. The paste command is greyed or not active.

Having encountered these problems, I think the concept of this application is aimed for users to assist them and simplify complex tasks. But it does need to address these issues as users can easily change hearts when a vital function is missing. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

google.com, pub-9356159227116695, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

ShareThis

Popular Posts