Taro

An innovative iPhone web browser

Taro is the Swiss Army knife of mobile web browsers — designed to speed up searches, maximize screen space and curb the hassle of network dropouts, taro goes above and beyond what you've come to expect from an iPhone/iTouch browser.



Interface

Browse in full screen all the time, maximizing your screen real estate. Use gestures to pull up the interface only when you need it. Gestures include:

  • Swipe up — interface (swipe away to hide)
  • Double-tap — toggle queue-mode
  • Swipe left — bookmarks shortcut
  • Swipe right — queue shortcut

Additionally, double-tap the page title to reveal the status bar.

Queue-mode

Download webpages, PDF documents and images in the background to reduce down time as you browse, or save them for later viewing offline. taro saves not only the HTML, but images, CSS and Javascript so you can get the full online experience wherever you need it.

Omnibar

Search Google or Yahoo directly from the address bar, or use custom search shortcuts to save time and bandwidth. Searches include:

  • w - Wikipedia
  • y - YouTube
  • f - Facebook
  • t - Twitter
  • fl - Flickr
  • d - Definr
  • l - Last.fm
  • di - Discogs
  • wa - Wolfram-Alpha

e.g. Typing "y Rick Astley" will search YouTube for the keywords "Rick Astley".

Bookmarklets

Enhance your browsing experience with bookmarklets, giving you the kind of functionality you'd expect from a desktop web browser. Bookmarklets include:

  • Mobilize
  • Find in page
  • Change font size
  • Search this site
  • Show RSS feed
  • Show image title
  • Show alt text
  • Convert URLs to Hyperlinks
  • Display all images
  • Hide all images
  • Translate this page
  • View Source
  • Calculate
  • Facebook this
  • Reddit this
  • Digg this
  • Tweet this
  • Serendipity

Want more? Tell me what bookmarklets you'd like, and I'll add them in future updates. Email me at tarofeedback@gmail.com

And more

  • Choose from Google or Yahoo as your default search engine
  • Don't bother typing "www." or ".com/net/org" ever again, taro does it for you
  • Save search history or browse privately
  • Set a homepage to load on launch, or go to the last page visited
  • Lock the orientation to avoid unwanted screen rotations
  • Scroll to bottom or top of the web page

Coming Soon

  • The ability to add your own custom searches
  • Star and refresh queue items
  • Better organization of queue items


Feedback

I hope you love taro as much as I do. If you have any feedback or ideas you'd like to see implemented, email me at tarofeedback@gmail.com


Disclaimer

Due to the endless variation in webpage markup on the internet, page queueing may not always work as expected. If you encounter any websites that won't queue properly, please let me know at tarofeedback@gmail.com and I'll do my best to fix it for you.

Availability


Taro was rejected by Apple due to the bookmarklets and the progress display. Apple does not provide support in the SDK to determine how much of the page has loaded in a UIWebView Object. Instead I had to use a private API to provide this information which goes against the developer agreement. My developers agreement has since expired but I will be seeking to bring Taro to iOS 4 devices once I redesign the way page loading works to allow for my own custom progress display.

You can contact me for further information on taro using this form