By: Green Onion Software
Site: http://www.ysh.kr/multifullbrowser
Release Date: May 26, 2009
Click icon to download

When I purchased my first computer, I was perfectly happy with Internet Explorer. Rather, I should say that I was perfectly happy being oblivious to the fact that such a thing as another browsing program existed. Then, I kept reading about this thing called Firefox. I gave it a test run and the rest is history. From that point on, none of the things that came standard in a computer from Microsoft was good enough. I had to customize my PC in a way that would make it better than it was the day I bought it. The same can be said for my iPod Touch.
For the first few months Safari was good enough. But I kept hearing the calling. I had to get away from the standard iPhone browser. Of course, I was going to start with something free. I came across the app Multi-Full Browser.

Multi-Full Browser lets you have one, two, or four wimdows on screen at the same time. You can also set a home page for each of the windows. The UI includes a button to hide the toolbars from view. Even with the toolbars hidden, though, four windows on such a small screen all at once seemed a bit much.

Once you drop the number of windows to two, the screen seems a lot less cluttered. Even with the toolbars up, you can see a good portion of the page.

With only one window open, and the toolbar hidden, MFB gives you a lot more screen real estate than does Safari.
One problem I had with MFB was its terrible bookmarking manager. Your only option for bookmarking is to add your bookmark to a list, where they will exist forever in chronological order instead of being able to organize them into folders, or at least having them in alphabetical order. Hitting the edit button only allows you to delete bookmarks. You cannot rearrange them or edit them to create javascript bookmarklets which I have grown to love. Hopefully this will be fixed in an update. This is a major flaw in an otherwise fine browser.

By: Vikas Singla
Site: No Site Listed
Release Date: May 28, 2009
Click icon to download

Oceanus was the next browser I tried. At 99 cents the price was right. It says it's on sale now, but it has been 99 cents for a while now. The first thing that I noticed on pulling up this app was the slick, almost Firefox-like look of the UI.

Oceanus offers the same full screen that MFB does. And while you can have multiple windows onscreen with MFB, Oceanus works off of a "Tabs" system, sort of. Instead of actually having tabs to switch between, you have to pull up a window with the available tabs in it. Switching betwen the tabs, though, is effortless and instantaneous. Unlike in Safari, where the browser will refresh a page when you switch between windows, Oceanus switches without the refresh. This is great if, like me, you pull up multiple sites to compare and compile data.

Oceanus offers a range of other features. It will compress the web pages you are viewing into the google mobile format. You can choose to let it keep a history or not. It will allow you to use different search engines by default. A great bookmarks manager is included with all the features you would expect: creating folders, adding and deleting bookmarks, rearranging bookmarks. Oceanus will also let you describe your bookmark. I like to use this feature as a note to self about why I bookmarked this page in the first place. Last, but not least, Oceanus will allow you to change the theme, or color of the toolbar. This is great for those of us who like to tweak things.
All in all, both browsers are good alternatives to Safari. I preferred Oceanus over MFB just for its sleek look and excellent bookmarking system. Neither browser allowed for the redirect I use to get readers to the App Store. I will count this as my mistake and not theirs, and will see how I fare copying the url directly from iTunes on the next post.