At one point I thought that the iPhone’s browser was so good mainly because the perormance of the device is so much better than all the other phones that you get things like smooth scrolling and good zooming for free. Those go along way, but you’re right. There’s more to it.

Regarding the missing find in page functionality, I find it (no pun intended) more than just a small annoyance – it is a tool I use all the time when doing any kind of research online. I have tried the plethora of bookmarklets that you are referring to, and they all fall far, far short of what has been state of the art on any traditional browser since, well, for as long as there have been browsers.

This has motivated me to create my own implementation, featuring a complete UI for performing searches and stepping through results, as well as much improved core search functionality. The biggest challenge in implementing the UI was adapting it to zooming – the page content can zoom in and out, but the Find In Page bar must remain the same size. The UI is implemented using HTML5 Canvas with hardware-accelerated animation to keep up with zooming. You can see videos of it in action here: http://findinpage.blogspot.com/2010/01/video-finding-needle-in-haystack-with.html

As you mentioned, installing bookmarklets is pretty painful, so I took this a step further, and released my Find In Page as an app on the App Store. The app assists in installation by putting the bookmarklet data on the user’s pasteboard, ready to be pasted into a bookmark. Here is the video of the process: http://findinpage.blogspot.com/2010/01/video-how-to-install-find-in-page.html

I must disclose that my Find In Page is not free, but it would be well worth the $0.99 for someone like me who really misses this feature in the browser, and wants to have it done right. I hope you give it a look – you will find that it is head and shoulders above any find in page bookmarklet you have tried before.

Another issue is Safari doesn’t cache pages for very long. If I open a bunch of pages of stuff to read, by the time I go to read them, they’ve been lost–the phone tries to re-load the page, resulting in an error because there is no internet, and all I get is a blank page. Not cool.

I have 8gb free–I don’t see why it can’t save the pages after they’ve loaded. Reloading a page is not fast on an iphone, and obviously you don’t always have internet access when it wants to reload. Needless to say, the ReadItLater app is my friend.

Re: Flash, the technical issue was always said to be about CPU and battery use. Given that the iPad is much faster and has a bigger battery, I think it’s becoming clear that it’s more of a political/business decision.

Two notes:

“Security and Phishing Protection”

MobileSafari has phishing protection like desktop Safari. See Settings: Safari: Fraud Warning. I’ve heard though that the blacklists are only updated if you launch MobileSafari while the device is charging.

“It was never entirely clear whether this was a technical decision or a political one; that is, until Wednesday when we learned that the iPad won’t support Flash either.”

So… what’s the answer? I’m not sure how the iPad’s introduction clarifies this at all.

I’m a heavy user of pages, and I use the “Open in New Page” feature all the time. In more than 90% of the cases, however, I return immediately to the main page. The way it works now makes it clearer what is actually going on, but more frustrating. A solution might be to open a new Page and start loading it, but staying zoomed out so you can choose with one tap whether to return to the parent page, or to go to the new page.