Which Web Browser?

Hi all

So I thoroughly enjoy web browsing on my iPad 4, it's what I do most with it, and as much as I like Safari I've got one major issue with it, it tends to reload tabs after I've left them for a while, sometimes even after I've just left a tab I go back and it has to reload, this really irritates a lot, so I wanted to find out from you guys what web browsers you use and which browsers are less likely to reload tabs?

I tried Google Chrome, very fast but the moment I had 5 tabs open, the rest began to reload when I went back to them, it seems to be worse than Safari.

I've tried Mercury but it just feels so clunky and poorly made, just feels like more effort to use than Safari and Chrome.

I'm currently using Coast by Opera just to see if I face the same issues as in Safari and Chrome. Coast seems very fast, but I'm holding back final judgement and will use it for a few days before I conclude.

What other browsers would you guys say are as fast as Safari and Chrome and will not reload tabs? This is my only gripe with both, if they didn't do that I'd be very happy.

I often have to copy/paste things either between tabs or between another app and Safari, so for me it is vital that I have a web browser that doesn't reload tabs when it wants to but rather leaves my tabs where they were, as I am the one who is in control I shouldn't just have to live with it doing this, it makes it less simple to use which diminishes the whole point of it "just working".

Thanks a mill for the replies guys!

maflynn said:

I think the reloading is less about safari having issues and more about available ram, which is why chrome is doing the same thing.

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Yep this seems very true indeed, as even Coast is now reloading, although it seems to hold tabs much longer in memory, I'm guessing it has a smaller memory footprint than Safari and Chrome.

zhenya said:

I have tried nearly every browser that has been released, and am pretty picky about details, yet Mercury is the only browser that has replaced Safari for me long term. What about it don't you like?

For me, it feels more like a desktop browser than most, and the interface is minimalist enough that it just gets out of the way. I like that I can keep in sync with all my other browsers regardless of platform. I can customize gestures to make navigation much simpler. And most important, it can keep 8-10 tabs reliably open without crashing or reloading.

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Maybe I should give Mercury another go, I don't know, I just find it a tad less fluid to use than Safari, but I'll give it another go and tinker with it a bit.

Menneisyys2 said:

ALL will reload tabs except for Opera Mini. It's only the latter that has significantly lower memory requirements.

Regrettably, Opera Mini tends to load quite a bit slower over fast networks than traditional browsers. It also has very bad scripting / AJAX support, which means you'll have a hard time reading, say, the comment section of an article.

All in all, don't bother with trying to find a Web browser w/o tab reloading. With 1GB of RAM and UIWebView's consuming even hundreds of Megabytes of RAM to load larger pages on a Retina iPad, you simply can't avoid tab reloading. "Thank" Apple for not delivering the latest iPads with more than 1GB of RAM...

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Indeed, the RAM given to these Retina iPads is laughable, it's really hindering an otherwise great experience in most other things.

sundragon said:

This is default behavior to save RAM - How many tabs do you have open?

FWIW - If you have multiple tabs open with form information it's not going to store that information for security reasons as well. You may as well go the Android route - though, I'm not sure things will be different re tabs refreshing (My Nexus 7s did that when I had multiple tabs open)

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I open around 4-5 tabs on average, I like to read a lot about Cars, Tech and Digital Marketing (my profession), so I have multiple tabs open all the time.
On my Galaxy S4 I can keep around 7tavs open, but that's a phone with 2GB RAM and an OS that is meant for multitasking I guess.


Thanks again everyone.

I'm still using Coast by Opera, still getting used to it, but two things I'm loving so far is how fluid it is and how resource friendly it is, seems to be a very frugal app on memory and battery, the latter is something I also liked in Safari, will give iCab a go though

I'm still enjoying Coast, but it is not without annoyances, I will give Mercury another go. One thing Safari needs that Chrome, Coast and even Mercury has is Data Compression. I often use my iPad 4 on LTE if I'm away from home, and the faster the data speeds the more I browse, lol, that's not good for my data balance.

Posting this from Mercury, before I opened it I did an update to it, it seems to be running a lot faster than before, it also has all my bookmarks from Safari, great start
Liking it so far, I'm going to keep it in my dock for a few days and use it as my main browser for a few days, see how it goes, don't know what put me off it last time to be quite honest but for a long time I just avoided using it.