Is web browsing on iOS always so awful?

I tried a much older version of Android than is out now, 6 I think, but I never even got browsing working on it, so in that respect, iOS is winning.

If I install an ad blocker in Safari, do I get it in Firefox too, since they're using the same engine? I do want it for the device synchronization yes. But that's why I tried both browsers, to see if there was any difference.

I loathe Chrome and will only use it when forced to.

I haven't tried Adguard yet, I'm trying to space out phone stuff so I don't end up getting frustrated. It's also why I'm asking a bunch of questions here, to get some tips.

Speaking of which, Earle, any browsing tips? My sample site is:

http://www.cracked.com

Navigate by headings, pick an article. Read it, or at least click the link. Go back. What I'm finding, this was with a Bluetooth keyboard, is that you get a lot of jumping around. I'm used to the browser being on the link I was on when I go back a page.

So if I was on, say, "five awesome things you can do with an iPhone as a blind person", and I go to that link to read that article, when I go back, I expect to be on that link again. Then I can just hit the headings key to go to the next article, since on Cracked at least, they've all got headings.

Don't worry if you're not using a keyboard, I have questions about that too. Suppose i pick an article. I get to the heading, and I swipe down with two fingers to read it. Sometimes, VO will stop reading. I haven't found a good way to touch the screen to get back to the place in the article where it was at when it stopped, so generally with longer text I just end up reading it from the top again by swiping down with two fingers.

This is the stuff that's been bothering me. I haven't tried say, shopping on Amazon, but that would probably be a lot more straightforward, because you're just looking for specific links and more or less going forward, e.g. picking thingy, adding it to cart, getting to the cart, checking out.

You're just going from page to page there, and barring things like ads or popups or what have you, I imagine it would be a pretty straightforward experience. But I often use the web for longer reading, e.g. Wikipedia, so for me, I started there, also because I figured it would be simpler, in terms of basic site navigation, e.g. I'm not trying to deal with a form or what have you.

I also need to try the reader mode. I haven't yet because I find that it sometimes cuts off articles, among other things. So I usually reserve it for sites I know are going to have a lot of junk I don't care about, e.g. news sites advertising other stories. That's less of an issue, at least for me, on something like Cracked or a wiki.

Ah see, I've been trying to do everything from the keyboard. Not that I've been ignoring the screen as such, I just figure if we've got keyboard commands, they should do what needs doing. But see this is why I ask for tips, because there are just things like this that make using iOS more efficient that I wouldn't think of on my own.

Installed Adguard, went into Settings/Safari/Extensions and turned it on and allowed it for all sites, even allowed it for private browsing, though I'm not doing any of that. I fire up Cracked.

1. Hit h in quick nav, got to an article.

2. Hit up and down to double tap the article link.

3. Got a popup that started with "web dialogue", don't know what the ad was for, but I had to close that.

4. Hit up and down again, get to the article.

5. Had to hit h a couple of times to actually get to the article, because it stuck me at the end. Read the article with VO-a.

6. In the middle of the article, got what I assume was an image that started with "advertisement". So I question Adguard's effectiveness, or indeed whether or not it's actually doing anything.

7. Went back with Vo-` *grave( the equivalent of the scrub gesture. Touched the center of the screen with a finger. Absolutely nothing happened. Used the keyboard, appeared to be stuck in the status line, the thing at the top, for some reason. Moved around the screen by sliding, got somewhere, but it seemed to be at the bottom of the screen, e.g. where the menu button is. I stopped at that point.

I would love to Skype or Discord or something with one of you who are all, "I use my phone for everything, I haven't touched a desktop computer in years"! Because here's the thing. I agree, you should probably be able to do quite a lot of stuff on the phone. It's pretty much a computer, after all.

But I try to do what I consider super basic stuff like this, and this is the kind of thing I run into. You're all like, OMG the phone is so awesome! I'm like, I just had to screw around with this thing for half a minute just to get it to open a link and read it properly.

Where is this magic yous are all on about? Because as much as I'm trying, I can't imagine doing any kind of serious work on this thing, where "serious work" equals basic things like browsing the web, forget writing or coding or something.

Clearly, some of you are doing it. And I keep thinking, fine, it's my ignorance. And then I run into stuff like this, and it's honestly difficult for me to figure out what I might be doing wrong. I don't know what would make things feel more efficient and like every single action isn't like waking up somebody who's sleeping and trying to get them to respond. I don't know why simple things like "touch the center of the screen" simply do not seem to work for me.

It's just really frustrating because I just do not get it. I'm happy to keep assuming it's my own ignorance, but then I keep asking for tips on making the experience better, and usually I just get, oh go learn basic VO gestures, that's all you need! I mean, clearly not at this point. And I'm not even sure you can make the argument that I should be using the touch screen rather than a Bluetooth keyboard.

Because again, touching the screen in the center gave me no feedback whatsoever. No speech like I'd hit a link or heading, no clicky noise like I touched a blank area of the screen, literally nothing happened.

If anybody considers themselves an iOS guru, hit me up. I might even be able to pay for lessons. Because seriously, I would love to know what I'm missing. I keep wanting to use the phone for things to push it and see what I can do with it, e.g. podcasting, Youtube videos. but it's hard to get all excited about the supposed amazing possibilities when something this basic fails so damn hard. I could go grab the Lynx browser and do everything in a text console and have away better experience at this point.

I just kind of picked Cracked because it's a fairly straightforward website, and it's something I check regularly. And I feel like some of these suggestions won't really solve the problem, e.g. turning on reader mode by default, great, cuts out junk, still doesn't help me move around in a list of articles. I also think you're all kind of looking at this the wrong way, so let's get away from articles.

I go to Amazon. I search for, let's say Kindle books. I see one. I go, OK I want to learn more about that, what's it about, how much is it, you know, the stuff you want to know when deciding whether you're going to buy something on Amazon. I'm done.

I want to go back and look at a different one. Now what? As with Cracked, we basically have a list of links, with headings. Am I hammering fifty Amazon links into Pocket to read them later? That seems pretty ridiculous. Again, on Windows, I'd open each result in a new tab, which would maintain my place in the list of results, because in essence, I've never left the list of results.

Saying that's not the way to do things in iOS is fine. But there should be a fairly straightforward way to accomplish this IMO very basic task. Again, I picked a site with a list of articles because it seems pretty simple, find the article, open it, find the beginning of the article, swipe down with two fingers or do VO-a to read it, finish, go back, find next article.

But again, this is exactly what I'd do if I were looking at a list of Amazon results, or results from some other store, as another example. There's just more potential complexity, e.g. if I actually want to buy something I'm dealing with buttons and/or links for a cart, possibly forms, that kind of thing.

But at bottom, just browsing the results and getting more details is *exactly* what I'm trying to do on Cracked, which is in essence navigating a simple list of links. So fine, I'm on Amazon in a list of search results, and I'm using the touch screen for this now. Let's also assume that when I go back to the list from a result, my place in the list is not maintained.

How am I navigating this efficiently? Yes, I might end up saying, I can browse on the phone, but it is awful and I'll only do it if I absolutely have to. But again, I'm assuming that any issues I come across using the phone are my own ignorance until proven otherwise.

As an example, I've been focusing on the keyboard because I use it to type, you can do stuff with VO on it, so I figure, why switch thingies? But now I know I should at least try focusing on the touch screen and using the keyboard only for typing. So this is something I can try. I can always abandon it, if I find it annoying or whatever.

Basically, I think it's easy to just throw up my hands and say I'm not great at using the phone, or I'm impatient, or whatever. That's why I'm trying to get tips, and thanks for all the help so far. I'd rather know how to do it and choose not to, than just assume it can't be done or I can't do it or whatever.

Like I said, it just gets frustrating when I'm doing very basic stuff like going to a page, clicking a link, doing something (reading it or whatever), and going back to the main page and getting stuck in part of the page or sent to a totally different area of the page or what have you. If this stuff is easier to deal with on the screen, great, just let me know what I'm doing with that, because I am apparently super dumb and have no clew whatsoever.

I mean, OK, sure, yes, if I can't get X done because Y is broken, sure. That's not really what's happening here.

Take Earle's tip. Click a link, do whatever, go back. Touch the center of the screen, and you'll be in about the place you were.

I did that. I did not get to the place I was at. Now, before I go complaining to Apple, it seems to me that I should make sure I was doing it right, and it really *is* some sort of issue. Or take the keyboard.

Sometimes I'd go back and just get a word of the page, and moving around with the keyboard, that was all the screen appeared to be. Touching the screen, I usually had to slide around it for a bit, fixed that, it got it back into the body of the page.

So when VO thinks it's in the page, the keyboard actually works fairly well. I can navigate by headings, usually click links, and so on. It does seem that VO gets confused sometimes, but this is why I'm asking about tips for screen navigation. Because I'm not entirely sure you can just blame it on the keyboard, and so I have to go complain to Apple about how they need to improve keyboard navigation with VO.

I apologize for the harshness, as I've mentioned, I get frustrated with the phone sometimes. That's because I see some people here going "oh I do all the web on my phone", and I'm going, how? See the above experiences for why that is.

Now it may indeed be the case that Apple needs to change something, or these people have a much higher threshold for something, waiting for pages to load, using a touch screen, whatever, than I happen to have. But if I can't do something, and multiple people say they can do it just fine, to the point that's all they ever use? Then I assume the problem is mine, not Apple's, until proven otherwise.

Re: Amazon

Fine. I'm here.

https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

I search for banjo. I click the first link. Then I want to go back and click the fourth one, and then the seventh, and then the fifteenth, it doesn't matter what, I'm just trying to go through that list and hear recordings that interest me. There is no app. The website is all you get.

How am I navigating it?

Sticking with the Cylinder Recordings Archive, they do 25 results per page, it looks like. So if I'm on twelve, and I click that link, then go back, the only way to get to fifteen is to set the rotor to links, and navigate through them all until I get to fifteen?

Put another way, OK, it doesn't maintain my place. Given that, do we have any better ways to navigate a list like this other than start at the top of the page and scroll through every link until you get back to where you were?

Again, thank you everybody so much for the help, and checking out pages. I'm fine with it not holding place, and yes if I decide that's needed, I should go complain to Apple. But right now I'm literally just trying to understand the best way to browse on a phone. So as an example, the advice to mostly use the screen rather than a keyboard, (although I wonder if you run into the same problems with things like the Hable), is probably going to be pretty helpful, and not something I would have necessarily thought of.

That's because I tend to stick to a thing unless I have to switch. So if I just have the phone with me, I'm likely to use the screen rather than a keyboard, unless I'm in a situation where that makes sense. But then I'd just stick to the keyboard for a while. So sure, I thought of maintaining place and tabs and all because that's what I'm used to. But on a touch screen, opening things in new tabs might not make a lot of sense, for instance.

So like I said, I'm just trying to figure out how to navigate a page like the Cylinders archive because, well navigating other pages seems simpler, you'd be doing less with them. Although now that I think of it, navigating the Cylinders archive would be like doing a Google search, right? Same thing, I search for whatever, I look at the first result, then I want to go back and look at more results and check out another one. So there we're just starting at the top of the results and scrolling through every time?

I'll give that a shot. It also might work for keyboard because you can get through the rotor options there. The big thing would be getting it back in the web content. The reason I'm thinking about keyboard is partly just to see if it can be done, but also I think I mentioned something like the Hable, which claims you can control your phone without using the screen.

So it just makes me curious what kind of control you'd really get. I assume it would work more or less like a Bluetooth keyboard though, unless it calls on the braille display commands instead? I have one of those too, which I haven't hooked up yet. So I'm just thinking of what you can do with each thingy. Screen is probably a great place to start, and now I've got some great tips.

I assume you can also go to the top of the screen too and do the same trick with unvisited? This would depend on knowing the site layout a bit, but I'm thinking for something like Cracked, for instance, that it might be simpler to start from the top, since newer stuff is first, although there ,headings would also be a good option. Cylinders doesn't have headings for some reason, so cool that we've got multiple ways to tackle this. Thanks everybody!

But from what I understand, it's sort of like a braille keyboard, but it doesn't behave like one. That is, it's not like a braille display with a keyboard, it uses its own commands. To be fair, I'm just going from what I've read of it.

The only reason I'm digging into alternative control for the phone is like I said, I find it kind of annoying to have to switch control methods. I'm sure I can get used to it, but for now, it's annoying to go, oh yeah I can do X on the keyboard, e.g. some extended writing, and now I have to switch to the screen.

Plus, if you think of something like the Orbit Writer, then you might have your phone in your pocket, so you'd want the most control over it without having to switch. To get back to browsing, stuff like navigating by headings and using the rotor and stuff works just fine from a Bluetooth keyboard. So the suggestion for using unvisited links, for instance, should work from the keyboard.

It might be a bit slower than the screen, but it works, I know this because I was browsing by headings and such before on Cracked. The big issue is placement, or more correctly, getting back to the link for the article or recording or whatever that you last read.

I do think using the screen is a great suggestion, it's something I need to get more familiar with anyway and specifically the gestures like touching the bottom of the screen to move around. But again, VO's keyboard commands should have equivalents, e.g. "Select the first or last item
Control-Up Arrow or Control-Down Arrow", that's with quick nav enabled.

I'll have to check what using a braille display is like, because if it gives more control, then the Orbit Writer would certainly be more portable than a standard BT keyboard. But I will say again, I think a lot of the issues with using a keyboard on the web aren't because stuff's not supported or something.

It gets back to the advice given about unvisited links, you get to a place on the screen, and then you have to get back into the web content. Sometimes when you go back with the keyboard, it doesn't seem to be in the web content area, so you have to figure out how to get back there.

I don't know if there's a way to do it without the screen, I'll keep investigating. And then there's the other issue, once you're back in it, you're probably not at the last place you were, so how are you getting there?

But as we've seen, this is an issue if you're using a touch screen as well, we just have a method or two for doing it now, thanks to you guys investigating. But those methods should also work with a BT keyboard and I assume a braille display/braille keyboard like the Orbit Writer as well. Bluetooth certainly has a method for accessing the rotor, as well as the web quick nav stuff like headings, and I assume a braille display has similar commands.

I don't think something like a Hable would make it stay on the link either, in fact, my whole point is the controller, so to speak, doesn't seem to matter. I still have to get back into the web content area and then get back to where I was, no matter if I'm using a screen, or a Bluetooth keyboard, or I presume a braille display, or whatever.

I also don't think something like a keyboard is lazy, as such. As an example, say I'm writing a blog post. I want to look up something on Wikipedia and copy and paste it into the post I'm working on. Doesn't it seem far more straightforward to use the keyboard for that, instead of breaking my workflow to switch to the phone's screen, and then back to the keyboard?

Or imagine I'm in a vehicle, maybe a keyboard, (I'm including a braille display with a keyboard here), would be more stable to work with because it would be less affected by movement. Or, actually a display is a great example. I'm pretty sure there are deaf-blind folks using iOS devices, should they have to try and juggle a phone and a display? It makes far more sense to just stay on the display, whenever it's possible, even if you can use the screen and speech.

So I don't think a not screen is bringing anything special to the table. I just think I should be able to do whatever *without* the screen, if I want to. That might not always be possible, of course. But something like web browsing should be pretty doable. In fact, I'm off to look at the articles and podcasts on using a braille display now, so I can go and try using one with the phone. I'm doing the screen yet.