bug 345 - keyboard locks up in iOS WebKit textarea

Issue: #345
Affects: iOS WebKit 536.26 (Safari & Chrome on iPhone, iPad, & iPod)

Note: this issue is specific to iOS.  WebKit running on BlackBerry / Android devices are unaffected by this bug.

Under normal circumstances a TextArea (even in WebKit) works just fine however on iOS6 and WebKit 536.26 there is a bug with textareas if they are within an iframe.


Example:

<iframe src="somePage.html"></iframe>

and then in somePage.html

<textarea cols="60" rows="6">

type a bunch of multi-line content (e.g. "abc" [Enter] over and over)

</textarea>

Yup! that's all the code you need... a textarea in an iframe (very common in today's inline overlay popups).

Just type multiple lines of text (enough to be able to scroll the textarea vertically).

Then re-position the cursor elsewhere in the textarea and try to type again... Denied! The keyboard is almost useless as no characters will render on screen (oddly enough the backspace/delete key still works fine!)

Frustrating isn't it! Gah!

Known Workarounds: One. It isn't obvious but if you dismiss the keyboard or use Previous/Next to jump to another field and come back to the field everything works again!

Related Issues: None.

If you have a SmartPhone or Tablet that runs a WebKit browser (basically any of them except Opera, Firefox (or a Windows 8 tablet)) please try this out and see if we can narrow down the specific versions/Operating Systems affected.


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Safari on the iPad - The new king of mobile tablet browsers

Safari on the iPad

The new king?!, says who?! - well the reality is that this is essentially a new market. Oh sure you could get bulky tablet displays that run Windows and IE but that is nothing like the iPad or the soon to be released devices by HP, Google, Microsoft and others.

The trick here is that Apple absolutely "Crushed It!" (thanks Gary Vaynerchuk ;-) when they released their iPad. If you haven't got your hands on one of these devices yet - be sure to stop by your local Apple store and check it out.

This device is so sexy, so portable, yet so simple to use that it changes the game for tablet devices.



It doesn't run a full blown bloated OS, it comes ready to install one of thousands of apps from the AppStore and users are already totally familiar with the interface due to the massive success of the iPhone.

Yeah, yeah, enough of the hype - what about the browser?

Well its no surprise that the browser on the iPad is Safari and it supports a native resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels thus it can render web pages just like its desktop counterpart.

Its a robust browser full of great standards support and even some of that HTML5 goodness that we've all been dying to play with. The good news is that Apple has simultaneously Raised the bar! for the Mobile Web platform. No longer is IE6 the lowest common denominator that you are stuck supporting... you start fresh out of the gate with a very fast standards based WebKit rendering engine based browser - Web Developers rejoice!

So is it all awesome joy and perfect harmony? - well not quite. There are some differences in Safari on the iPad (vs. its desktop cousin) that you'll want to be aware of.

(stay tuned for updates!)
(bug 536)
(bug 543)

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Google Chrome Joins The Modern Browser Party

Welcome Google Chrome

For months if not years rumor had it that Google was cooking up a browser of their own which many dubbed "The gBrowser". Since Google had built a good relationship with the Mozilla foundation it was presumed that they would build it on top of the Mozilla rendering engine "Gecko" but Google has just announced / released the "Google Chrome" Web Browser, based on WebKit, the rendering engine inside Safari and Konqueror.

You can download the beta here for Windows (it will be available for Mac and Linux shortly) in one of 43 languages and give it a test spin yourself.

The interface screams of simplicity yet under the hood contains a lot of great design. The browser is designed to load each tab as its own process in the host Operating System, thus if one site crashes, you need not lose your entire browser and all other sites.

Tabs can be easily dragged, dropped and re-arranged... and best of all you can drag a tab out of the set, and start a new window... or merge one or more tabs back into one window just by dragging it back. (Note to all Web Browser makers, this is how all browsers should work!

Developers will be happy too, since it runs WebKit, its fast and any site that supports Safari 3.1 will work just fine with Google Chrome. Not only that it comes with a Task Manager that reports back how much memory your web site/application is actually using so you can watch your memory management and check for memory leaks.

For end users and developers go download it now and check it out! As for Google, welcome to the Modern Browser party, we're certainly glad to have you... Diversity is the key to the modern web.

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Apple Safari on Windows

Apple Safari on Windows:

For those familiar with the MacOS platform, Safari is likely your native tongue.

However Safari on Windows, is relatively new, and brings another great browser to the Windows world with all its shiny aqua goodness.

As a new browser on the Windows platform, it has some excellent features, and a few bugs that I'll point out below.

Features:
1.) It is Fast, blazing Fast!
2.) It has a built in JavaScript Console
3.) Built on the WebKit codebase (same as Konqueror), it is one of the most standards compliant browsers out there!
4.) Fancy shmancy form field highlighting
5.) Built in resizable textareas
6.) Built in bug submission. Right into the browser! Simply give some brief details (the url of the page you are on is sent automatically) and submit! All browsers could use this feature!

Bugs:
1.) It doesn't respond to the windows command [WinKey]+ M or [WinKey] + D to minimize all windows and display the desktop.
2.) You can only resize the window, by the bottom right corner, or double-clicking th e title bar.

If you haven't tried this browser out yet, I'd highly recommend it!