Dolphin Browser: Surf Web with gestures

Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch owners already use their fingertips to tap, flick, pinch and swipe through content. But a new app goes one step further by letting you navigate the Web by drawing gestures on the screen.

With Dolphin Browser from MoboTap, you can use the nine preloaded gestures for common Web browsing commands, such as drawing a "greater than" symbol to go forward a page, an upper case "G" to open Google Search or backwards "C" to refresh to site.

But at any time you can tap the "New" tab to create your own gestures. You can either change the existing gesture, such as replacing the bookmarks shortcut by drawing a "B" on the screen if you don't want to use the default gesture (oddly, it's a small "m"). Or you can create all new gestures for things such as saving a page, clearing history, finding text on a page or loading a predetermined website with a command, such as drawing a "U" to launch USATODAY.com.

While adding gestures to the Web is a good idea, and it works well in Dolphin Browser, you first need to touch the finger icon at the bottom of the browser before performing the gesture. As a result, some tasks might be faster by simply tapping the dedicated icon, such as refresh, send page address, opening up another tab or accessing bookmarks.

But there's more to the free Dolphin Browser than support for gestures. Regardless of what website you're on, simply swipe right to open up a "Speed Dial" list, which gives you bookmarks to sites you frequent very often. Swipe to the right again for your full list of bookmarks. Or swipe left to open up a menu with five other options: view full screen, add new gestures, clear data, view download queue and settings. These quick-access "sidebars" help speed up Web browsing.

Previously available for Android devices, Dolphin Browser also offers a "webzine" feature and "desktop mode" option, both of which can make it easy to read content at your favorite sites; a smooth tabbed browsing experience for those who like to keep multiple sites open at once; and a smart address bar with auto-completion based on Google search and browsing history.

Aside from the aforementioned gestures flaw, it would've also been great if this browser let you surf to Flash-enabled websites as you can with other Safari alternatives, such as Photon, Skyfire, Cloud Browse and iSwifter. Also, while you're supposed to be able to shake the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to navigate back and forth through sites -- as seen in the Dolphin Browser video below -- it didn't seem to work for me, nor were there instructions on how to enable it. One last beef: The app isn't optimized yet for iPad, therefore you have to enlarge it to fit the 9.7-inch screen, and it's not in high resolution.

Overall, however, Dolphin Browser's gestures and sidebars make Web surfing fast, intuitive and fun while on the go.

Update at 10:24 a.m. ET: Dolphin Browser is now optimized for iPad, a feature added after this review was initially published.

Category:	Productivity
Developer:	MoboTap
Rated:	3 out of 4