It does not have tabs but opens a fresh window. Though I think it does carry on loading while you are doing something else. Now I hope that you feel totally sullied.

I think tabbed browsing is in the next update though, isn't it?

Yep. Throwing away the 'expose' screen in favour of tabs in iOS 5 safari. Not out for ages though. Have a look at 'Terra' if you want a tabbed browser on an iPad. It uses the same page renderer after all..

Jon

Sites certainly continue to load when switching to another tab/window, not 100% about if the app is closed (but running the background).

EDIT: After some very quick, rudimentary testing, I think sites do continue to load when the app is in the background, though I'm fairly certain they don't refresh.

Yes they continue to load but do not refresh.

That would require each browser windows to exist in a different process with separate access to the network stack and plugins & etc. I doubt they've bothered doing that on iOS to be honest, given the majority of available iOS devices are single core anyway. Assuming the iPhone 5 uses the same dual core CPU as the iPad 2, it seems more likely to be something they might implement in iOS 5.

Jon

Thanks guys. The reason I am asking is that this was highlighted by somebody as a "realtime OS" feature when talking about BB Playbook. Apparently Playbook will keep refreshing in the background so your work doesn't get interupted while you are working on something else (a different applicatin for example).

If I fill out a web form, then go to check my emails before hitting submit, I can still come back to the web form and finish it off.

I think I'm being dim, but when you say refresh, you mean like hitting ctrl+r of F5?

No. What I mean it that some websites will reload automatically after some time. Maybe the whole website, maybe just a portion of it (like a flash window). The simpliest example would be a youtube video playing so you can listen to it, or a livestream (NASA tv is popular). Or maybe a live chart with share price updating real-time, or a table of share prices. Or a web based IM service. That kind of thing...

Classic example would the 'live commentary' sites the BBC do for when there's a big live news or sports event. They've got one running currently for the open golf, although this link will be dead after about 9PM on the 14th. They're a scrolling list of posts following the action, usually in an iframe on an existing page but sometimes done with javascript or HTML push. IIRC the ones I've used (mainly the BBC and the guardian) do seem to work on an iPad but obviously anything that's flash based won't, so it's down to how the site decided to provide it.

Jon

Ok, today I went to ap*le store in westfield london and had a play with ip*d 2.

I've done some testing on this "multitasking" issue I was asking about. I opened a number of web browser windows and started playing videos in them. First I opened a video on skysports and pressed "play". Then I opened and started playing a youtube video embedded on the androidcentral website and then another one quicktime one on the nasa tv. I didn't know if it kept playing or not but I couldn't hear anything, either the device was set too low or the noise in the store was too loud.

When I switched back to the skysports website , the video that should have been playing there was paused (i assume it paused itself) when I switch the window/tab. I pressed played again and went to the second website/tab only to find the video from skysports being paused and embedded on the androidcentral.com. WTF?!
I couldn't play it but when I refreshed the website, the androidcentral.com loaded again with the correct video. I pressed play again, went to skysports and there I found the video that should have been being played on androidcentral.com. WTF2?!

Then I switched to a quicktime video on nasa tv only to find that it was replaced by some other video, either from androidcentral.com or skysports, I can't remember which one.

Anyway, those of you who have ipads can try this at home and make their own conclusion, I don't want to called names here...

BTW, for those who care: the video embedded on the website will keep on playing on the Playbook even when you switch to a different application so you can listen to it no matter what you are doing.

Why would I want to just listen to a piece of video? Surely if it's video the visual part is quite significant? I can see the advantage with being able to continue to play a piece of streaming audio when looking at another window (live sports commentary is an obvious example) but, really, being able to play a piece of video in a window which I'm not interested enough in to actually look at? That's not a use case I've ever come across.

Jon

I think this is quite a personal thing. I rarely do this on the desktop, so I wouldn't want it/feel the need for it on a tablet. If I have wanted to listen to an internet radio station that doesn't have an external application, I've got an app that wraps the website in a native app which can then be played independently of my main browser.
But I can see where others would like it different.

I think the two preferences may come from how applications are managed on the Mac, simply by closing a window doesn't mean the application has quite, so I can hide/minimise a browser window (say) and carry on with the rest of my browsing. When I've finished browsing I'll quite my browser, which quits the hidden/minimised streaming window. On Windows/Linux applications don't behave like this.

If you want to listen to a radio station on the iPad, there is a radio app that continues to play when you have other apps open. I find that very useful. Could that be what you are looking for?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

There's a lot of music and comedy on Youtube where the video is not important. On a big monitor, I have space to keep it open while I do other stuff. On a smaller screen like my phone, I'd like to slide it off the side out the way. It bugs me that I can't do that.