Touchscreen Tips for Websites

The touchscreen operates much the same way in Safari as it does in the other iPhone apps. You can use it to scroll pages, zoom in and out, tap links, fill in forms, enter addresses, and more. The screen is remarkably fluid in its motion, and its response to your touch is neither hyperactive nor sluggish. It actually makes surfing the web a pleasure, which isn't something you can say about most smartphones.

Here's a little collection of touchscreen tips that ought to make your web excursions even easier:

Precision zooming:
Zooming on the iPhone is straightforward: to zoom in, spread two fingers apart; to zoom out, pinch two fingers together. However, when you zoom in on a web page, it's almost always because you want to zoom in on something. It might be an image, a link, a text box, or just a section of text. To ensure that your target ends up in the middle of the zoomed page, place your thumb and forefinger together on the section of the screen you want to zoom, then spread your thumb and forefinger apart to zoom in.
The old pan-and-zoom:
Another useful technique for getting a target in the middle of a zoomed page is to zoom and pan at the same time. That is, as you spread (or pinch) your fingers, you also move them up, down, left, or right to pan the page at the same time. This takes a bit of practice, and often the iPhone only allows you to pan either horizontally or vertically (not both), but it's still a useful trick.
Double-tap:
A quick way to zoom in on a page that has various sections is to double-tap on the specific section - it could be an image, a paragraph, a table, or a column of text - that you want magnified. Your iPhone zooms the section to fill the width of the screen. Double-tap again to return the page to the regular view.
Note:
The double-tap-to-zoom trick only works on pages that have identifiable sections. If a page is just a wall of text, you can double-tap until the cows come home (that's a long time) and nothing much happens.
One tap to the top:
If you're reading a particularly long-winded web page and you're near the bottom, you may have quite a long way to scroll if you need to head back to the top to get at the address bar or tap the Search icon. Save the wear and tear on your flicking finger! Instead, tap the status bar at the top of the screen; Safari immediately transports you to the top of the page.
Tap and hold to see where a link takes you:
You "click" a link in a web page by tapping it with your finger. In a regular web browser, you can see where a link takes you (that is, the URL) by hovering the mouse pointer over the link and checking out the link address in the status bar. That doesn't work on your iPhone, but you can still find out the address of a link before tapping it. Hold your finger on the link for a few seconds. Safari then displays a pop-up screen showing the link text and, more importantly, the URL, as shown in Figure below. If the link looks legit, either tap Open to surf there in the current browser page or tap Open in New Page to start a fresh page. If you decide not to follow the link, tap Cancel.
Tap and hold to make a copy of a link address:
If you want to include a link address in another app, such as a note or an e-mail message, you can copy it. Tap and hold your finger on the link for a few seconds and Safari displays the pop-up screen shown in Figure above. Tap Copy to place the link address into memory, switch to the other app, tap the cursor, and then tap Paste.
Use the portrait view to navigate a long page:
When you rotate your iPhone 90 degrees, the touchscreen switches to landscape view, which gives you a wider view of the page. Return the iPhone to its upright position, and you return to portrait view. If you have a long way to scroll in a page, first use the portrait view to scroll down, and then switch to the landscape view to increase the text size. I find that scrolling in the portrait view goes much faster than in landscape.
Two-fingered frame scrolling:
Some websites are organized using a technique called frames, where the overall site takes up the browser window, but some of the site's pages appear in a separate rectangular area - called a frame - usually with its own scroll bar. In such sites, you may find that the usual one-fingered scroll technique only scrolls the entire browser window, not the content within the frame. To scroll the frame stuff, you must use two fingers to do the scrolling.
Getting a larger keyboard:
The on-screen keyboard appears when you tap into a box that allows typing. However, the keyboard you get in landscape view uses noticeably larger keys than the one you see in portrait view. For the fumble-fingered among us, larger keys are a must, so always rotate the iPhone into landscape mode to type text.
Note:
Remember that rotating the iPhone only changes the view if your iPhone is upright. The iPhone uses gravity to sense the change in orientation, so if it's lying flat on a table, rotating the iPhone won't do anything. So rotate it first before you put it on the table.
Quick access to common top-level domains:
A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name that comes after the last dot. For example, in wiley.com, the .com part is the TLD. The most common TLD is .com, so your iPhone thoughtfully includes a .com key on the Safari keyboard. If you regularly use any of the other TLDs, you might think you have to type them the old-fashioned way. Nope! Tap and hold the .com key, and a pop-up appears with keys for .net, .edu, and .org, and another for your current country TLD (such as .us for the United States). Just slide your finger over the one you want.