Vais Salikhov

What important Web browsing feature is sorely missing from mobile Safari, the iPhone's built-in browser? If you're like us, you probably said the ability to search for text within a Web page. We're accustomed to using this feature in the grown-up Web browsers on our desktop and laptop machines, but sadly, it's lacking when we switch over to the mini-browser built into our mobile phone. Until now, that is. In yet another case of "there's an app for that," there is, in fact, a new iPhone application that adds the "find within a page" feature to the iPhone browser. And it's well worth the $0.99 fee to finally have this function at our disposal again. The application "Find in Page" (iTunes URL), which was released last month in the iTunes App Store, is essentially a browser bookmarklet that adds an extra feature to mobile Safari. Not only does "Find in Page" locate all instances of a word within the displayed Web page upon launch, it also counts them, highlights them and lets you move from once instance to the next (and back again) by tapping arrow buttons. Of course, there are other free bookmarklets out there that provide similar functionality, but this one feels very much like a part of mobile Safari itself. It feels built-in. The key differentiating factor that makes this pseudo plugin stand out from the rest is the semi-transparent toolbar that appears at the bottom of the screen once the bookmarklet is activated. From here, you can access the arrow buttons, word count information and you can pull up the search window again if you want to edit your current search or start a new one. Also, if you perform multiple searches, you can do so without having to reload the page - a definite time-saver. Finally, an "X" button closes the toolbar when you're finished. Although this small application may not sound as exciting as a revolutionary new feed reader or a brand-new interface for Facebook, it's arguably going to be one of the most useful applications you've ever installed on your iPhone. For that reason, we think it's well worth the $0.99 the developer is charging for the app. We've certainly paid far more for applications we've used much less than this. However, for those of you who balk at paying anything for apps, especially for ones that are essentially just a bit of code, Read More

v1.0 Find in Page isn’t really an app – it’s actually just a very fancy Safari bookmarklet that emulates the Ctrl-F or Cmd-F functionality on a desktop browser. All you do is load the $0.99 app up, copy the javascript code with one tap of a button, paste it into an existing bookmark, and you’re good to go. Find in Page loads a small toolbar overlay at the bottom of your screen to help you navigate to different instances of the word you’re looking for. This bookmarklet works pretty well for the websites I visit, but it does warn that it can’t detect words when they’re formatted differently (i.e. Iron Man), and it certainly isn’t optical character recognition (so no finding words in pictures). There are other bookmarklets that do similar things (like Safari+, thanks to Code Retards), but Find In Page certainly provides the easiest way of setting this functionality up. It’s also the only one I know of that has buttons to help you jump to each found word – which is a big help! —Find In Page is available for $0.99 on the App Store. The app was provided by Vais Salikhov for review on the site. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page. Read More

by on 26. Jan, 2010 in Vais Salikhov wrote to tell me about Find In Page, his newly available $0.99 app. The app isn’t. Instead, it’s a Mobile Safari bookmarklet. Confused? Allow me to explain: Mobile Safari, like any modern browser, supports bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are compact blurbs of JavaScript saved as a bookmark. When you navigate to a JavaScript bookmark the browser simply executes the JavaScript in the current page. So, instead of writing a complete Safari replacement to add the missing Find In Page capability, you write JavaScript to take the search term and then find it in the page. Add that JavaScript as a bookmark and you’re all set. Vais’ twist is this: he’s selling his bookmarklet in the App Store for $0.99. His angle is clever: he’s created a simple app that places the bookmarklet JavaScript on the pasteboard. The user can then add a bookmark and set its location by pasting the JavaScript. This YouTube video demonstrates the installation: Early registration for my iPhone Development For Web Programmers in Minneapolis on Feb10-11 ends this Sunday. $899 with “mo” discount code and early reg discount. Read More