Droid M terrible for browsing

[jetfixr]

I just bought a droid M. Someone finally figured out there was a market for 4g phone that wasn't as big as a HOUSE. So far the size is great, the battery life easily gets me through the day with plenty of juice to spare. My only issue with the phone is that so far I find the browsing experience cumbersome. I went to a website to check out the new Resident Evil movie trailer, it will download and then just hang up. On further investigation the default browser, Chrome, does not support Flash. Why? Also the pinch and zoom features seem all messed up, some times it is allowed, other times not. If a website contains small text and you enlarge it for comfortable viewing it is not reformatted to fit the screen. You are constantly having to pan back and forth to read the text. I have downloaded several browsers and cannot get a pinch, zoom, and reformat that is satisfactory. I am coming from a HTC droid Incredible (1st version) and inpsite of it only being 3G it was able to do everything I have mentioned here and it was 3 years old. I would love to find a fix for this because I love the form factor and battery life of the phone.

 

[guidot]

Chrome will not support flash. There isn't a workaround AFAIK.

Do you double tap the screen to get it into a readable format? This has always worked on my GNex with ICS and JB.

 

[Mr.Craig]

On my D2G I used Dolphin mini. It was good. I haven't found a reason not to use Chrome on the M though.

Try Dolphin mini. It might do some of the things that you want.

Also, I thought Flash support went away in August?

 

[jetfixr]

Try playing a Flash video, then you will find a reason for not running Chrome, lol. At any rate, I rarely run flash videos so that was just a minor irritation. I do however browse quite a bit throught the day. I have tried the doubletap method. It seems that will bump the screen up a fixxed amount, maybe 20 percent or so. With the HTC incredible, all I needed to do was enlarge the text to whatever size was comfortable, it would automatically format the text at that size to fit the page.

 

[Mr.Craig]

Try playing a Flash video, then you will find a reason for not running Chrome, lol. At any rate, I rarely run flash videos so that was just a minor irritation. I do however browse quite a bit throught the day. I have tried the doubletap method. It seems that will bump the screen up a fixxed amount, maybe 20 percent or so. With the HTC incredible, all I needed to do was enlarge the text to whatever size was comfortable, it would automatically format the text at that size to fit the page.

Good thing the Youtube app still plays videos.

Also, it really looks like Flash is going away on Android. This is from the Play Store App:
*** NOTE: FLASH PLAYER IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED FOR NEW DEVICE CONFIGURATIONS. FLASH PLAYER WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED ON ANY ANDROID VERSION BEYOND ANDROID 4.0.x ***While Flash Player remains on Google Play for installation on Android devices that are certified by the manufacturer, installing Flash Player on an uncertified device may result in unexpected behavior and can potentially destabilize your device. A list of certified devices can be found at http://www.adobe.com/go/certifieddevices. Flash Player WILL NOT be supported on any device shipped with or upgraded to an Android version beyond Android 4.0.x

 

[LaurelRaven]

Try playing a Flash video, then you will find a reason for not running Chrome, lol. At any rate, I rarely run flash videos so that was just a minor irritation. I do however browse quite a bit throught the day. I have tried the doubletap method. It seems that will bump the screen up a fixxed amount, maybe 20 percent or so. With the HTC incredible, all I needed to do was enlarge the text to whatever size was comfortable, it would automatically format the text at that size to fit the page.

I think with chrome, for the double tap, it will intelligently resize to fit text to the edges. Dolphin will zoom in further and reflow the text.

As for flash...Google's not going to waste time with it in their browser (see the other responses). Looks like flash is just on its way out, finally.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[iamgmf]

Try Firefox Beta

You can download Firefox Beta from the Android store, which is suppose to support flash, and so far, looks better then Chrome. I also like Dolphin, but flash will not work on it.

 

[TheAlmightyBob]

Just wanted to mention that I believe the type of continuous text reformatting you're looking for is an HTC-specific feature. All of their devices do it, and I haven't seen it on any others, regardless of browser. I don't believe Dolphin does things the same way, but I haven't used it in a while so I'd be quite happy to be wrong, as I am also a fan of this behavior.

Possibly you can achieve acceptable behavior by changing the font size in the browser settings so that it is more readable when automatically formatted to fit the screen size? (I believe Dolphin and some other browsers also let you specify a default zoom to avoid the double-tap step)

 

[TisMyDroid]

In chrome, go to settings then accessibility. From there you can set the size of the text that you would like your doubletap to zoom to.

Sent from my DROID RAZR Maxx using Droid Forums

 

[LaurelRaven]

Just wanted to mention that I believe the type of continuous text reformatting you're looking for is an HTC-specific feature. All of their devices do it, and I haven't seen it on any others, regardless of browser. I don't believe Dolphin does things the same way, but I haven't used it in a while so I'd be quite happy to be wrong, as I am also a fan of this behavior.

Possibly you can achieve acceptable behavior by changing the font size in the browser settings so that it is more readable when automatically formatted to fit the screen size? (I believe Dolphin and some other browsers also let you specify a default zoom to avoid the double-tap step)

I think dolphin does, but I can't check anymore since I recently removed it in favor of Chrome. I seem to remember it doing that, though.

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[bambam03]

There is a work around for flash on chrome. I have been using it and it works great. This is a plug in apk that works as a plug in for chrome. I
Got this off of xda.
https://hotfile.com/dl/178780482/10b...15.27.apk.html

My wife has the razr m and likes it. The only thing is that she came from a HTC incredible and had the same complaint about the browser. As
Far as I can tell there is no way to auto format the screen. She has gotten used to it and really likes her phone. Me, I went with the DNA, HTC
Makes a far superior phone with a much better interface, but for a small phone with a big screen the m is nice.

 

[bigbadwulff]

Forget Chrome and get Dolphin browser. Soooooooooooooooooo much better!!

 

[LaurelRaven]

Forget Chrome and get Dolphin browser. Soooooooooooooooooo much better!!

I had the exact opposite experience...dolphin was good, but chrome just had it beat.

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