Gestures on the new Dolphin Browser for iPhone.

The Dolphin Browser made a name for itself on Android, carving out a space as a zippy alternative to the default browser while rapidly building a robust feature set. Dolphin for iPhone, released today, brings most of those features to iPhone owners. The most notable one is gesture-based browsing, which makes it the only iPhone browser to support custom gestures.

Another interesting feature that Dolphin brings to the iPhone is its Webzine. It's the browser's in-house version of the streamlined, ad-free reading experiences that turn multipage stories on the web into a single vertical flow. Webzine includes works on more than 120 "channels," based on the sites' RSS feeds.

The browser bakes in a lot of tools that other browsers require you to reach for add-ons to get. The Twitter icon allows you to share via Facebook or Twitter, tabbed browsing replicates the popular desktop browsing option, and the built-in desktop agent allows you to force a site to render in its standard desktop view. There's also the Speed Dial, for quick one-tap access to your most regularly visited Web sites.

Unfortunately, Dolphin faces the same restrictions that other third-party browsers suffer on iOS. There's no way to change your system's default browser, and unlike on Android--where the default br... [Read more]

While the desktop version of Firefox seems to have settled into an interface design, going largely unchanged since version 4 debuted in March, Firefox for Android (download) apparently has some alterations coming its way as part of a heightened focus on mobile development. A blog post by Ian Barlow, a visual designer for Firefox Mobile's User Experience team, revealed three coming changes for Firefox on tablets. The upshot of these changes is that the browser will feel like more of a native fit for Honeycomb.

Firefox for Android tablets will be getting some interface changes, designed to make it easier to use. This mock-up shows how tabs will change in landscape and portrait modes.

The first will revise how tabs are implemented in the browser. Currently, tabs appear hidden for the most part. The new design keeps the tabs on the left in landscape mode, but will force them to be persistently visible. It's not clear yet if there will be an option to toggle that. In portrait mode, only one tab will appear visible, with a number inside the elegantly minimalist icon to indicate how many tabs are open. It appe... [Read more]