Chapter 3. Browsing the Web
In this chapter, you discover how to browse the World Wide Web using the Chrome browser app that comes with your HTC One. Topics include the following:
→ Bookmarking websites
→ Using tricks to browse quickly
→ Keeping track of websites you have visited
→ Configuring Chrome to work your way
Your HTC One includes the fully featured Chrome web browser app that enables you to take full advantage of its large, sharp screen. You can bookmark sites you want to revisit, hold your HTC One in landscape orientation so you can see more on the screen, and even share your GPS location with sites.
Navigating with Chrome
The Chrome browser app enables you to access sites quickly, bookmark them for future use, and return instantly to the sites you visit most frequently. You can even sync your open Chrome tabs among your HTC One, your other portable devices, and your computer, giving yourself a seamless browsing experience no matter which device you’re using.
1. Touch the Chrome icon on the Home screen.
2. Touch the omnibox—a combined address box and search box—to type in a new web address. If the website has moved the previous page up so that the omnibox is hidden, drag the web page down so that the omnibox appears again.
3. Touch to navigate among your tabs. Read more about tabs later in this chapter.
4. Touch a thumbnail to go to one of your Most Visited sites, shown in this figure.
5. Touch to display one of the pages you have closed most recently. You might need to scroll down to reach the button for the page you want.
6. Touch to display the list of Most Visited sites.
7. Touch to display your bookmarks.
8. Touch to display your Other Devices list, which shows the tabs open on your other phones, tablets, and computers that use Chrome, and sign into your Google account.
9. Touch the Menu button to display more options for working with Chrome and web pages.
Web Page Options
While a web page is open, you have a number of options, such as creating a bookmark for the page or finding text on the page.
1. Touch the Menu button to display the menu.
2. Touch to go back to the previous web page you visited on this tab.
3. Touch to go forward to the last web page from which you went back on this tab. This button is unavailable until you go back from a page.
4. Touch to add a bookmark for this page.
5. Touch to open a new tab.
6. Touch to open a new Incognito tab for private browsing. Incognito tabs are covered later in this chapter.
7. Touch to display your bookmarks.
8. Touch to display your Other Devices list.
9. Touch to share this web page with other people using apps such as Email, Gmail, Facebook, Messaging, or Twitter. The Share via dialog shows all the apps you can use to share the web page.
10. Touch to search this page for specific text you type.
11. Touch to enable or disable forcing websites to show the regular view of a web page designed for full-size screens instead of a mobile view designed for small screens.
12. Touch to change the settings for Chrome. You learn about the most important settings later in this chapter.
13. Touch to get help on using Chrome to browse the Internet.
Browser Tricks
Chrome has some neat tricks to help you browse regular websites comfortably on your HTC One’s screen.
1. Rotate your HTC One so that its long edge is sideways. This puts the screen into landscape orientation. Your HTC One automatically switches the screen to landscape mode.
2. Double-tap the screen to zoom in and out.
Pinch to Zoom
When you need to zoom in further, or zoom in to exactly the degree you want, use the alternative way to zoom. Place your thumb and forefinger on the screen and spread them apart to zoom in. Move them back together to zoom out.
Browsing with Bookmarks and Other Devices
The Chrome app enables you to bookmark your favorite websites for quick access. You can create folders and subfolders to keep your bookmarks well organized and easy to find. The app also syncs your open tabs among your devices that run Chrome and sign in to the same Google account, so you can quickly pick up browsing on your HTC One exactly where you left it on your desktop computer, laptop, or tablet—or vice versa.
2. Touch Bookmarks. The Bookmarks folder opens.
3. Touch the bookmarks folder you want to open. This example uses the Mobile Bookmarks folder.
4. Touch to return to the main Bookmarks folder. From there, you can touch another bookmarks folder to open it.
5. Touch a bookmark to display the web page it marks.
6. Touch and hold a bookmark to display a menu containing the Open in Incognito tab command. Touch this command to open the bookmarked page in an Incognito tab.
Create a Bookmark
1. Navigate to the page you want to bookmark.
2. Touch the Menu button to open the menu.
3. Touch to start creating a new bookmark.
4. Change the bookmark name if you want to. The default is the web page’s title; you might prefer a shorter name.
5. Edit the address if necessary. If you went to the right page in step 1, you do not need to change the address.
6. If the In box does not show the folder in which you want to save the bookmark, touch the folder shown.
7. On the Choose a Folder screen, touch the folder to put the bookmark in. If necessary, you can create a new folder, as described in the next section.
8. Touch OK.
9. On the Add Bookmark screen, touch Save to save the bookmark.
Create a New Bookmarks Folder
When creating a new bookmark, you can create one or more new bookmark folders to keep your bookmarks organized.
1. On the Choose a Folder screen, touch New Folder.
2. Type the name for the new folder.
3. If the In box does not show the folder in which you want to create the new folder, touch the folder shown. On the Choose a Folder screen, touch the folder to use, and then touch OK.
4. Touch Save to save the new folder. The Choose a Folder screen appears with the new folder selected, and you can finish creating the new bookmark.
Browse with the Most Visited Sites List
The Chrome app’s Most Visited sites list enables you to quickly return to sites you visit frequently but that you have not necessarily bookmarked.
1. Touch the Menu button.
2. Touch Bookmarks to display the Bookmarks screen.
3. Touch to display the Most Visited screen.
4. Touch to open one of the pages in the current tab.
5. Touch and hold to display further options.
6. Touch to open in a new tab.
7. Touch to open in an Incognito tab.
8. Touch to remove the web page from the Most Visited list.
Browse with the Other Devices List
The Other Devices list gives you instant access to the tabs open in Chrome on your other devices, such as your tablet and your PC or Mac.
1. Touch the Menu button.
2. Touch Other Devices.
3. Touch a heading to expand or collapse the list of pages on a device.
Managing Multiple Tabs
The Chrome app can have multiple web pages open at the same time, each in a different tab. This enables you to open multiple web pages at once and switch between them.
1. Touch the tab icon in the Chrome app.
2. Touch to open a new tab.
3. Touch to close an existing tab.
4. Touch a tab to switch to it.
If you want to visit a website in secret, you can. Visiting a website in secret means that the site you visit does not appear in your browser history or search history and does not otherwise leave a trace of itself on your HTC One. To browse secretly, create a new Incognito browser tab by touching the Menu button and then touching New Incognito tab. Inside that browser tab, all sites you visit are in secret.
Customizing Browser Settings
You can customize Chrome to make it behave the way you want. Here are the various settings you can change.
1. Touch the Menu button.
2. Touch Settings.
3. Touch your Google account name.
4. Touch to turn sync on or off. If you turn sync on, you can choose which items to sync: bookmarks, omnibox history, open tabs, or everything.
5. Touch to enable or disable sending web pages from your computer to the Chrome app on your HTC One.
6. Touch to enable or disable automatically signing in to Google sites. Signing in automatically saves you time and typing but decreases your privacy.
7. Touch to return to the Settings screen.
8. Touch to choose your search engine. Your choices vary depending on your location, but Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are typical.
9. Touch to enable or disable the Autofill Forms feature. This feature lets you add profile information—your name, address, and so on—and credit card information for the Chrome app to fill in automatically on web forms. This means you can complete web forms and spend your money with even less effort.
10. Touch to enable or disable the Chrome app’s capability to save your passwords so it can enter them for you.
11. Touch Privacy.
12. Touch to enable or disable seeing suggestions for web addresses that you enter incorrectly or that Chrome cannot locate.
13. Touch to enable or disable seeing related queries and popular websites similar to those you type in the omnibox.
14. Touch to enable or disable the Network Action Predictions feature. See the nearby sidebar for details.
15. Touch to choose whether to send usage and crash reports to Google. Your choices are Always Send, Only Send on Wi-Fi, and Never Send. If you are happy to provide this data, choosing Only Send on Wi-Fi is usually the best choice, because it prevents the reports from consuming your cellular data allowance.
16. Touch to display the Clear Browsing Data dialog.
17. Touch to enable or disable clearing your browsing history. This clears the history of websites you have visited using the Chrome app on your HTC One.
18. Touch to enable or disable clearing the cache, data that Chrome stores so that it can redisplay web pages more quickly when you visit them again.
19. Touch to enable or disable clearing your cookies and website data. Browser cookies are used by websites to personalize your visit by storing information specific to you in the cookies.
20. Touch to enable or disable clearing your saved passwords.
21. Touch to enable or disable clearing your Autofill data.
22. Touch to clear the items whose boxes you checked in the Clear Browsing Data dialog.
23. Touch to return to the Settings screen.
25. Drag to make the text in the Preview box appear at a comfortable size for reading. This is the minimum size to which the Chrome app zooms the text when you double-tap a paragraph.
What Is Text Scaling?
When you use text scaling, you instruct your HTC One to always increase or decrease the font sizes used on a web page by a specific percentage. For example, you can automatically make all text 150% larger than was originally intended.
26. Touch to turn on or off Chrome’s capability to zoom in on a website that prevents zooming. Some websites turn off zooming because their creators rate design higher than readability. Turning on this feature enables you to zoom anyway on such sites.
27. Touch to return to the Settings screen.
28. Touch Content Settings.
29. Touch to enable or disable accepting cookies. Browser cookies are used by websites to personalize your visit by storing information specific to you in the cookies.
30. Touch to enable or disable JavaScript. JavaScript is used on many web pages for formatting and other functions, so you might want to leave this enabled.
31. Touch to block pop-up windows. Pop-up windows are almost always advertisements, so keeping this enabled is a good idea; however, some websites might not work correctly if pop-up blocking is on. Chrome displays a message indicating that it has blocked a pop-up.
32. Touch to display the Google apps Location Settings screen.
33. Touch this switch to control whether Google apps can access your location.
34. Touch to go back to the Content settings screen.
35. Touch to view the list of websites that are storing data on your HTC One. You can then clear the data for a specific website if necessary.
36. Touch to go back to the Settings screen.
37. Touch Bandwidth Management.
38. Touch Preload Web Pages to open the Preload Web Pages dialog. (Refer to the “What Are Network Action Predictions” sidebar for more information about preloading web pages.)
39. Touch to preload pages over both Wi-Fi and cellular connections.
40. Touch to preload pages over Wi-Fi only.
41. Touch to turn off preloading. You would normally do this only if you need to minimize data use on your Wi-Fi connection.
42. Touch to return to the Settings screen.
What Are the Developer Tools in Chrome Settings?
The Chrome app’s Developer Tools screen offers two features intended for people developing apps for Android, but one of the features is useful for nondevelopers as well. The Enable Tilt Scrolling feature enables you to scroll through your open tabs in Chrome by tilting your HTC One backward and forward. The Enable USB Web Debugging option lets developers use Chrome on a PC or Mac to hunt down bugs in Chrome on Android.
