The Dolphin Browser is a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

for the Android and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

operating systems developed by MoboTap. It was one of the first alternative browsers for the Android platform that introduced support for

multi-touch In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one somatosensory system, point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CE ...

gestures. Dolphin Browser uses its native platform's default

browser engine A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interacti ...

Features

Dolphin Browser supports most

web standards Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of st ...

. The browser also supports

tabbed browsing In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or Panel (computer software), panels to be contained within a single window (computing), window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching be ...

, voice controls, and touch gestures. It can cache web content for offline use and synchronize data across devices. It supports browser add-ons on Android only.

Versions

Both iOS and Android versions are

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

with optional in-app purchases. There was an updated version called ''Dolphin Browser'' for Android 2.0 or later. Dolphin Browser Beta was released in May 2012 with the in-house

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

engine Jet pack. In December 2013, Dolphin Zero, a version of the app that claims to be private by automatically deleting browser data, was released.

Privacy concerns

In October 2011, privacy concerns were raised about Dolphin browser after it was discovered that all

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

s loaded in Dolphin HD were being relayed as plain text to a remote server, a process described by

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

as "an unambiguous breach of privacy". This breach was patched in the next update.

Reception

In 2011, Steve Kovach of ''

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

'' compared Dolphin Browser favorably to Safari and claimed "Dolphin Browser blows Safari out of the water." In 2011, Dolphin Browser was recognized on ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...

''s list of the best free iPhone and iPad Apps of the year, and received a ''

'' Editors Choice award in 2012. However, in the years since its release it has not had enough users to compete with competitor mobile browsers. As of March 2024, the browser holds a rating of 2.7 out of 5 on the Apple App Store.

References

External links

* {{Web browsers, mobile Mobile web browsers Android web browsers IOS web browsers Software based on WebKit 2011 software Android (operating system) software