Browsing the Web with Your Samsung Galaxy Note 4
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
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Topics include the following:
Your Galaxy Note 4 comes with not one but two web browsers to enable you to explore the Web on its large screen. This chapter shows you how to use Chrome, a browser developed by Google. Your Galaxy Note 4 also includes the browser usually called simply Internet, but sometimes called (arguably even more simply) Browser, which is developed by Samsung.
Chrome is fast and easy to use. You can bookmark sites you want to revisit, hold your Galaxy Note 4 in landscape orientation so you can see more on the screen, and optionally 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 Galaxy Note 4, your other portable devices, and your computer.
Go to a Web Page by Typing Its Address
Touch the Chrome icon on the Apps screen. Alternatively, if the Chrome icon appears on the Home screen, touch it there; it might be in the Google folder on the Home screen. Chrome opens and displays either your home page (as in the example shown here) or the last page you visited.
Touch the omnibox—a combined address box and search box—to select its contents. 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.
- Type the web address, such as android.com. Chrome displays any matching results.
Tap the result for the web page you want to display. The web page appears.
- Tap Home to go back to your home page.
- Tap the Menu button to display the menu, which contains many commands. The next section explains these commands.
- Tap the Tabs button to display the Tabs screen. You use this screen to open new tabs, switch among open tabs, and close tabs you no longer need.
If the square green icon bearing a white padlock appears, tap it to display the security information for the website. See the nearby sidebar for more details.
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What Does the Green Icon with the White Padlock Mean?
The green icon with the white padlock appears when Chrome has established a secure connection to the website. The omnibox shows the address here starting with https:// to indicate that the connection uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) instead of regular Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is not secure. Chrome uses technologies called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure the connection using encryption.
When you connect to any site with which you will exchange private or sensitive information, it is best to make sure that the padlock icon appears. But because of the recent furor over government surveillance of the Internet, more and more websites are using encryption as a matter of course, so don’t be surprised to see the padlock icon for “regular” websites.
You can tap the padlock icon to display a pop-up window containing details about the website’s identity and the security of your connection to it.
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Web Page Options
While a web page is open, you have a number of options, such as opening a new tab, creating a bookmark for the page, and finding text on the page.
- Tap the Menu button to display the menu.
- Tap the Forward button to return to the previous web page from which you have gone back on this tab. The Forward button is available only when you have visited multiple pages on this tab and gone back from at least the last page, by tapping the Back button, to an earlier page.
- Tap the Bookmark star to add a bookmark for this page.
- Tap the Refresh icon to refresh the display of the current web page. You’d normally do this either if a page failed to load completely or to load updated information, such as fresh news.
- Tap New Tab to open a new tab.
- Tap New Incognito Tab to open a new Incognito tab for private browsing. Incognito tabs are covered later in this chapter.
- Tap Bookmarks to display your bookmarks.
Tap Recent Tabs to display your Recent Tabs list. This list includes the Other Devices list, which gives you access to recent tabs on other devices with which you sign in to the same Chrome account.
- Tap History to display the History screen, which contains a list of the pages you have visited on your Galaxy Note 4.
- Tap Share to share this web page with other people using apps such as Email, Gmail, Facebook, Messaging, and Twitter. The Share Via dialog shows all the apps you can use to share the web page.
- Tap Print to start the process of printing the current page.
- Tap Find in Page to search this page for specific text you type.
- Tap Add to Homescreen to display the Add to Homescreen dialog. You can then type the name to give the icon that Android adds to the Home screen. You can then tap this icon to go straight to the website in your default browser, such as Chrome.
- Tap Request Desktop Site 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. When you change this setting, Chrome reloads the page, displaying the desktop version if it is available.
- Tap Settings to change the settings for the Chrome browser.
Tap Help & Feedback to get help or to vent your frustrations with Chrome.
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Browser Tricks
The Chrome browser app has some neat tricks to help you browse regular websites comfortably on your Galaxy Note 4’s screen.
Rotate your Galaxy Note 4 so that its long edge is sideways. This puts the screen into what’s called landscape orientation. Your Galaxy Note 4 automatically switches the screen to landscape mode.
If necessary, double-tap the screen to zoom in and out. You can also place your thumb and forefinger on the screen and spread them apart to zoom in or pinch them together to zoom out.
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