FAQs - Skyfire Browser for iPhone

Skyfire for iPhone runs on all iPhone or iPod Touch devices.

Skyfire for iOS requires iOS 4.3 or later.  Skyfire has been optimized for iPhone 5.

Skyfire for iPhone is available in the Apple App Store Worldwide except for China.

Skyfire allows you to view Flash video content in our iPhone. Skyfire processes page loads on the server to detect available video to make this available for streaming to the phone.

In addition Skyfire allows easy switching between desktop and mobile modes. This helps in accessing video content that often is not available for mobile formatted pages.

And finally Skyfire is a great way to share content to your Friends via Facebook and Twitter and allows you to stay see what is going on in Facebook with one click, without having to navigate to Facebook or open the Facebook app.

Pinch!

In addition, you can double-tap to zoom into specific regions on the page. It behaves just as Safari on the iPhone.

The “Load page as…” option allows you to run Skyfire in either Desktop or iPhone mode, enabling either a full desktop or standard iPhone experience. Simply toggle between the settings to view your favorite websites however you see fit. Remember: Often video content is only accessible in Desktop mode. We also recommend that when accessing your email account, it is generally best to switch to the iPhone view. You can go to www.yahoo.com to give it a try!

Please upgrade to Skyfire 2.1 first :-).

Switching the browser mode from iPhone to Desktop only changes the way that the browser represents itself. With Skyfire 2.1 however we ensure that we load the original URL that has been selected, thus when you switch it redirects to the appropriate page.

Private browsing is active on a per tab basis. Once a tab is set to “Private Browsing” mode, no history or cookies will be retained for this tab once the tab is closed.

If 'Video Alerts' is on, each page will be analyzed for the presence of video plug-ins that may be viewable in Skyfire. Switch this off and you will not be auto-notified when videos are available on the page.

No. Unfortunately, this action is not supported by Apple.

Yes! You can do this under Browser Settings.

We call the bottom toolbar the SkyBar. It provides four main functions:

• Navigation: Basic navigation and function such as: Back, Bookmarks, Tabs
• Videos: Access to supported videos from the specific page you are currently on. Once a video is available you will see a notification pop-up
• Explore: Access to the Explore feature, which gives you contextually relevant content to the page you are browsing
• Sharing: A variety of ways to easily share the current page, including Facebook and Twitter!
  Plus you can see your Facebook Wall with one click without having to open a Facbook page, or app.

When you load a web page, Skyfire will analyze the page for video content. If a playable video is found, a pop-up notification will inform you about it. Now you can access video content that is typically inaccessible on your standard mobile browser, namely Flash Videos.

Skyfire currently supports Flash Video and are are looking to perhaps extend this over time to Windows Media, Quicktime and perhaps Silverlight.

Note: Skyfire will NOT analyze any secure pages.

Flash for video playback is used in vastly different ways on different sites. We are rapidly expanding the list of supported players and sites as we come across them, but not all will work right away. Thank you for your patience!

You can support us by sending feedback via the 'Feedback' function under Settings. This will help us prioritize and work on enabling the content that is important to you.

In some cases the content might be blocked from working on Skyfire. For example, Hulu blocks all mobile distribution, including Skyfire.

Oh — and please check that you are not on a secure site. Skyfire does not analyze pages for video content on secured (e.g. https:// ) pages.

Yes! In fact, Skyfire adapts the stream to your conditions, including network connection quality and bandwidth. This way, you get the best possible video experience given your current bandwidth situation. Skyfire even adapts these parameters on-the-fly.

We have as well as special low quality mode, which has continous audio, but 'slideshow' snapshots from the video to allow you to play back under adverse conditions.

Obviously if the connection is really lousy then we cannot do much about it and video playback will fail.

Thus Skyfire changes the video to a mode where audio continues to play, but shows a snapshot from the video every couple of seconds.

This is a way for you to continue to enjoy the content of the video even under bad conditions. As soon as the network improves the video should play normal again. When network conditions deteriorate (check your connectivity!) it is difficult to continuously stream video.

This depends on the type of video and how we process it. In most cases you will be able to pause and resume.

No. We do not send the page URL to the server for secure pages. Additionally, we do not analyze pages when the ‘Video Alerts’ setting is disabled by a user. (see settings).

No, they are not stored.

Skyfire never sends any user passwords to the server in the first place. Cookies are used temporarily for analyzing pages, however they are immediately discarded.

You can read about our privacy policy on our web site at http://www.skyfire.com/about/privacy-and-security

Skyfire supports Flash Video. More formats such as Windows Media, Silverlight and Quicktime are in planning.

No. Our focus is on enabling video playback. Currently we have no plans to enable Flash games and applications.

For each page Skyfire will try to determine the most relevant topics on that page. The Explore section allows you to delve deeper into the topic selected. If no topic has been found, then you can always enter a topic of your own in the search field, and use the Explore functionality.

It's a useful and fun way to see what Videos, Trends, current Tweets and Images are related.

Sometimes there is no topic that can be extracted in a reliable way.

In addition, the extraction of topics is optimized for English content. If you use your phone primarily for non-English content then there might be no topics available.

In either case simply type your interests into the Explore bar.

These are the most popular news articles and blog posts that others across Twitter and Digg are sharing.

No. We do not send the page URL to the server for secure pages. Additionally, we do not analyze the ‘Video Alerts’ setting when this option is disabled by a user. (see settings).

Similar to Safari we have a quick a convenient way to search within the browser. We enhanced this by providing search results not just from Google, but provide Wikipedia and Video specific search results as well.

With ‘Safe Search’ set to ‘On’ results will be filtered to avoid potentially explicit content for Video searches.

The 'Safe Search' setting does not affect the way that Google displays results. Please change your preferences in Google.

Using the '+' option in the bottom toolbar allows you to share the current page via Facebook, Twitter or Email.

If you have not logged in to Facebook or Twitter you have to provide your username and password first before you can share.

Note that for Facebook sharing, the log-in is unfortunately separate to the log-in for Facebook.com or the Facebook Quickview feature. This is due to Facebook's security mechanisms.

Quickview is a simple and fast way to access your Facebook Wall and Twitter feed without having to either navigate to facebook.com/twitter.com in the browser, or open the a dedicated app.

Thus you can quickly catch the newest gossip from within the browser and navigate to the links shared from your friends without any hassle. It's a time saver!