Get Coast, a Modern Web Browser for iOS

Coast is a new Web browser for iPhones and iPads. It puts a smooth interface on top of Web browsing, making it easier to bookmark and visit the sites you go to a lot. I think it looks great.

Coast’s simplified user interface gives you what you generally need when you’re browsing the Web.

But under the skin it has the same bones as every other Web browser for iOS (called WebKit), because Apple won’t let software vendors release anything else.

So what do you really get?

You get a prettier way to navigate between websites. Coast’s combined search and address bar gives you immediate feedback as it locates matching terms or sites while you’re typing. And its simplified interface is easier to operate with just your thumb (as you hold the phone in your fingers).

In Coast, bookmarks are big icon buttons, arranged on screens like the app icons in iOS. They’re easy to find and click on, and it’s easy to make a new icon from any site you’re on. It really is better than standard bookmarks for a mobile device.

You get big, fat suggestions when you start searching. This is also where you type URLs.

Coast also makes navigating between pages on a website easy: Swiping left or right takes you forward or back. Safari does this, too, but Chrome uses swiping to change sites (equivalent to switching tabs on a desktop browser).

I used Coast as my Web browser for a day and found it more enjoyable and faster to use than Chrome, which is my go-to browser for those times I can choose the browser I want.

And that’s the problem. In iOS, you don’t get to change your default browser. If you click a link from an email, you’ll get Apple’s default browser, Safari. If you’re going to a webpage linked to from Facebook or another app, chances are you’ll get an embedded browser in that app instead. Again, all the browsers use WebKit, so they’ll display your page mostly identically, but the benefit of getting accustomed to Coast as your primary browser will be lost whenever you go to a site any other way than visiting it directly from Coast itself.

When you’re on a page, there are always two UI buttons.

Coast really is enjoyable to use, and it has other nice features, like synchronizing browser sessions between iOS devices (but, sadly, not desktop browsers). Once you navigate to a site of your choice, though, for the most part it’s going to look the same as any other browser. Maybe the interface is a little more fluid, but the sites look the same — which is what you want.

It is worth a download. Get it here. It’s a good app to have for those times when you can actually use it.

Rafe Needleman can be reached at rafeneedleman@yahoo.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @rafe​.