iThing lovers, please refresh me by getting my iPad to stop refreshing!

January 4, 2011 9:39 PM

iPad idiot question of the day: I won a wifi-only iPad a few weeks back and it's my first apple product since my dad bought me a IIGS. My questions is about the browser constantly refreshing pages and how to stop this from happening.

What I want to happen is to be able to load several pages-say several different FPPs-while within distance of my wifi signal, then go sit in the backyard [where the wifi doesn't reach] and enjoy my morning coffee.
Whenever I do this, though, whenever I pull up a "hidden" page on the iPad, it attempts to refresh and, of course, will not load.
I've attempted to switch the settings to airplane mode before leaving my wifi area, but that didn't help.
So, wise iThing lovers-there's clearly some obvious thing I'm missing.
Please tell me what it is. Thanks!

posted by atomicstone to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: You're running out of memory and Safari is forcing a reload to get it back into memory. There really isn't much of an in-iPad solution (aside from killing background processes to make sure Safari has all the ram available to it), although perhaps something like Instapaper might be able to solve your usage scenario.
posted by Kyol at 9:44 PM on January 4, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks! OK. Even more stupid follow up: by "killing background processes" do you mean some actual way of "closing" other apps besides hitting the home button.
Wow-I am a total iPad idiot.
posted by atomicstone at 9:47 PM on January 4, 2011

Best answer: Double tap the home button; a bar will come up at the bottom with all of your currently running apps. If you hold your finger on one, little red minus signs will appear on all apps. You can tap this minus sign to fully close the app. Just close whatever you aren't currently using, and you may need to swipe to the right to see more open apps.

To clarify, you shouldn't need to do that in daily use; only if you're experiencing some kind of unusual slowdown.
posted by DMan at 10:02 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: wow! Thanks Kyol and DMan. As you might imagine, since I had no idea about this "killing background processes" every single app I've run since getting the damn thing out of the box was running in the background. Cool!!!
And now I'm two for two in the AskMe question answered game.
posted by atomicstone at 10:10 PM on January 4, 2011

Keep in mind that it's a combination quick launch bar/running aps with all the closing down done in the background. Every icon isn't a running process, just the first 5 or 6. You'll be wasting a lot of time if you close every program on the bar every time!
posted by Silentgoldfish at 10:25 PM on January 4, 2011

It sounds like what you really want is Instapaper, it lets you bookmark articles to download for viewing offline. It's free, give it a shot.
posted by Oktober at 10:26 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Silentgoldfish is right. As I attempted to say in my response (and probably didn't quite say clearly), you shouldn't have to close all that stuff very often. I only do it on my iPhone in the rare cases when I get a weird slowdown of some kind.

It's also useful if a particular app is acting strangely, freezing and such. Just close it and open it up again.
posted by DMan at 10:50 PM on January 4, 2011

every single app I've run since getting the damn thing out of the box was running in the background.

That is incorrect. The tray of icons is ultimately just a list of recently used applications, in the order you last used them. The presence of an icon doesn't mean it's running; iOS will automatically quit inactive applications when under memory pressure, but the icon remains there in an effort to be (largely) stateless and opaque about nerdy details like process lifetime and system resources. Good iOS applications are designed with this in mind and can restore state correctly if they need to be terminated by the system to maintain device performance.

Removing an app from the tray doesn't mean you've killed it—it may not have been running in the first place. Don't feel you need to do this constantly.
posted by secret about box at 11:58 PM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

(Just a general bit of info. Not meant to say doing it never has an effect.)
posted by secret about box at 12:02 AM on January 5, 2011

Terra is a free alternative to mobile Safari on the iPad. You can open tabs and once they're loaded they seem to stay loaded. I actually use it for loading up a few songs when I'm playing an instrument. iCabMobile is another alternative, costs very little, and is the best I've found for this sort of thing. I think Apple dropped the ball with mobile Safari on this point. They should just store a snapshot of the page and only reload it when asked.
posted by monkeymadness at 6:10 AM on January 5, 2011

For in browser solutions you must use iCab mobile. It's not as "simple" as safari but you can accomplish this, among other things.
posted by Patbon at 8:11 PM on January 5, 2011