News · 11 Jul 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
I’m discovering interesting things in the Mango Beta 2 even after nearly 2 weeks of daily usage, nothing groundbreaking but still interesting. Firstly, Mango no longer requires the YouTube plugin “app” to playback embedded YouTube videos. But there’s a catch, the videos must be embedded with the new iFrame code and not the old code…one. If the required Iframe code is detected by the browser user will see the YouTube video correctly show up on the webpage and will be able to watch it by taping twice on it. This will then launch the OS’s native video player (not a mediaelement control like the previous solution) and stream the video in what appears to be 480P MP4 format even when using the cellular network connection (finally!). The YouTube plugin will still be required if the video is embedded with the old code. Check it out n the my short video after the break:
There’s one thing that currently bothers me in Mango: the new Internet Explorer UI. Sure it’s nice to finally have it available in landscape mode and the URL is now easily reachable. But requiring three taps to switch tabs or hit the favorites is IMO counterproductive. Thankfully there a small trick to easily jump from one tab to another: using the task-switcher by longer-press the back button. Simple right? Well it took me a while to realize that. Mango handles every IE tab as if it’s a new application running in the background so when you jump into the task-switcher view every one of them is there. You will still have to go to the regular tabs screen to create a new tab though.
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