The Galaxy Tab 10.1's browser supports the TinyMCE WYSIWYG JavaScript editor widely used in Web forms to allow rich text editing. Mobile Safari's lack of support for the editor frustrates me every day, as InfoWorld.com's content management system uses it. But on the Galaxy Tab, I experienced display problems, such as the rich text window not always refreshing its contents after scrolling. Text selection didn't always work either. Other JavaScript windows had display problems, as well as significant typing and scrolling lags -- in some cases, the scrolling gesture wouldn't work. At the end of the day, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is unusably reliable with such AJAX tools, whereas the iPad 2 makes me work with raw HTML -- which at least always works.

Both browsers offer settings to control pop-up windows, search engines, JavaScript, cookies, history, cache, form data, passwords, image loading, autofill, fraud warnings, and debugging. Note that many websites won't know about the Galaxy Tab 10.1's unique identifier or the subtle difference in how Android tablets in general self-report versus how Android smartphones do; they will treat the Galaxy Tab or other Android tablet as if it were an Android smartphone. That'll cause some full-sized sites such as InfoWorld.com to redirect the Galaxy Tab to mobile-oriented sites rather than present their desktop- and tablet-friendly site. The iPad's browser ID is better known to Web developers, so this redirect issue is less likely to occur for that device. (If you're developing mobile-savvy websites, you can use to read the IDs of the various devices and, thus, optimize how your site works with them. Tip: Android 3 in the user agent string means a tablet.)

Using the cloud-based Google Docs on either device is not a pleasant experience. It's barely possible to edit a spreadsheet; the most you can do is select and add rows, as well as edit the contents of individual cells. You can edit a text document -- awkwardly. Partly, that's because Google hasn't figured out an effective mobile interface for these Web apps; the Safari and Chrome browsers are simply dealing with what Google presents, rather than working through a mobile-friendly front end. It's also because the as their desktop counterparts. But things are improving on the Google Docs front. For example, you can create, edit, and navigate appointments in Google Calendar in all four of its views (day, week, month, and agenda) pretty much as you can on a desktop browser.

This contest ends in a tie, with the iPad 2's advantage being able to copy and print Web images balanced by the Galaxy Tab 10.1's faster, more HTML5-savvy browser.