I am pretty sure that most iOS users have found themselves in a situation where they are harmlessly scrolling through their Springboard home screens, looking at all of the beautiful installed applications, only to scroll one step too far and come across a fairly empty looking screen that doesn’t appear to have any use. I am, of course referring to Apple’s inclusion of Spotlight within iOS, and the fact that it seems to be something that not a great deal of users actually use for its intended purpose.
The WebSpot tweak in Cydia seems to come from a developer who has the same line of thinking due to the fact that it hooks into the Spotlight display and changes the behavior to something that users may actually find useful. Cydia contains a number of tweaks that change the way Spotlight is used, ranging from displaying music lyrics to listing all of the currently running applications. Tweaks like SpotRemover even disable Spotlight altogether, but WebSpot chooses to use this section of iOS in a different manner by allowing users to display a web page of their choosing in the space.
When installed, WebSpot comes with its own preferences panel that can be accessed through the native Settings.app. The tweak itself basically operates a mini web browser within Spotlight and comes with a fully functioning address bar, back and forward buttons, as well as having the obligatory home and refresh options. Alternatively, users can opt for a scaled down version of the tweak by removing certain user interface aspects such as the navigation toolbar and the address bar.
WebSpot actually has quite a number of uses, including setting the URL to your favorite news site or blog for quick access to newly published articles. From an aesthetic point of view, I would personally like to see a little more attention paid to how the web page is actually displayed as at the moment it looks as if the developer has just dumped a web view onto the display meaning that it does look extremely out of place when compared to the rest of iOS. However, if you are looking for an alternative use for the Spotlight screen, WebSpot could provide that.
WebSpot is available as a free of charge download from the BigBoss repository.
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