Today iPad hopefuls finally have the chance to get their hands on an iPad ... at least a Wi-Fi only iPad. Up until this point, not many people have touched the device, or even seen many of the included applications in action. With this post, however, we want to give you a “sneak peak” of the iPad version of Safari, Contacts, Photos, Settings, and some of the other features that haven’t yet been mentioned.



Safari
If you think Safari on the iPad is the same as the iPhone version, you’re somewhat wrong. Safari feels more natural and more like its Mac counterpart on the iPad. A look at the user interface shows a very big difference in how the applications stack up.

The user interface is centered around the bar at the top of the screen. On that bar, you have buttons for back, forward, pages, bookmarks, more options, an address text entry field, and a Google search box. The content is then displayed below that in a huge area reserved for the entire web page.



When you click the page button, the screen will turn black and all of the opened pages you have will be displayed with thumbnails on the screen. While not a big difference, the iPhone lets you have 8 pages opened, while the iPad will allow you to have up to 9 opened at one time. When you close a page, you get a very nice animation as the pages reshuffle to fit the screen.



The bookmarks section of Safari has been completely redone for the iPad. The first big change is that you have a bookmarks bar. To show the bookmarks bar, you’ll have to either tap the address/Google bars or enable the setting to have it always displayed (we tell you how to do this in the Settings section below). When you do this, you’ll be able to click the items in the toolbar to load the appropriate pages. You can click the “+” button in the tool bar to add a bookmark. When you select add bookmark, you have the ability to edit the description, and select the location to save it in (Bookmarks Bar or in just the regular bookmarks). Additionally, you can choose to have it saved on the home screen in the same fashion as on the iPhone.



One thing you’ll notice when using Safari on the iPad is that you don’t get the checkered gray boxes where the page is still processing when you scroll. The majority of websites load their regular versions, but a few sites (YouTube included) still load the iPhone versions of the sites, which can be annoying because of how they’re displayed (they get stretched across the screen). We imagine that over time this will get solved just as it did when the iPhone was first released.

Other functionality in the iPad version of Safari comes when you press and hold your finger on an item on the page. If you press and hold on an image, you have the ability to  open the link, open the link in a new page, save the image, or copy the image for use in another application. When you save images locally, a new album will be created in the Photos application called “Save Photos.” Screenshots taken will also appear in this section -- the same way the iPod touch handles saving photos.



Photos
The Photos application gives you the ability to view and send your photos anywhere. When you first launch the application, it looks rather basic, beautifully displaying your photo albums against a black background. To look at an album, you can either tap it or pinch it.



Once you’re in an album you have a few more options at the top of the screen. You can go back to the album listing by pinching as though you were zooming out or by clicking the Albums button in the top-left corner. In the top-right corner, you have items for a slideshow or a share button.



The slideshow button lets you select whether or not you want music to be playing, choose a song, and choose a transition. If you’re an iPhone owner, you know these items were scattered all over the place when you actually wanted to do a photo slideshow. When you click “Start Slideshow,” your pictures will begin floating across the screen with the music you selected playing in the background. There are five transitions to choose from: Cube, Dissolve, Ripple, Wipe, and Origami. With the exception of Origami, the four other transitions can be found on the iPhone. Origami is the transition that was demoed in the Stevenote back in January at the iPad announcement.



When you click the sharing button in the top-right next to the Slideshow button, you’ll be prompted to select images you wish to share. When you do, you’ll have the option to either email or copy the images. Selecting email will bring up an email composition window without having to leave the Photos application.

When you’re viewing an individual image, you have different sharing options. You’ll be able to assign the photo to a contact, use the photo as wallpaper, or copy the photo to the clipboard.



When you select to set the photo as wallpaper, you’ll be given three additional options. You can either set the lock screen wallpaper, set the home screen wallpaper, or set both using the same image.

Contacts
The Contacts application is almost like it’s iPhone counterpart in that it stores and manages your contacts. With the advantage of a larger screen, Apple added more UI goodies like a page flip to go to/from the Groups section and being able to display both the list of contacts and the contact details.



You can enter the regular details when it comes to creating a contact including home and work email, home page URL, and more. The interesting thing to note here is that when you enter their mobile number, it will select the “iPhone” label by default (this can be changed to any number of labels, mind you). You can also click on the contact image to choose an existing photo from your Photos, edit a photo by resizing, or delete the photo for that contact.



Settings
Since there are a lot of settings, we’re only going to talk about the ones we’ve found different from the iPhone. The Settings area of your device is where you’ll be able to set some settings in other applications you’ve installed from the App Store as well, so your iPad Settings may look different.


New in the Keyboard Settings (General > International > Keyboards > Your Keyboard Language) is the ability to select different styles of keyboard layouts. You can choose between QWERTY, AZERTY, or QWERTZ layouts for the Software Keyboard Layout (the keyboard that’s displayed on the iPad screen). But you can also connect a Bluetooth keyboard to your iPad, therefore, you can choose a Hardware Keyboard Layout. Of note is that Apple has included support for a Dvorak hardware keyboard.


Pretty much all of the iPhone Safari settings have made their way over to the iPad with the exception of the Always Show Bookmarks Bar switch. When you flip this switch on, Safari will always show the bookmarks bar below the address/Google bar at the top of the screen.


In the Photos Settings, you can specify settings for how long to play each slide and whether or not to repeat and/or shuffle the photos during a slideshow.

Other Finds
Here are some of the things we noticed on the iPad that Apple hasn’t really specified, but are neat none-the-less.


Unlike the Dock on the iPhone/iPod touch, the iPad has the ability to hold 6 Applications on the bottom of the screen. You can juggle application icons around the same way you do on the iPhone ... just tap and hold on one until they wiggle, then you can drag them around.


Apple didn’t really mention this feature in their announcement back in January, but on the lock screen you have the ability to turn your iPad into a photo frame by pressing the photo button to the right of the lock slider. This will randomly start playing the photos contained in the Photos application on your device. This is neat when coupled with the iPad dock because it doubles as a photo frame when not in use.

There you have it, a walkthrough of a few of the included iPad features. Be sure to stay tuned to Mac|Life over the next few days as we will have even more iPad news, reviews, and content coming your way.