The paragraph that takes the cake is the following:
There’s nothing particularly bad about the current state of browser technology–that is if you are frozen in a time warp, circa 1999. Internet browser design stopped being interesting years ago. That’s simply because Microsoft no longer faces any challenge that forces it to innovate. If Microsoft were still trailing behind Netscape, Internet Explorer would be a far better product. That’s what competition’s all about. If the forward and back arrows constitute the last stage in Internet browser interface design, then we’re an awfully sorry lot.
All this paragraph proves to me is that Charles Cooper hasn’t even tried other browsers. Before you bemoan the lack of innovation in the browser space, Charles, maybe you should try actually using a browser besides Internet Explorer for Windows.
You want better “breadcrumb”-style back navigation? Try SnapBack in Safari. You want better “threaded” navigation? Try tabs in Phoenix, Mozilla, Chimera, Galeon, NetCaptor, CrazyBrowser, Opera, Epiphany, or Konqueror. Sophisticated ad blocking? Try Mozilla or OmniWeb. Popup blocking? Safari, Mozilla, Phoenix, etc. How about smart searches using bookmark keywords? Typeahead find in Mac IE or Mozilla? Link prefetching? QuickSearch in History and Bookmarks? Bookmark groups using tabs? Tab home pages? How about the sophisticated user controls of Opera? What about site navigation controls in Mozilla and Opera?
From Opera’s page zoom to Omniweb’s bookmark scheduling to Phoenix’s popup whitelisting to the Web services support in Mozilla, browser makers are innovating everywhere! The problem is not that we, the browser makers, aren’t innovating. The problem is that you apparently aren’t using the browsers we produce.
Safari gains Tabs, AutoFill in latest beta
Tabbed browsing and form AutoFill has made it into the latest internal beta of Safari, Spymac has learned.
The beta (v62) allows testers to open up new sites in elegant “tabs,” preventing the need to open multiple windows — though Tabbed Browsing has to be activated via the hidden debug menu.
[Spymac]
Have not had the pleasure yet of auto-fill, but the tabs function is way cool and more elegant than in Chimera or Mozilla/Netscape. This beta is a tab less stable, but I can be forgiving enough to handle the rediscovered functionality.
Subscribing to a site from within Safari
Works like a champ!
One of my favorite features of NetNewsWire is that it’s scriptable. There’s even a Scripts menu, so you can add your own commands as scripts.
Here’s a little two-line script that lets you subscribe in NetNewsWire to the frontmost window in Safari.
tell application "Safari" to set s to URL of document 1 tell application "NetNewsWire" to subscribe to sIt gets the URL of the front window in Safari, then it tells NetNewsWire to subscribe to that URL.
When NetNewsWire gets a subscribe command it automatically does RSS auto-discovery.
In other words, you could just be on the home page of a weblog in Safari, run this script, then NetNewsWire will (most often) find the RSS feed for that weblog. (If it exists, of course.)
You could put this script in NetNewsWire’s Scripts menu, or maybe put it in the global Script Menu, or even put it in the Dock.
And then there you have it, an easy way to subscribe to a site in NetNewsWire while you’re in Safari.
(By the way, you could probably modify the first line of this script to work with other browsers. It may not even need modification except for the name of the application.)
Safari Beta 2-12-03
In case somehow you missed it…
The fastest and easiest-to-use web browser ever for the Mac. [Mac OS X Hot Downloads]
JeepSafari
We all use and love Safari, it’s already a great browser. Organising bookmarks is easier than ever before, but wouldn’t is be nice if the bookmarks you add on your iMac at work, would show up on your PowerBook at home? Now it’s possible with JeepSafari. Think of it as iSync for Safari.
Rise of the Uber-Browser
Right on! right on!
Now that I’ve started using NetNewsWire to read blogs, I find it frustrating to be constantly switching back and forth between NetNewsWire and Safari. This led me to wonder: should RSS capabilities and browsing capabilities be merged into a single “uber-browser” application?
Beyond the Safari Hype
Apple’s new Safari Web browser has taken off faster than a brushfire on the Serengeti Plain. Within 24 hours of its January 7th introduction, Apple counted more than 300,000 downloads. But how many people are actually using Safari for everyday Web browsing, and what do Mac community gurus think of it?
In terms of everyday use, The Mac Observer said Safari accounted for almost 21 percent of user traffic on its site in the first eight days after its release. Considering that Safari is still in beta form and works only with Jaguar, Apple’s latest version of OS X , that figure indicates an impressive rate of adoption.
safari multipage view mockup
Not the first time I have seen this idea… I think this is a bit cleaner and perhaps easier to deal with than the previous iteration which followed the look and feel of Preview. [anil dash’s daily links]
Apple Web site recognizes Safari users
A small Safari icon appears in the top-left corner of Apple.com with the message “Welcome Safari user” when visiting the site with Safari. The icon does not appear when viewing the site with any other browsers.
Is Chimera Dead?
Also Is Phoenix Dead? [Mozillazine]
Seems that the impact of Safari on the Chimera project has been to cause an almost sudden death to the spurt of developmental energy which has been invested so far.
It’s too bad that the Phoenix team is also suffering a similar fate. Safari has been great as my primary browser so far but certainly lacks some of the features that have been incorporated by the Chimera team. It seems that Dave Hyatt is working hard to defeats bugs (first) and continue to develop the feature set.
Mossberg (WSJ) reviews both the 12″ PowerBook and Safari
First on the 12″ PowerBook:(Subscription required)
The 12-inch PowerBook is one sweet little laptop. Sheathed in an aluminum case, it has the feel of a finely made camera. And it’s the smallest notebook I’ve tested that sports a full range of features, including one I’ve never seen on a compact laptop. Yet it’s significantly less expensive than some comparable Windows laptops.
This PowerBook is slightly smaller than Apple’s low-end laptop, the iBook, but is powered by the more potent G4 processor that drives the larger PowerBooks. Apple has omitted a few standard PowerBook features — including a special memory cache that speeds things up — to protect sales of the older PowerBooks. But in my tests, the little PowerBook felt speedy and sure on every task I threw at it.
Safari’s main goal was to be speedier than the Mac version of IE, and it is. In my tests of five popular Web sites, Safari beat the Microsoft browser in rendering a page every time, sometimes by seconds, other times by huge margins.
Safari Tabbed Browsing Petition
Falling in deep like with Apple’s Safari browser but can’t tear yourself away from Chimera’s tabbed browsing? Now’s your chance to potentially influence the powers that be on the subject:
Sign the petition at PetitionOnline. [raelity bytes]
Apple snub stings Mozilla
As Apple computer chooses open-source competitor KHTML for its Safari browser, Mozilla critics say AOL Time Warner’s browser suffers from code bloat, among other problems. [CNET News.com]
Safari Aquafier 1.0
SafariMasks 1.0
SafariMasks was made to customize the look of Safari – Apple’s new turbo web browser for Mac OS X. With SafariMasks you don’t have to settle with Apple’s navigation buttons. Simply choose a new theme from our list and click install. Within seconds you can have a brand new theme to use when surfing the web. It’s that simple.
Insert Safari URLs 1.0.1
I don’t use Entourage, but I did request this feature for Safari. I miss the ease in which you are able to email a link from both Chimera and IE. Hopefully soon enough.
Insert Safari URLs is a script that will take URLs selected from open windows in Apple’s “Safari” web browser and insert them into a message composition window in Microsoft Entourage. Multiple URLs can be selected.
WebMonkey Reviews Safari
Surfin’ Safari – reviewed from a web designer’s perspective…
Safari Tip: Command Click the Title Bar
From Macintouch:
You can command click on the title bar to go “up” directories in a url.
This is very nice addition allowing the Safari window to function much like a window in the finder.
Navigating the Safari Browser
O’Reilly has published a nice overview of Safari: Navigating the Safari Browser, It’s lean, it’s mean, but is it for you?
SafariNoBrush 1.0
SafariNoBrush removes the brushed metal appearance on Apple’s Safari web browser. It also allows you to revert back to the brushed metal appearance at any time if you prefer.