Comments on: Safari 4: Three Steps Forward, One Step Back

By: Mark Wheadon

Mark Wheadon — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:00:01 +0000

If, like me, you find you need to back out of Safari 4 beta and go back to 3.2.1, then here’s how:

http://www.markwheadon.com/blog/2009/02/how-to-back-out-of-safari-4beta/

Cheers,

Mark

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:28:41 +0000

There are a few plugins that I would like to see come to safari 4. I was concerned about not having Firebug as well until i came across the Develop menu which includes something called “Show Web Inspector”. This does pretty much everything firebug does and more.

You have to turn this on in your preferences and it is awesome. Check it out.

The best thing about Safari 4 so far for me has been how snappy web pages load. I am definitely going to give Safari a try for a while.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:53:02 +0000

Oh man, that was awesome. I just sprayed all over my MBP from my nose. The best part was when Michael said: “I don’t think Apple cares about ‘Safari’ market share at this point. All they are really interested in is making sure WebKit continues to gain adoption. This insures the proliferation of web standards, which is, in the end, what Apple is really pushing.”

As if Apple cares about ANYTHING besides market share and profitability. Don’t delude yourself into thinking they are more concerned about pushing Webkit or OSS or any other holy-cause-of-the-week for its own sake. THEY ARE A PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY. The bottom line is the ONLY line. Wise up.

By: Aviv

Aviv — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:28:40 +0000

@Michael: 100% agreed. The blue loading bar was driving me nuts, didn’t mind the tabs on top so much so I left them. But, I turned the blue-loading bar back on. Major oversight on Apple’s part.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:27:30 +0000

Simplicity is what makes Safari the browser it is. Plug-ins be damned. I don’t think Apple cares about ‘Safari’ market share at this point. All they are really interested in is making sure WebKit continues to gain adoption. This insures the proliferation of web standards, which is, in the end, what Apple is really pushing.

Personally don’t care for any of the new user-oriented visual features in Safari 4 and I thank god Apple left them as hidden switchable preferences. The performance enhancements and search functions however, are very much welcomed.

By: Aviv

Aviv — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:29:21 +0000

@hmurchison: True. But I think Opera made some mistakes in the past when it was a commercial product and for the most part, Chrome made the “tabs and the bookmarks” publicly known… At least recently. But, you’re right, Opera had it first.

By: hmurchison

hmurchison — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:05:51 +0000

Actually Apple did not rip the idea for Top Sites from Google. Opera had a thumbnail landing page for your most visited sites way before Google Chrome was even known about.

By: Aviv

Aviv — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:59:30 +0000

I also am not particularly keen on the fact that the entire LOADING BAR was removed in favor of a loading.gif on the right of the URL. Talk about a split second moment confusion during what should be a natural interaction with a tactile button. I think if Apple wants to have as little “options” as they can, then the entire blue loading bar needs to come back within the URL bar.

By: Aviv

Aviv — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:49:40 +0000

@Scott: Well, I take your opinions into account, however, I think you’re wrong when you say that even if Safari offered me the plugins, I would use both browsers. That’s not correct… You see, Firefox is also very shaky on OS X. And the UI bonks out periodically, the tabs take a while to load up, and the rendering engine is just MUCH slower than what’s now being called “Nitro.”

In fact, there’s a tutorial here on how drastically ( http://snipurl.com/cl38h ) speed up Firefox, but it still lags behind Safari in terms of speed.

The bottom line is that Firefox’s stability and compatibility with web-apps is greater than Safari’s. For example, go into the editor in any Wordpress admin area and try and crop/resize an image in the visual editor, now go try the same thing in Safari…. This is a small example of how Safari’s quirks can throw a wrench into any deep web application productivity or browsing session.

I will give it to FF for their new UI which tries to be more consistent across platforms. However, the bottom line remains that Apple needs to open up a bit here. It’s not just that they preach open web standards, this is a WEB BROWSER, they need to be setting an example, not running it like a niche IM application.

By: Scott Paterson

Scott Paterson — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:44:12 +0000

Accept most of the points you raise here, however I think the argument about lack of plugin architecture for Safari is a moot point for 90%+ of Mac users. Yes web designers and power users will have need for the widgets that can be added to browsers like Firefox but in practice most users will be happily oblivious of the use of these tools. As usual Apple are out to target the majority and not the minority, they want the experience to be seamless, reliable and consistent for all. Not allowing users to plugin potentially flaky third party addons is one way of attempting to ensure this.

If you need plugins as you say continue to run both browsers ( in reality you would probably do this even IF Safari allowed them ).