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Mac web browsers and Safari 3 notes and future ideas
Mac market share is growing rapidly and Mac users are fortunate to have a pretty impressive array of available web browsers.
* Safari, based on the open-source WebKit engine, is included as the default choice. It is my personal favorite for everyday use for reasons discussed below.
For some more notes on available Mac web development options, check out Hicks Design.
* I occassionally use Firefox when I want to Stumble or use some other specific extension, but for my needs there’s no one single extension that exists that I can’t live without. There are some neat Firefox web-development tools, but I’m happy with CSSEdit and some of my other favorite Mac Apps for web development.
* I like Opera a lot as well. I think I’m going to start recommending it over Firefox for inexperienced computer users that don’t use Firefox extensions anyway. It comes with a ton of great features. I really like the Speed Dial feature as just one example of something smart and unique.
* I want to like Shiira as it presents some interesting interface ideas, such as replacing standard tabs on the top with an image of the page on the bottom, but it is way too unstable to use as a full-time browser. Worth keeping an eye on though as it does seem to have potential.
* Sunrise is a great browser for testing websites in because you can check quickly test different monitor sizes, and it has some neat ideas, but its not something I’d use for anything other than testing.
* Camino is a lightweight and functional browser based on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. Its a worthy choice in my opinion.
* A number of folks rave about OmniWeb. It is very feature-rich and seems very polished, but the extra customization options and features might not be worth paying for to everybody.
As far as I am aware of, those are the major web browsers on the Mac, but if I missed any, feel free to let me know of any others.
Why I use Safari over Firefox & Opera & others
I just wanted to explain part of the reason why I use Safari over the numerous alternatives on the Mac.
The whole topic of the differences in font-rendering between Macs and Windows itself is also pretty fascinating. There’s a large amount of interesting discussion on the topic.
* Font-rendering in Safari appears better than in other browsers.
* There are normal Aqua-style buttons, everything feels more Mac-like. In Firefox for instance, the close tab button is on the right like in Windows instead of the left like Safari and the Mac OS.
* Dragging and dropping works better with images and things. In Firefox for example, instead of seeing a transparent ghost image when dragging images to the Desktop as in Safari, you just see an empty box.
* Though I’m a big fan of Delicious for bookmarks, when I do want a bookmark to be saved on my computer, Safari’s handling of it is nicer.
Safari 3 Impressions
I’ve been using the Safari 3 beta as my primary browser since it has become available, and I’ve got to say that I’m very impressed with it.
* Yeah, memory-usage wise it can still be a real pig with extended use. Unfortunately, most browsers are.
* It is noticeably faster and more stable due largely to the very strict performance and testing guidelines the WebKit Project adheres to.
I particularly hope that text editors like TextMate start using this kind of search as it would be very valuable when programming.
* The inline-find is absolutely golden when scanning long documents for specific terms. I hope more apps start using this kind of search.
* Draggable tabs and the ability to even drag a tab to create a new window is very useful.
* Flash on the Mac can still be unstable at times and sometimes cause a browser crash so the “Reopen Windows from Last Session” feature is greatly appreciated.
* Resizable text fields are awesome when entering in text in message boards of other forms that are designed too small.
* Those are the biggest ones for me, but there are a ton of other great features as well that add value to the software.
* There are some Leopard-only features of Safari 3 that I haven’t tested yet, but things like the Web Clip feature that allows you to create part of a website on your Dashboard look amazingly useful without being complicated.
A few ideas for Safari 4
Here are a few desired features for the next version of Safari.
Some of what is mentioned can likely already be accomplished via Firefox extensions, or at least hypothetically be accomplished, but I don’t believe that at least some of what I mention is possible via Firefox extensions because (as far as I am aware) you can’t control other system Apps via the Firefox extension system.
Apple is actually in a really pretty position here because they make the software that comes with the Mac and there are so many opportunities for integration between Apps that other browser manufacturers can’t match.
And I think at least a few of the suggestions I make can be transferred to the Windows version of Safari.
Embed Website URL in Image Metadata
I often save images from the web for use in articles and things, but I often forget to write down which site a specific image came from, leading me to have to hunt Google Images for the original source.
A simple solution would be that when saving an image to your computer, whether via dragging and dropping or selecting Save, that the website URL it arrived from would be automatically embedded in the file’s metadata.
So next time I’m searching my hard drive to see where I originally got some cool picture of Worf, son of Mogh, I could see what website I originally got the image.
It could appear something like this.
Youtube and iTunes should co-exist.
When on the computer, I am often either consuming YouTube videos or listening to my music on iTunes. When I want to go from listening music to watching a YouTube video, I use Expose, stop iTunes, watch the YouTube video, and go back to iTunes to click play.
Yes, there are some Dashboard widgets to control iTunes, and even some menubar tools, but I think there’s an even quicker and easier way for people.
Possibly even QuickTime should take advantage of this as well.
Safari and iTunes should be intelligent enough to fade out + stop iTunes music from playing when the user is in the browser watching a YouTube video (or possibly any Flash video if possible) and resume playback when the video is done or the tab is closed.
Social Networking Notifications
Macs are getting more and more popular among young folks. And social networking and fancy Web 2.0 sites are getting more and more important to peoples’ lives.
I currently have a handful of these sites in my Bookmarks Bar. How about having a subtle notification system that tells you how many events occurred at each of these sites? It might look something like this.
Animated GIFs playback controls
I think it would be nice to have a little set of playback controls appear in when you mouse over animated GIFs in Safari.
Maybe something simple like this.
Its nothing too important, but its a fun little enhancement.
A few minor Safari bug and usability fixes that I’d want
For all I know, some of these fixes are in the final version of Safari, but regardless, here are a few minor bugs I noticed.
* Safari prevents a tab from being closed that has text entered in a form within. It unfortunately also presents the same warning message even when the text has already been submitted via Ajax. It should automatically detect whether the text has been submitted and make a decision to give a warning message accordingly.
* Safari’s inline-find finds stuff within frames, but doesn’t scroll the frame down to the location of the word when hitting the “find next” button. I don’t like frames in most cases, but they are used as an element of certain sites’ designs, and the frame should automatically scroll down to arrive at the highlighted term.
* The draggable tabs could be improved by figuring out a way to drag tabs from when you’ve got an overflow of tabs on the right side.
* Safari should prevent a tab from being accidentally closed that is loading a Flash movie or streaming video that hasn’t finished playing. For a short clip, thats not too much of an issue. For a longer clip that might take a minute or two to load, this can be annoying.
* Safari seems to have as good or better CSS support than most browsers, but continuing to keep pace with any developments ought to be a priority as many developers are now using Macs.
Plugins and more
Input Managers are the main method used to plug-in to existing Mac Apps such as Safari.
There’s been some concern that Input Managers will removed in 10.5 Leopard due to security concerns. As far as I am able to tell, they will still be present in 10.5. I hope I’m not wrong on this as Inquisitor is a great Safari plugin (advertised as “Spotlight” for the web) that I’d miss if I didn’t have.
For more Safari plugins, visit Pimp My Safari for other great options.
Conclusion
Safari 3 looks really awesome. I can’t wait to try it out the finished version when I get Leopard on 10/26.
Posted on October 18th, 2007 by Chris Papadopoulos.
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johno (7 comments.) @ Oct 18
An impressive review, Chris.
I use FF almost all the time on my Mac; I am thinking of changing though. I do find that FF hangs a lot, especially with embedded video. In fact FF is the only app that can bring my whole system down.
One question re Safari: one thing I really miss is the info bar at the bottom (forgotten what it’s called) that shows the uri of the link you’re hovering over. I really miss that. For me that’s a great security feature. I usually check that bar before I click.
Is there any way to make in show in Safari?
I’m off to download that Safari beta. Thanks again for a very comprehensive review. You may have convinced me to chanhe to Safari for my browsing (though of course I need some of the developer extensions in FF for work).
Chris Papadopoulos (5 comments.) @ Oct 18
Thanks John,
I think what you’re looking for can be found under the View menu. Its the “show status bar” command.
Safari to me isn’t perfect, it just feels a lot more comfortable than Firefox and I haven’t personally found any killer FF extensions that would make me switch full-time.
Mason @ Oct 19
I appreciate your article. My own opinion about Safari is that it seems to take forever to load pages, especially compared to Camino (on my MacBook Pro). I used to use Firefox for just about everything, but especially for web development. Then Camino came out and it had improvements that hadn’t made it into Firefox which made page renders much faster, etc. The only thing was that it didn’t support extensions (like AdBlock Plus).
Then I tried Flock. I have been using Flock as my #1 browser for about 2 months and am currently using the 1.0 Beta (as of today). I can add the FF extensions I need (i.e. webdeveloper toolbar and adblock plus) and get great integration with YouTube, Flickr, RSS feeds, etc. I tried Sunrise and agree that it’s not ready (although I like the snapshots bookmark feature). Opera is ok in my opinion (I tried it often but always went back to FF). I don’t want to pay for OmniWeb when so many free browsers do so well.
I’ll use Safari for WebClips once Leopard drops, but unless something changes, I’ll probably stick with Flock.
Chris Papadopoulos (1 comments.) @ Oct 19
Thanks for the reminder about Flock, Mason. I’d forgotten about it.
I tried it a long while ago when it was still a very, very early release but haven’t used it since. It does have some cool feature ideas, especially with regards to dragging photos into forms, so I’ll have to check it out again.
The only slowdown I’ve noticed in Safari 3 is the occasional “takes a minute to start up” when quitting the app after extended periods and then restarting it. Other than that, for me anyway, it works pretty fast.
Don Williams (1 comments.) @ Dec 14
I agree that Safari is the best. Its fast, lean and does basically most of what I need.
There is another rendition of FF called Flock that is rather nice that you might want to check out.
Sunrise is something new to me thanks to you. I will try it out, but something tells me I will be sticking to Safari even though, like yourself, I’m hoping Shiira becomes more stable as I really love the interface as I do Omniweb.
Louise @ Feb 1
With regards to the embedding of images in the Spotlight comments, Safari 3 already does this. If you can’t get it to work, a great plugin is Saft, for extra funtions (http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/saft) and also Stand which adds a visual thumbnail tab browser like Omniwebs to your browser plus many other features. (http://hetima.com/safari/stand-e.html)
Don (1 comments.) @ Feb 2
I might also like to suggest that there is one more browser for the Mac and that is the German browser: iCab.
It’s not a bad browser, but unfortunately, like OmniWeb, it is a commercial release.
You can download and take iCab for a test drive here: http://icab.de/