03/02/04
11New Browsers
After excitedly downloading the Omniweb 5 Beta yesterday, I was all prepared to give a critique, but as usual, John Gruber says it best.
Suffice to say that OW 5 shows a lot of promise, but the beta crashes and hangs too much too often to use it for any length of time. The thumbnail tabs are wonderful and I’m no longer a sceptic. The toolbar icons are not to my taste though. I feel a browser theme coming on…
There’s more activity on the browser front – Safari 1.2 has just been released, and is even zippier, as well as adding few more features. Safari Enhancer and PithHelmet have both been updated to work with 1.2. There are bug fixes too: The aggressive caching issue is fixed, so I no longer have to use Firebird to view Dunstans Blog. Dan Cederholm reports that the hover bug is fixed too. This was causing my site logo to stick on ‘home’, so I’m glad to see the back of that. The one downside is that you now have to use Panther to get the updates – Jaguar users have to stick with 1.0.
Also, Firebird 0.8 is due out next Monday. In the nightly builds annoying OS X bugs such as no new browser window when clicking the dock icon, have been fixed, and its looking good.
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Shaun Inman said 1634 days ago:
As I noted on SimpleBits, the@media ScReEnbug has been fixed. I'm disappointed to see it go since it was rather harmless (wHo TyPeS LiKe tHiS?) and when combined with the IE 5 Mac /*\*/ filter allowed designers to make up for Safari's rendering differences (for me, form elements specifically). Are there any CSS filters left that just target Safari?I'm really beginning to like the idea of browser-specific comment conditionals (I don't remember where I saw this mentioned). I am all for standards but bugs invariably sneak into apps. It's a problem that is not going away so we or rather browser-makers should decide on a standard that address this problem. No?
Jon Hicks said 1634 days ago:
Shaun, have you seen all the hacks listed at Dive into Mark? I'm not sure if there are any there that will still work:http://diveintomark.org/safari/73.html
Shaun Inman said 1634 days ago:
Apparently the escape hack still works and might be usable (since I'm only interested in hiding single rules). I've never had much luck with that one though. I don't know if it has to do with the character encoding of the OS X's "tab character" or what but whenever I try it all other browsers miss the style too.Shaun Inman said 1634 days ago:
Strike that. I must have been doing something else wrong with my initial tests. One curious bit, Safari understands "\70 " (with a trailing tab character) as "p" but not "\64 iv" (with the tab character after the "4") as "div". I think Safari only understands escaped characters when they are not in the middle of the string. "di\76 " (with a trailing tab character) works.Of course all of the above applies to Safari 1.2. Since Apple has gone the Microsoft root of tying the browser to the OS and only allowing one installation I have no way to test in multiple versions of Safari short of repartitioning my drive and maintaining multiple versions of the OS.
Michael said 1634 days ago:
Ah! At last Safari does smallcaps:http://www.btinternet.com/~historiae/sctest.html
New Camino on the way, too:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/camino/homepage.html
and an update to Mailsmith:
http://www.barebones.com/index.shtml
I believe John Gruber has a hand in that.
Jayme said 1634 days ago:
Using Safari makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside because it's Apple's baby. But even 1.2 still gives me the occasional spinning beachball when I attempt to copy and paste from an outside app into a webform in Safari. By giving me these small, micro-delays Safari consistently makes me feel like I click and think faster than it can handle at times. Drives me crazy because I have to fill out a lot of forms for work. I've taken OmniWeb 5.0 for a drive around the block, and as has been mentioned already, it is still far too buggy to be used for anything more than an occasional joyride or two. It does boast some unique features that make me yearn for the day when all nuts and bolts on this browser are tight. Bottom line: Firebird is the best overall browser for the Mac right now. I keep looking for a reason to go elsewhere (because that's just my nature), but no other available option brings as much stability, speed and polish as Firebird.Jon Hicks said 1634 days ago:
Shaun - Yes, I think its rather nasty of Apple to go and do a MIcrosoft on us. Particularly stipulating upgrades to Panther before getting the updates. Do you then support 1.0 and 1.2 users with different hacks?Michael - thanks I wasn't aware that small caps had been introduced!
Jayme - Wierd I don't get that form problem with Safari. If Firebird suddenly became Cocoa and supported the services menu, it would be my default in a flash. Version 0.8 will be good though! ;o)
Colly said 1634 days ago:
The great thing about Safari is how the community (albeit the Mac side for the most part) are helping shape what will surely be an exceptional browser once officially completed. It is comforting that not only is the community engaged in collectively solving the myriad of problems, but also that the Safari team are so approachable and open about their progress.Version 1.2 messed up forms display on three of our sites, but the styles were soon sorted, and now everything looks better. So, I'm a step closer to happiness, and happy to be patient. One thing messes up, but forty are fixed...
And, as for discussions about checking in Jaguar/Panther versions, I wonder if a facility like http://www.danvine.com/icapture will be tailored to help us with this. Apple could look to offer something similar, or pay that chap handsomely to offer multi-version checking.
Shaun Inman said 1634 days ago:
Haha, I'm friends with Dan, I'm sure he'd like that quite a bit Colly. Jon has a good point about converting Firebird to Cocoa--if Mozilla had inline spell checking I might jump the fence as well.I wouldn't put too much hope in an "officially complete" Safari though (or any other browser for that matter). The standards will always move forward and the browsers will always be trailing after.
I am concerned about the growing volume of nasty point releases littering the information superhighway though.
It's great that these developers are openly sharing their progress but it amounts to an automaker releasing cars with incomplete feature sets. The first without windshield wipers, the next version might have windshield wipers but no brake lights, the third has both but still no turn signals. (I'm obviously exaggerating since no physical harm can come from using an unfinished or buggy browser but it certainly makes our jobs unnecessarily more complicated having to account for all the possibilities.) Drivers on the open road would become aware of the deficiencies of their vehicle rather quickly just be seeing other's autos, but casual internet user's don't care about minor version numbers.
I'm young, I missed out on the browser wars and maybe this has all happened before. Maybe Microsoft is the hero here, providing us with a temporarily static platform (buggy as it is) whose quirks we can learn and address instead of chasing after each minute improvement in the rapidly and publicly developing browsers.
I want Safari to be the dominant browser on the Mac platform and Mozilla can have the PC market but I think these point releases undermine the importance of staying up to date for the casual user. It's like crying wolf to the public and the numbers that get "duped" just increase the vagueness of our job.
Jon Hicks said 1633 days ago:
Just thinking about OmniWeb again, its a shame that they don't release nightly builds in the way that Mozilla do. I'm sure bugs are getting fixed at least every week. I know that thats not really possible though...Shaun Inman said 1625 days ago:
I finally figured out the trick with the escape hack mentioned above. It can hide CSS from Safari--but only when it's declared inline. If the escape hack is used in a linked or imported stylesheet Safari has no problem reading it.