Apparently Apple focused Safari development on gaining milliseconds instead of improving their web browser. According to Apple’s marketing department Safari 3 outperforms every other available browser. And you really need those milliseconds to compensate the time you loose while using Safari caused by the lack of new and innovative features, compared to other popular web browsers.
E.g. the implementation of a simple but very handy feature like bookmark keywords and the wonderful %s for adding search functionality:
In Firefox or Camino I simply
- type a bookmark keyword followed by a blank and the search term into the address bar – just like “wiki Apple” for looking up the word “Apple” on Wikipedia for instance
- and hit enter
That way I can possibly search every searchable site on the internet very fast and easily.
In Safari I use
- the Bookmark Bar or Bookmark Menu to
- find the right bookmark,
- click on it or type the site address into the address bar,
- wait until the page loads – btw, in Safari it really loads blazingly fast now!
- figure out where the searchbar is on the site,
- click in it to activate it – now I think you even can resize text input fields in Safari, and be honest, we all anxiously waited for this feature!
- type in my search term
- hit enter or the search button.
You see what I mean?
Search is one of the most important features on the internet, a web browser should therefore ease the access to search and information.
By definition beta software is feature complete and ready for testing. So that means I’ll have to wait for Safari 4 until I eventually see more features…
It’s probably only a small step for mankind, but a major improvement for any Firefox user on Mac OS X: the next version of the famous open source browser comes with good looking Mac OS X native form controls. Anyone interested can download an early preview here.
Another point that won’t work well in my WordPress 2.1 is Firefox’s spell check functionality. It only works after enabling manually each time you edit a post using the rich text editor. Kind of annoying.
But, thanks to Otto there is a workaround: to automatically enable Firefox’s built-in spell checking functionality in WordPress 2.1 again, just head over and get the FFSpell-plugin.
After being the next big thing for more than 5 years now, native SVG support in Firefox 3 gets a major update. Read Tim Rowley’s post for more information. Guess I have to try the Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 as well…
Maybe I should read support documents more carefully, but I never would’ve expected a browser to break a GIS installation: after my glorious update to IE7, ArcToolbox wasn’t working any longer, as discussed here and patched here. Even though the site says that the patch is meant for IE7 betas, it solved my problem with the final (german) IE7 release.
A must have Firefox 2 extension for web developers: IE Tab lets you switch between IE and Firefox within a Firefox tab immediately. Have the Firefox interface and let IE render the page if you want. Great add-on!
Zotero, another new Firefox 2 extension, manages bookmarks like a bibliography. Seems very useful for extensive online researches.
Inspired by gps tracklogs’s GPS data search tool I set up this morning a customized search engine based on Google’s Co-op service called Geo Blog Search. It includes and searches every geo related blog I could find so far, but is still open for contribution, meaning that if you know a site which isn’t yet included, you can mark and add it to the Geo Blog Search (never tried this but it can’t be so difficult to figure out how it works).
The whole thing was pretty straightforward and can serve well if you want to dig out some topics the “geoblogosphere” was talking about.
Additionally I created a little search extension in order to access the customized search directly from the browser’s search bar. If you’re reading this in Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7 you should now see the option Add “Geo Blog Search” in your search engine drop down list.
BeatnikPad offers now optimized Firefox 2 builds for Macs again, which bring an overall better performance on Mac OS X. If you’re unhappy with the icon and name “BonEcho” you can simply change and rename them in the finder and info-window. To get the browser labeled as Firefox in the menu bar too, you’ll want to edit Firefox.app -> right-click “Show Package Contents” -> Contents -> Resources -> en.lproj -> InfoPlist.strings and rename “BonEcho” there to “Firefox” too.
At the same site I came over a nice Firefox extension: Fission, puts the page loading progress into the address bar as known from Safari. From a usability point of view I think it’s much better than in the status bar. The eye can stay at the upper screen area and don’t has to jump around to see whether a page is completely loaded or not.
I’ve never seen the small animated arrows on Google Maps before when you zoom in or out using a scroll wheel. A good method to ease orientation while fast zooming on maps.
It almost took a day to figure out whether Firefox 2.0 is released or not, but now it’s officially announced and Firefox is available for download.
Even people in Redmond noticed that there’s something cooking and sent this cake, un-poisoned.
Released or not released, that’s the question…
If you’re in the mood of celebrating this historic moment, join a Firefox Release Party close to you. There is even one in Vienna, if you happen to be around this area on Saturday.
Btw, unlike earlier versions, Firefox 2 works like a charm on Macs! I’m using it since release candidate #1 and already prefer it over Safari because of its better compatibility to most heavy JavaScript (vulgo AJAX) sites, the possibility to customize it with add-ons and the built-in SVG support.
Only Apple’s Quicktime and Google’s Toolbar cause sometimes trouble.
In Google Toolbar 2.0 for Firefox I can now add news feeds to my Personalized Google Home, Firefox Live Bookmarks, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, NewsGator or Pluck. So far so good, but why is Google’s own feed reader missing?