In what must be the fastest, most in-depth, distributed product review in history, Apple’s new browser, Safari is being bashed about all over the blogosphere. Last night I was less than overwhelmed, but this morning I’m a little more happy. [Ben Hammersley]
Ben is spot on. Based on the mob’s commentary (posts by Terrie Miller, Mark Pilgrim and myself provide numerous starting points) it would seem that tabbed browsing has been voted as the leading must-have missing feature from the new browser.
Equally as noteworthy is the distributed conversation regarding Apple’s selection of an HTML rending engine and the mass debugging of its standards compliance.
Apple’s use of the Konqueror/KHTML engine as opposed to Mozilla Gecko is a bit controversial (or more accurately intruiging), but in the long run will be beneficial to the space. Instead of one open source engine, developers will have more choice and the inheritent flexibility that two different efforts provide. (More specifically, these engines are likely to be essential in providing the basis to next generation Internet-aware microcontent applications.) There is some valid concern that another engine will divide the efforts of the community and introduce additional quirks and standards incompatabilites for designers concerned with universal access to work around. With Apple’s support and dedication, I’m optimistic that those issues will be surmounted — take David Hyatt and quick and open response to the community’s feedback.
Once again the network effects of the Internet delivers.
What are your thoughts on Safarai and its use of Konqueror instead of Gecko?
Well, a bit more work and it will be a great browser
Missing or bugs are right now: Cookiemanagement has trouble with a lot of sites, Downloads are going just in one folder (no possibility to get an "save under"-dialog), draging a picture out of the browser on the desk don't make an icon on the file, forms in CSS will not be displayed correctly, reloading a picture or just a frame is not possible, and a few more little stuff.
On the other hand, its nice to have popup-window blocking, fast browsing/rendering, favicons are displayed, nice favorites management, addressbook websites of friends integrated, google in menue, + window button makes window not over the dock, ... well after betatesting it will be a nice alternative!
You can download to a different folder
Not sure what you mean exactly by:
"Downloads are going just in one folder (no possibility to get an "save under"-dialog)"
but you can change the download folder from the preference panel and there is also a Save As meno item.
Rendezvous
It appears that Safari is the first web browser to support Rendezvous. There is a bookmark collection titled "Rendezvous". I expect we'll see Rendezvous enabled devices that can be discovered and interacted with via Rendezvous and Safari. While printers come to mind, it looks like that even devices like Tivo are going to support Rendezvous to some extent.
Google Search
I really like this feature because I use it often. However, I would really love it if I knew a keyboard shortcut to get to the search bar, something like command+g, for instance. Other than that it seems like a good beta and something to be optimistic about. So, tabbed browsing and a key combo for quick access to Google. Would work for me.
Re: Google search
Not exactly one step, but Command-L, works for me! :-)
re: google search
try cmd-option F
enjoy
Why not KHTML?
For starters, Safari is significantly faster than Chimera, and Chimera is fast. Secondly, I agree that it's certainly not going to hurt anyone to have two great rendering engines out there -- after all, diversity is one of the great boons of open source software. Not to mention Gecko already has lots of people working on it (some would suggest far too many), whereas KHTML is a much smaller-scale project and one that is much easier for Apple to dig their hands into. Gecko was expected... but when does Apple do the expected?
You may be interested to note that one of the Safari developers has his own web log @ http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/ ... and he addresses many of the comments that have been made across the web.
Amy, who also wrote about Safari on OS X Goodies
Why not KHTML?
For starters, Safari is significantly faster than Chimera, and Chimera is fast. Secondly, I agree that it's certainly not going to hurt anyone to have two great rendering engines out there -- after all, diversity is one of the great boons of open source software. Not to mention Gecko already has lots of people working on it (some would suggest far too many), whereas KHTML is a much smaller-scale project and one that is much easier for Apple to dig their hands into. Gecko was expected... but when does Apple do the expected?
You may be interested to note that one of the Safari developers has his own web log @ http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/ ... and he addresses many of the comments that have been made across the web.
Amy, who also wrote about Safari on OS X Goodies
Default Browser :-)
Safari is already my default browser, it use to be chimera but I found that Safari is more complete as an application. Sure there are some bugs in the rendering but Gecko must has some bugs also.
As for someone comments : "draging a picture out of the browser on the desk don't make an icon on the file" That's not a bug and it's not missing, that a functionality, Jaguar can automatically make icons for a image with the view options. I have the option of seeing icons when I want, to me that's better than having an icon slow the display all the time.
Not the main issue
I miss three things far more than tabbed browsing:
1. Auto fill - I have to fully type the same items over and over again.
2. Mail button - I regularly excerpt something from a web page and want to send it to someone, but can't do it as easily as in IE.
3. New windows opening full screen and positioned correctly, with no slight offset down and to the right.
Other than that, I think Safari is great! My biggest concern is that all of us with our suggestions do not cause Safari to get bloated and slow down any. I'd rather keep it like it is!