Tabs for Safari

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Posted by pudge on Tuesday February 4, 2003 @02:27AM from the better-than-nothing dept.

hexgrid writes "A dream come true! Blacktree, Inc. has released Pith Beta 2, 'a utility for Safari that tracks the currently open sites and displays them in a window.' It's not exactly tabs as we know them in other browsers, but serves the same purpose with the added bonus of being more 'Mac-like.'"

22 of 66 comments (clear)

Pith != tabs... yet by root+66 · 2003-02-04 02:33 · Score: 5, Informative

While it's true that Pith is a nice tool, it is not exactly comparable to Mozilla's tabs. Some of Pith's shortcomings may exist due to its beta stage, but I wonder whether it's possible for Pith to fully achieve its goal. One major downside is the performance hit caused by the heavy safari window showing/hiding.
There is a discussion about Pith on MacSlash.
In other news, Apple has updated it's iMac product line...

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-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
1. Re:Pith != tabs... yet by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-04 07:14 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I don't see how everyone can say it's not quite there yet. It's a different implementation but has very interesting features:
  
  1. You can hide any window (control click the button and choose hide).
  
  2. If you see a performance problem with hiding, instead use the same window to display all pages. This is very much like tabbed browsing with the advantage that you don't waste as much vertical screen real-estate.
  
  3. You can organize the buttons by age, name or order; which is an improvement over traditional tabs.
  
  All in all I think it's a great implementation; even though different.
  
  Note: to access the preferences click on the PITH icon on the bottom of the floating window.
  
  AC
pith balls by sporty · 2003-02-04 03:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Pith is a utility for Safari that tracks the currently open sites and displays them in a window. If Safari crashes, relaunch it, and Pith can recover the windows that were open.

Um.. and if pith crashes, can safari relaunch it?

If there should be tabs for safari, then it should be in the browser somehow, not as a second hand utility. By making it a second hand utility, they become two systems that become dependent on each other. No optimization, no good integration. Look at mplayerosx. It's one app that controls the other. It jsut doesn't feel.. seemless.

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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Re:This looks like a cool hack, but... by njitkoff · 2003-02-04 03:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder what grounds Apple could use to issue such an order. iCommune was killed because it used there plugin SDK, but Pith is AppleScript/Events and completely separate..... Even so, it is works for the time being.
Tabs? by funkhauser · 2003-02-04 03:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

Tabs are nice and all, but what Safari really needs us Keychain utilization and stability fixes.

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Learn to Play Go
1. Re:Tabs? by Visigothe · 2003-02-04 06:05 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  > Tabs are nice and all, but what Safari really
  > needs us Keychain utilization and stability fixes.
  
  Actually, Safari does utilise the keychain. What it *doesn't* do is auto-fill forms.
  
  If you go to a site that uses HTTP authentication [as opposed to a web form a la /.], it will read/write to the keychain.
  
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  Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
I don't find tabs that useful by kerteszla · 2003-02-04 03:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

Before Safari came along, I used Mozilla and rarely if ever used the tabs feature. I'd rather open a new window and then close it or minimize it if I didn't need it right away. The mozilla tabs were simply too buggy for me to bother with. I hope Apple works on compatibility issues before it spends time on designing tabs that work. d.
What The World... err, Safari Needs Now is... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-04 04:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

** An obvious way to _export_ bookmarks
- Using Eterm/Terminal/Xterm to cd, cp, grep is a work-around not a way in a GUI program.
- When I realized this I immeadiately switched to Chimera before I really built up a bunch of bookmarks.
- In the process I tried to manually maul the bookmark.xml file. Don't even try. It's cluttered with a bunch of other stuff: history, your IP address, blah blah.

** A bookmarks file that just has bookmarks. I don't want my IP address and surfing history burned on to a backup that I throw into a corner of my work disastter.

** Tabs: I was going through serious withdrawl for the last week.

** Nested bookmark folders: How else are you going to keep your pr0n seperate from the mountains in your pics directory? Although if you insist on using it, create a new folder then click on the button bar icon, then drag the folder to the right pane if you want to add a folder to the button bar... Wait! Wait! I'll bet I could use Property List editor to duplicate that stupid button bar entry, rename it and then... oh my god! where did my bookmarks go. What are they doing in history. Ack cough choke. Please, please, please Mr. Jobe, tell me how to move things from history to bookmarks.

** Better bookmark control in general. Creating a new folder in the left and _having to_ drag it to the right pane is the only movement choice (the one time you can do it). People are very used to being to drag things on top of things (e.g. a folder or Rendezvous or whatever on the left) and people are very used to having a hierarchical view (e.g. Windows (not internet) Explorer's left column)
1. Re:What The World... err, Safari Needs Now is... by Sir+Holo · 2003-02-04 20:35 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  What The World... err, Safari Needs Now is...
  
  The ability to TURN OFF FLASH/SHOCKWAVE! Is anyone else so distracted by animations when they're trying to read text that they have diabled flash/shockwave? Animations are cool, but only when that's what I want to watch, which is less often than I want to read text without some Monkey jumping around waiting to be Punched, or whatever. (GIF animations are off, too.) In my browser, nothing moves, and all is well. Opera, Baby, you are still on top.
  
  Am I the only one?
Don't be daft by hobbit · 2003-02-04 05:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Whatever Apple could come up with will be better than this, because it would actually be part of Safari. Do you think they built scripting into Mac OS just so that they could sue people who use it?

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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Re:Pith is cute, but lacks keyboard control... by njitkoff · 2003-02-04 06:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Pith window never receives keypresses, and doesn't usually become the active application. I opted to do that rather than have it absorb them because after clicking the pith window I kept trying to use the Safari command keys and Pith would just beep and look at me like I was stupid. What sort of keyboard navigation do you suggest? I may be able to rig up hotkeys to work.....
I Want This For All Apps by esme · 2003-02-04 07:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

I want a Pith for everything -- a taskbar that displays an icon for each window that's open.

My one big problem with OSX right now is that it's too hard to switch between windows of different apps. Since I often have a bunch of terminals, several Mozilla windows, plus other random stuff open, I need to do this often. Mozilla's tabs make it easier to get the Moz windows, at least. But I'd like it to handle all apps...

-Esme
1. Re:I Want This For All Apps by Golias · 2003-02-04 10:55 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  For every app that's running in OS X, the dock icon has a menu of each of the windows handled by that app. So switching between different windows in different apps is actually pretty easy, if you know about that feature.
  
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  Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
2. Re:I Want This For All Apps by 3-State+Bit · 2003-02-04 12:23 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  command-tilde switches between open windows of a given app. As long as you only have 3-4 that's okay, but the point is that each of those 3-4 safari windows should be able to hold potentially dozens of tabs.
3. Re:I Want This For All Apps by esme · 2003-02-04 18:42 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I should have been more specific -- I want single-click access to every window, like the Gnome taskbar (if you turn off grouping) or the Windows taskbar give you. (I never thought I'd find myself complaining about a usability feature that's present in Windows and Linux, but missing from OSX).
  In fact, I started to write my own taskbar, but I was trying to do it in Java (b/c I don't know Obj-C). The Java APIs will get you a lot of stuff, but crucially won't let you talk to the window server to get the open windows. There are some classes that let you register to receive application lifecycle events, but I couldn't get them to work, either. Maybe I should check out Real Basic to see if it can talk to the window server.
  -Esme
Re:This looks like a cool hack, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-04 07:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

Remember the iPod TV Remote Control addon that Apple requested be killed?

Yeah, the Griffin PodMate. I'm still pissed. I wanted one, but it was too late. And I think you're giving Apple too much credit - they aren't producing nothing to replace it, ever. They're not "slow", they're just not interested. They don't want the iPod extended to a "paltry" RemoteControl. The rule is, "If it wasn't invented in Cupertino, we don't like it".

I've been a MacAddict since my old PB520 and system7, and this incident was the same old Apple, killing off a good idea, shooting themselves in the head. All these linux guys will soon learn how Apple really is. I can see they're still all excited over osx, but they'll learn. I hope they stay onboard after they get Steved. And I really hope Apple gets a clue and stops killing good projects.
Holy Crap! by cpsc2005 · 2003-02-04 08:22 · Score: 2, Funny

It's the "Window" Menu with little pictures! Wow, this thing is great!
They're Tabs, Jim, by Tumbleweed · 2003-02-04 08:32 · Score: 3, Funny

...but not as we know them.
Not a real good idea by rgraham · 2003-02-04 08:42 · Score: 2, Informative

Apple has stated that developing apps for or that include Safari is not recommended since they anticipate a lot will change between now and when they release vesion 1.0.
OS 9 App Switcher by hnoon · 2003-02-04 08:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

It'a kinda like the old drop-down, tear-off App Switcher in Mac Os 8/9.

The tab interface still needs significant improvement on all the browsers. Quite often I want to close a tab by clicking on the little x but instinctively move my mouse up an extra inch and close the window instead. There go all them pages I opened up.

The only reason I still use tabs is because of good old ctrl-t and ctrl-f4.
AMD logo by TQBrady · 2003-02-04 09:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's with the AMD logo on this story?
why tabs? by euggie · 2003-02-04 20:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

IMHO tabs is probably one of the biggest UI blunders out there these days. Sure, it's all fun and games if you are running at 1600x1200, but most luser folks run at 1024x768. At that kind of resolution if you have more than handful of tabs in the same window, the tabs are crunched so closed together you can hardly read the title. So what's the point?

I don't see the point of this whole Windows-within-a-window deal. It's not like you can actually read anything besides the active tab anyway. If you have Safari's SnapBack, you're not going to need tabs to help you keep track of where you are.

Besides, if you bothered to read Apple's Safari page at all--or watched the keynote for that matter--you'll know that Safari is built for _speed_. Keep the Netscape/Mozilla-style bloat out.