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.'"

12 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.
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
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)
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
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 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.
2. 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.
They're Tabs, Jim, by Tumbleweed · 2003-02-04 08:32 · Score: 3, Funny

...but not as we know them.