Safari Beta Leaked, With Tabs

ollie_ob writes "Seems a bit too good to be true: Apple listening to its community and implementing the features most requested? Apparently a build (v62) of Safari has been leaked into the wild, and has tabs -- though not fully implemented yet -- and primitive support for autocomplete in forms. The Think Secret rumor site has the scoop." It is not merely a rumor, I've confirmed it. It works nicely, too, in a brief test. Then I, uh, deleted the copy I looked at.

Comments

Tabs? of course

[djupedal]

You mean when I said Safari would have tabs, and tons of people ran me down and others supposedly in the know said 'no way...not ever'...you mean to say that I was right all along?

Imagine that.

Re:Tabs? of course

[sporty]

Did you provide proof of some kind?

Did you use absolute statements? (Bush will definitely go to war vs most likely)

Unless you didn't do those two things, your opinion would be unpopular because you had no authority (proof) or no logical argument. Not that what you said waranted to be modded down, as if mod points were money, but if people don't find reason to agree, they won't agree or just not care :)

Re:Tabs? of course

[iomud]

To the tab naysayers, how do like them apples? When it comes out (officially) I'll glady switch to using safari as my default browser.

Next stop keychain support.

Re:Tabs? of course

[cymen]

What exactly is wrong with using absolute statements? The whole "in my opinion", "most likely", yadda yadda just makes more dribble. Any rational person has to assume that the person they are talking to is full of BS and work UP from there using their judgement and information gathered. Why assume the person isn't full of BS and then work down when pushed?

Contrary to a lot of /. posts, I'm actually interested in a rational opposing view. I just don't see one (yeah, this is your cue to reply).

Re:Tabs? of course

[sporty]

What exactly is wrong with using absolute statements?

Well, because making absolute statements can be very harmful or just wrong. Like saying

Microsoft has done nothing good... or..
Bush will go to war... or..
This company will go bankrupt.

Do you have some fore-knowledge? Also by making absolute statements, you weaken your argument. Or can we now say,

All mp3 users are pirates...
All pregnant teens were irresponsible...
All linux users are zealots...
All geeks are fat and ugly with no social skills

Re:Tabs? of course

[pressman]

All geeks are fat and ugly with no social skills

I don't think anyone is going to try and refute this one though!

Re:Tabs? of course

[mbbac]

Is version 1.0 out? Does it have tabs?

No, and no?

Well, then your hunch hasn't been proven correct yet. There is still time for the release version of Safari to have the tabs functionality removed from it or replaced with something more worthwhile. Features found in betas have been removed for finals before, you know.

Re:Tabs? of course

[Kplusplus]

Apple has always included the most requested features by users. That is the reason why the Mac OS is so good in the first place, it has what users want in it. If you request any feature in any Apple product enough you do get it.

How you think this is in any ways like Windows is beyond me. Tabs are not in IE, neither on the Mac nor on windows. Tabs are a Mozilla/Opera invention, much better on Mozilla's side. They were improved in practice in Chimera with quick key shortcuts to navigate from tab to tab and Safar has inherited these. Try Command-Shift-Left, Command-Shift-Right, they will cycle right and left through your open tabs.

However, if you prefer a company that doesn't listen to its customers, and would rather do what they want then waht users obviously want, then I don't see how you could like Apple, the company, not its computers.

Re:Tabs? of course

[vsync64]

They were improved in practice in Chimera with quick key shortcuts to navigate from tab to tab and Safar has inherited these. Try Command-Shift-Left, Command-Shift-Right, they will cycle right and left through your open tabs.

Umm, AFAIK this feature was in Mozilla before Chimera existed. Try Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn.

Re:Tabs? of course

[Alan Partridge]

wrong

the MacOS was good because it was designed by people who CARED. they cared about efficiency, user feedback and aesthetics. MacOS is such a creaky UI because it's in the business of capturing users from Windows, so it aims to emrace UI conventions that they're familiar with - Apple seems to think that this is the way forward, I think it's a step back.

To paraphrase Akio Morita "why would we ask consumers what to make? They don't know what's possible."

Re:Tabs? of course

[Kplusplus]

THe MacOS is still all those things except not some things are different then before. You can't possibly think Apple doesn't care since I personally think that the changes in Mac OS X all make sense.

Efficiency? 10.2 is super optimized, and as to UI efficiency I have seen nothing that would suggest that X is less efficient in this regard. Hell most of the time its faster with things like global window switch keys( Cmd-~ ), and applicatino switching ( Cmd-Tab ), add to that the familiar Mac OS way of doing things.

As to familiarity with windows. Almost all the things you could argue are windowsesque are from NeXT and thier implementation of them predate Window's.

Apple has always thought that the user is more important since they will be using it all the damn time. I don't have a qoute unfortunately.

Re:Tabs? of course

[Alan Partridge]

10.2 may be optimised, but it's still about HALF as quick as OS8.6! 9.2.2 is BLAZING fast by comparison, the folder hierarchy is more logical, the spatial finder is much more customisable (for productivity).

Now I use 10.2.4, and I won't be going back to the instability of OS9, but I can't help but wonder just how great Copland could have been.

Re:Tabs? of course

[Kplusplus]

9.2.2 is less stable than 9.1 first of all and that is because its only a build to appease the demands of Mac OS X. As to optimization, 9.2.2 is the result of over 10 years of optimization and computers growing magnitudes faster over that time. 10.2 is 2 years worth of optimizations, and the amout of optimizations that have already been made more than surpass those for 9.

QuickDraw meets its older and wiser brethren Quartz and Quartz Extreme.
The organization is the same if not better.
System Folder = /System
Applications Folder = /Applications
Apple Extras in /Applications
Users = /Users
Yes the /Library I can't sompare to 9 but it is much better than fropping stuff directly into te sytem folder since all the non essentla and third party stuff sit outside of the folder of stuff your computer needs in order to run.

And Copland could not have possibly been great besides OpenDoc which was a nice idea, there is nothing much that it would have bought us since we would still be basically using 9. And if you think Apple has trouble starting from a base like NeXTStep 4.4 what if they did try fro mscratch I think there would be a lot more bitching all around. I just don't think Apple could afford that misstep.

Re:Tabs? of course

[squiggleslash]

One of the first things I did when I went over to OS X was turn on the spacial mode (basically a matter of setting the defaults to "Open folder in new window" or something, and, to prevent windows getting absurdly cluttered, turning off the toolbars of any Finder windows with them until it remembered to do that automatically.)

I thought it intensely odd that Apple made the browser mode the default, rather than either the NeXTStep "Columns" view or a spacial mode. The former would have been alright by those who can't have more than one window open without flipping out (which, for some reason, includes a lot of my technically inclined collegues), the latter would have made the experience familiar to existing Mac users, and both would have ensured users had a file management system that reflected and made intuitive the underlying file structure.

Oh well.

Re:Tabs? of course

[fault0]

Uh, what the fuck? Internet Explorer doesn't have tabs. Tabs are as tied to Windows as it's tied to Linux or MacOS.

Re:Tabs? of course

[acm5fan]

you're absolutely right dude

Re:Tabs? of course

[Kplusplus]

Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown are nowehere near as intuitive as Cmd-Shift-Left, Cmd-Shift-Right. Secondly though Mozilla doeshave the functionality you say it is pointed out in no menus whatsoever. I knew of this functionailty because of Chimera. In mozilla the shortcuts you mention don't show up in any menu not even the tab menu you get when you right click on a tab. I'm just pointing out that if a feature is there but not clearly listed it might as well not be there. Cmd-Shift-Left/right is obvious since if Cmd-left/right go forward and back obviosuly you need a modifier to move through tabs and shift is the closest one.

Re:Tabs? of course

[jericho4.0]

But few Betas have ever been released that have been this polished. At this point, I could care less when version 1.0 is coming out.

Re:Tabs? of course

[rjung2k]

The /Library and ~/Library folders are comparable to what used to be in the "System Folder" as well, except better organized with support for multiple users and system-wide preferences.

And I agree, the MacOS X directory organization is equal to or better than what it was in MacOS 9. The only people I hear complaining about this issue are the folks who insist on the privileges to stick files in obscure places, even though they'd never use that feature to begin with.

Re:Tabs? of course

[vsync64]

Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown are nowehere near as intuitive as Cmd-Shift-Left, Cmd-Shift-Right.

I'm not sure how either one is really "intuitive" but oh well, go on your merry Mac way with that. What I like is that Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn only make me move my right hand away from the home row, and I can hit Control with my pinky (I've swapped it with CapsLock on my keyboard, but before I did that I could easily hit Control with my palm). Meanwhile, Cmd-Shift-whatever is in a far more inconvenient place, is another extra keystroke, and requires me to move both hands away and back again, just to switch tabs.

In mozilla the shortcuts you mention don't show up in any menu not even the tab menu you get when you right click on a tab. I'm just pointing out that if a feature is there but not clearly listed it might as well not be there.

Yes, this should be fixed.

Cmd-Shift-Left/right is obvious since if Cmd-left/right go forward and back obviosuly you need a modifier to move through tabs and shift is the closest one.

I don't use Mac OS, but if you're saying Cmd-left/right go left and right with words in text, I'm not really sure how that's related to tabs.

Re:Tabs? of course

[vsync64]

cmd-left-right go back/forward in your browsing session. (e.g. you probably can't go "forward" now, since you didn't just come back from somewhere)
quite clear?

Actually, now it's even less clear. "Back" and "forward" in the browser history is moving along the time axis. Meanwhile, switching between tabs is moving along the axis of distinct sections. So really, these orthogonal concepts being at right angles to each other in any rational representation, it makes no sense whatsoever to use the same left/right direction keys to move along the distinct axes.

Sorry if Cartesian geometry and multiple dimensions are difficult concepts for the Mac userbase.

Hooray!

[tamen]

Tabs ho!

You need to activate the debug menu. While Safari is not running, write this in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Start Safari (Beta .62) and choose "Tabbed Browsing" in the debug menu.
Command-T will open a new tab as will right clicking on a link and choose "Open link in new tab". Command-W will close the tab you are currently using. Command-shift-right/leftarrow wil choose the prev/next tab.
One thing though, tabs slows down the gui, not page-load-time, but it takes longer to switch between tabs than to switch between windows. Also, if you have, say, 5 tabs in one window and are looking at the last (the one most to the right) command-shift-rightarrow will not cycle you back to the first tab. Another thing is that Safari sometimes closes the whole window instead of just the tab when you press command-W.
Ive got only small complaints, Im very impressed they got it working so well already. Cant wait for the final.

Tabbing is a nice feature, but Ive kinda got used to not using tabs after shifting to Safari. well, Ive just got to get used to tabbing again ;)

Re:Hooray!

[sapporo]

Cmd-click will open a link in a new tab
Cmd-Shift-click will open a link in a new tab in the background
Cmd-Option-click will open a link in a new window
Cmd-Option-Shift-click will open a link in a new window in the background

How did I find out? When you hover over a link, Safari shows you what it would do if you clicked that link in the status bar. Very convenient.

Re:Hooray!

[Ponty]

Somewhere in the mists?

Re:Hooray!

[Lewisham]

Using, um, an uplink, um, to a disk server that, um, is in *no way connected to me*, I tried out tabbed Safari.

I almost wept a tear. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen (apart from Oolong. I was atheist. I now see the light.

In Steve I trust.

It also fixed my blog page's CSS troubles. Woo!

Re:Hooray!

[sergeantmudd]

You don't need even the debug menu unless you wanna turn tabs on and off on the fly. (Which you might because clicking on a link opens a new tab, not a new window, which some might now like in all cases) In terminal just type

"defaults write com.apple.safari TabbedBrowsing 1"

Re:Hooray!

[toothfish]

very handy. does anyone else think that the tabs which are in the background are really hard to read, though?

Re:Hooray!

[mccabem]

Merely a point of reference: All the gotchas you list were also present for me in the first tabbed Mozilla release. :-)

v.62, however, isn't released yet, so there's some degree of hope that the Safari implementation of tabs will be rid of all this bugs before the (rest of the) public sees them.

Oh?

[ptaff]

So, Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Safari, (...!) all have tabbed browsing?

Who's missing? oh! sorry, I remember, they don't care about usability anymore, they have 95% of the market.

"People don't use tabs, look, mommy, 95% of people live without."

Innovation: don't ever use bright ideas from others.

Re:Oh?

[HaloZero]

CrazyBrowser - These guys have it, too. It's a decent browser. *shrug* Works well, doesn't crash, fast-ish browsing, little slow though.

Re:Oh?

[Consul]

So, Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Safari, (...!) all have tabbed browsing?

Who's missing?

Well, I don't remember using tabbed browsing in Lynx (or Links). ;-)

Re:Oh?

[troc]

They are using a leaked "internal" build of Safari, not the public beta you can download from Apple.

HTH

Troc

Re:Oh?

[cymen]

Just to point out CrazyBrowser is a new web browser in the same way as Galeon or the browser-formerly-known-as-phoenix-yet-not-renamed- yet. They use the IE engine.

From the FAQ page:
Crazy Browser is not IE plug-in or add-on, it just uses IE rendering engine to render the Web pages. Programming is not so easy, I have been developing Crazy Browser for two years.

I tried CrazyBrowser in the lab at school and it was pretty sweet. I did find the multiple close buttons a little odd, non-intuitive, and put in a poor location.

Re:Oh?

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

Well, I don't remember using tabbed browsing in Lynx

Wasn't that called emacs or screen?

Re:Oh?

[mgaiman]

The difference, though, is that on Windows you have the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen that allows you to switch back and forth between windows easily. You only really need to have tabs when there isn't an easy way to switch between windows. Tabs allow you to easily have a running list of all open browser windows and to switch back and forth, something that the MacOS window cascade has difficulty with.

Please don't get me wrong, I love OSX with a passion, but this is just an area where the windows taskbar shines over the dock. It doesn't happen often.

Tabs are essential to the mac browsing experience in my mind.

Re:Oh?

[prinzip]

Just to point out:

- Mozilla run on windows, many people use it and it have tabs

and more important:

Apple didn't create tabs idea, it came from Mozilla, then from Linux And Windoz...

Re:Oh?

[ptaff]

If you could open more than 4 windows without making the OS crash, the taskbar would become so cluttered that it would make it unusable.

I also despise the XP-way of putting all IE windows on the same taskbar 'button': 2 steps that could be made into 1 with a tab.

My 0,02$

Re:Oh?

[martingunnarsson]

I don't know what resolution you run on your machine but 10-15 buttons fits easily on the taskbar here. Also, I've had over 20 IE-windows at the same time, it doesn't even slow down Windows. You have exactly the same cluttering-problem with tabs. In Word 97 you could open several documents in the same Window (only one taskbar button) but that was removed in favour of one button per document which is really a better option.

Re:Oh?

[awl]

Am I missing something?

On OS X I right click on the icon (or control click if you are still running a one button mouse) for a running app in the dock and I get a menu including an item for each open window.

I use windows a lot, and I always end up with more icons that fit in the bar and end up having to page through them. The dock way feels easier to me...

Re:Oh?

[commodoresloat]

Lynx (or Links)

Folks, these are not the same browser. Lynx is sane, bloat-free, simple. Links has color and support for other bloatware like tables. This crap slows my computer to a grinding halt. Bloat I tell you!!! Next we'll be seeing popup ads, tabs, and other horrible things. Worst yet I hear they will be changing the name to (B)Links once they add support for everyone's favorite HTML tag....

Re:Oh?

[danrees]

Tabs allow you to easily have a running list of all open browser windows and to switch back and forth, something that the MacOS window cascade has difficulty with.

Do remember that in Mac OS X you can use command-~ to switch windows within an application. This should suit most people's needs quite readily (although tabs are a good optional extra).

Re:Oh?

[GlassHeart]

[navigating web browser windows] just an area where the windows taskbar shines over the dock

And in other cases, it doesn't. The Windows taskbar gets cluttered a lot more quickly than the Dock, because every window gets a "tab". I don't need a "tab" for the window I'm typing email in, because I don't type too many of them at the same time, so clicking the mail application icon is sufficient to switch back.

This is why tabbed browsing, implemented in the browser, is better. It's available where it's needed, but doesn't clutter up other applications that don't need it. Perhaps Apple will update Cocoa so that Document-based applications can get tabbed navigation for free.

Re:Oh?

[phossie]

i find tabs provide a better model of the data i'm perusing. i often have a window devoted to a subject area, with tabs for all the pages within that area under that window. so for example i'll have one window open holding references, one with test cases, and another with mindless crap like slashdot. keeps me organized and efficient, and i don't have to scan [taskbar|dock] to be in the right place.

it's the extra level of heirarchical organization that makes tabs killer for me. same reason i like the OS X columnar file browser. fast, transparent traversal.

Re:Oh?

[Alan Partridge]

pointless question - buzzword compliance is at issue here, and today's buzzword is "tabs"

Re:Oh?

[drsmithy]

In Word 97 you could open several documents in the same Window (only one taskbar button) but that was removed in favour of one button per document which is really a better option.

The advantage tabs have over plain MDI (which is what you are describing) is there is a quick and easy easy to switch between documents, something MDI lacked.

Re:Oh?

[Xcapee]

ptaff:

oh! sorry, I remember, they don't care about usability anymore, they have 95% of the market.

I must have nodded off. Was there a nanosecond or two when they did?

Re:Oh?

[noewun]

Yes, the ~1 second delay (which is present on every Mac I've used up to a dual 1Ghz G4, so it must be hardwired, like the slow scrolling) before the menu actually becomes accessible.

On my 500 MHz G3, the delay is barely noticeable unless I am really stressing the system.

Having to hit a tiny, moving icon as opposed to a fairly wide tab

Turn off magnification and pin the Dock.

Then having to actually read what each menu item is to figure out which one you want, because the names are the only thing that differentiates them

This has never bothered me, but perhaps it's just a personal thing.

Re:Oh?

[MochaMan]

You only really need to have tabs when there isn't an easy way to switch between windows

Cmd-` not good enough for you? Works in any Mac OS X application. Cmd-tab between applications.

Re:Oh?

[NaugaHunter]

I've found a worse problem with Windows taskbars are logins to apps that don't register in it. With how many things that like to pop in front of what you're actually typing in, I often find myself minimizing windows until I find the one I need that I can't Alt-Tab to, because some idiot decided it didn't need to be seen in the task bar. (It usually happens when I click on something else while it should authenticate and it pops a message in front of whatever I'm doing saying only "Authentication failed", that is rude enough to interrupt and not switch to the problem window.)

And to continue with a related rant, at least once a week I'll double click an email in Outlook, so I can double click on a name so I can copy an email address. If I forget to cancel out of that little box immediately, I usually end up trying to click on Outlook's main window. Instead of bringing all of it's windows forward in proper order, it brings the main window and the yells (read: beeps) at you when you click on anything. I hate it.
</RANT>

Maybe I should change my .sig: Slashdot. Therapy for nerds, rants that clear.

Re:Oh?

[noewun]

You should heed an old Army saying: Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.

I can see how someone might not consider it "noticable" if they are used to the general unresponsiveness of OS X's GUI

I have been using various windowing systems since the original Mac appeared in my middle school in 1984, and have used much shit in between, from various Mac OSes to various versions of X windows to various versions of Windows blah blah blah, so it is safe to say I am used to more than OS X. With all of that experience, I still find the lag on dropping windows to be barely noticeable most of the time. Perhaps it is a difference between you and I - different things bother us.

Is the OS X GUI less responsive than the OS 9 GUI on my machine? Yes. However, as it's a three year old machine, I don't mind. I played with my brother's new 12 inch Powerbook this weekend and found the GUI to be nice and snappy, pointing to the fact that Quartz Extreme works. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

It's still a tiny icon. Either that or the Dock is wasting valuable screen space. It'd be hard to make the icon on the Dock anwhere near as big as the average tab without wasting heaps of screen space on the Dock.

I have 31 items in my Dock, on a 14.1 inch screen, before adding any additional windows or apps, and I do not find the icons to be too small. I also have my Dock set to autohide. Once again, I would guess things that bother you don't bother me, and vice versa.

For sake of argument, I have never found the taskbar to be very useful to me. It's lack or organization and its hapahzard way of throwing every window into the taskbar made it feel like an organizational afterthought to me.

You're probably just not someone who would really benefit from tabs - ie don't regularly have lots of web pages open and wants to switch between them often. For the same reason, you probably aren't suffering as much from the delay in the right-click Dock menu

I have, at a minimum, three browser windows open at all times. I open others when necessary. Furthermore, I rarely ever find any lag when right clicking, and I just did it a coupla times to check it out. I just clicked around on my tabs and found the responsiveness to be fine for me.

Re:Oh?

[Peer]

The difference, though, is that on Windows you have the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen that allows you to switch back and forth between windows easily

Well, Microsoft(R) changed that in Windows(R) XP. So, they already found out that is _not_ an easy way to switch between 3 apps and 13 browser windows.

Re:Oh?

[Halo1]

I can see how someone might not consider it "noticable" if they are used to the general unresponsiveness of OS X's GUI. However, I just walked around here and tried it on a half dozen different machine (Beige G3/233, iMac DV/500, PowerBook 667 Rev B, G4/500, Dual 1GHz Xserve, 700MHz iBook) and they _all_ had a delay of about a second before displaying the menu

Make sure you ctrl-click or right-click on the icons. If you click normally, then there is indeed a delay of about one second.

Re:Oh?

[drsmithy]

Make sure you ctrl-click or right-click on the icons. If you click normally, then there is indeed a delay of about one.

It's actually click and hold (a single click just brings all the application windows to the foreground), and I'm well aware of the difference. I am ctrl+clicking (or right clicking if the machine has a multi-button mouse) and the delay is always there.

Re:Oh?

[drsmithy]

With all of that experience, I still find the lag on dropping windows to be barely noticeable most of the time. Perhaps it is a difference between you and I - different things bother us.

That sounds fair. I suspect what is more annoying depends on how the machine is being used. I am constantly flicking between dozens of different windows - hence if the machine is unresponsive at doing this, or has less that optimal functionality for doing this, I find it annoying (alas, OS X has problems in both these areas - I hope they are fixed soon). I can see how someone who spends some time on one window, then switches to another and spends some time on it, etc, might not be bothered.
However, OS X is, comparitively, a very sluggish and unresponsive GUI. Undoubtedly all the stuff that is going on under the hood is a significant factor in this, but even taking that into account it's slow - because a dual G4 is not a slow piece of hardware in terms of raw power.

I have 31 items in my Dock, on a 14.1 inch screen, before adding any additional windows or apps, and I do not find the icons to be too small.

I didn't say it was too small, I said it was tiny - and I was speaking in comparitive terms to a tab.

For sake of argument, I have never found the taskbar to be very useful to me. It's lack or organization and its hapahzard way of throwing every window into the taskbar made it feel like an organizational afterthought to me.

In XP, like similar windows are "grouped" together, so all the IE buttons are in the same place on the taskbar. This is a step forward, although it has the irritating side effect of collapsing all the buttons into one after a certain threshold, which annoys me no end. I'm not quite sure why you refer to it as "haphazard", as it is clearly consistent and designed to fucntion that way. I could understand that comment if it were being made back in the days of Win95 and Office 95, where sometimes there was only a single button for an app and sometimes there there were multiple buttons, depending on whether or not an app was MDI.
I *like* the way the taskbar has a button for each window, because it allows me to quickly and efficiently switch between different windows, no matter what application they belong to - something that is fiddly and inefficient under OS X. OS X's GUI is still very much application oriented, which I believe to be a hangover from MacOS Classic (whose GUI also suffered from it - but it least it had the excuse of being based on a non-multitasking OS).

I just clicked around on my tabs and found the responsiveness to be fine for me.

As you say, it's a matter of preference. Since I switch rapidly and often between windows, I hate it whenever it doesn't happen instantaneously.

Re:Oh?

[Halo1]

I really don't understand it. On bnoth my G4 400 and my iBook 800, the menus appear instantly (at least the second time and onwards, the first time there is indeed sometimes a small delay, but it's by no means even near a full second).

Not the first time

[CottonEyedJoe]

Apple has been doing alot of listening lately. The Apple menu was replaced in 10.0 (it was an ornament in the Public Beta), spring loaded folders reappeared in Jaguar to much fanfare. They even listened on the unix side... bash replaced zsh as the default "bourne" shell around the jaguar release (possibly a bit sooner I use ksh and didnt pay that close attention). Now if they would only listen release the "G5"... In whatever form it takes.

Re:Not the first time

[Whatchamacallit]

Bash is not the default shell but it is available if you want it. The tcsh is still the default shell.

Re:Not the first time

[CottonEyedJoe]

I didnt say it was the default shell I said it was the default "bourne" shell.

Argument for tabs

[elliotj]

According to an off-the-cuff test I performed a few days ago, tabbed browsing can cut your RAM requirements in half and greatly speed up your system.

On my Mac I opened Chimera and filled up the window with as many tabs as it would allow (16 in a single window). All windows displayed the Slashdot mainpage. My Slashdot prefs are set to show all stories from all sections.

I checked the system usage in the Process Viewer app:

Navigator %CPU 9.00 %Memory 11.20

I then closed all the windows and did the same thing, this time opening 16 SEPARATE windows. Again with Slashdot's mainpage loaded in each.

Process Viewer showed:

Navigator %CPU 9.20 %Memory 22.40

So, according to this unscientific off-the-cuff test, you cut your RAM requirements in half by using tabs. YMMV.

I noticed this the other day when I opened over 50 different images in different windows. My Mac almost ground to a halt. I then opened the same images in tabs (in only a few windows ... again Chimera limits you to 16 tabs per window), and my performance was great.

So, to all those who think tabbed browsing is purely a matter of personal preference, I suggest that there is at least a reasonable performance based argument for it.

Re:Argument for tabs

[rufo]

Yeah, but that might be something related to Chimera itself, not anything that Safari would take advantage of. Remember, the two browsers aren't anything like each other, so just because something works, doesn't work, or acts one way in one browser doesn't mean it will work anything like it in another.

Re:Argument for tabs

[NaugaHunter]

I think you should close Chimera and reopen it between tests. You may just have found memory leaks or even an active memory cache which goes up with each site, tabbed or not. And yes, it could exist for each even if the same site - you'd need a seperate history for each, wouldn't you? I assume Back on each tab would take you to the last page on that tab. In order to do that the browser needs a seperate list per page, whether tabbed or not.

I'm not saying that that is the only source for the difference, I just wanted to point out that without quitting the results are even less accurate than you think. I will admit your other test does support your argument, I just think the 50% you saw at first could have been inflated.

Re:Argument for tabs

[moof1138]

No. This is not guesswork. A window is inherently a much more heavyweight entity than a view inside a window, and will necessarily consume more RAM. Take a look at the cocoa docs for all the components of a NSWindow. Assuming that the tabs are subclassed NSView, take a look at what is involved there. Beyond that, windows are double buffered, have border transparencies/shadows and other RAM-hogging aspects not associated with a view. In OS X, more windows inherently means more RAM. If a window with three tabs ate as much RAM as three separate windows in Safari, that would indicate extremely crappy coding, and I guarantee you I would not use the browser based on that fact.

Re:Argument for tabs

[GutBomb]

I opened 7 instances of non-tabbed safari to the same page ( http://www.macosxhints.com ) Safari's memory usage was 21.70 I completely exited safari and started it back up, this time i opened macosxhints.com in 7 tabs in one window. this time the memory usage was 10.70. it cut memory usage in this informal test by more than 50% One thing I noticed is that if you have tabbed browsing enabled, but open 8 new windows (not tabs) starting with the 8th it will just create new tabs on the 7th window instead of creating more windows.

Re:Argument for tabs

[EricWright]

I cannot confirm this. I just used cmd-n to open 10 new pages (which autoload /. [my homepage]). All 10 popped up in their own windows... no tabs. And before you ask, yes, I did get a copy of v62 this morning...

Re:Argument for tabs

[jcr]

A window is inherently a much more heavyweight entity than a view inside a window, and will necessarily consume more RAM.

The cost of a titled window in memory is:

132 bytes for the window itself
184 bytes for the border view ..and then whatever its title, contentview, and so forth add up to. An NSView's instance size is 80 bytes. So basically, a window isn't all that expensive.

If a window with three tabs ate as much RAM as three separate windows in Safari, that would indicate extremely crappy coding, and I guarantee you I would not use the browser based on that fact.

If you did so, you'd be jumping to conclusions based on extremely limited information, and it would be rather stupid of you to base your choice of a browser upon such a doctrinaire prejudice.

-jcr

Re:Argument for tabs

[scrutty]

Windows cause quartz to maintain a buffer proportional to their display area for drawing into. Views do not.

Re:Argument for tabs

[jcr]

Windows cause quartz to maintain a buffer proportional to their display area for drawing into. Views do not.

Correction: views don't have to do so. Some views, NSImageView for example, may have buffers that take up more memory than needed for display.

-jcr

Re:Argument for tabs

[scrutty]

Your point is correct. I was really just pointing out a simple linear relationship between quartz top level windows and memory consumption that might explain the "more windows use more RAM" observation, made higher up the thread. Certainly a window consumes more of your free memory than just that occupied by an initialised instance of NSWindow.

My solution is too cram as much RAM into OS X machines as they can take :-)

Tabs and MDI

[GigsVT]

The wide success of "Tabbed browsing", heralded in by Opera seems to indicate Microsoft was wrong to call MDI "depricated" and attempt to force users to a "document centric" rather than "application centric" view of the computer.

Microsoft's implementation of MDI could easily be called confusing, with multiple sets of window control decorations so close together, however, I don't think that points as much to a fatal flaw in the idea of MDI, as it does to a flawed implementation. MDI has real life analogies too.

Imagine your computer is a large shop, each application is a machine that does a certain function. It is perfectly natural to think in terms of "I need to lathe this piece of metal, so I'll to take it to the lathe. I can set other pieces I am going to lathe on the lathe table."

Document centric is like, "OK I have metal, I need to run it through the lathe, so I will feed it into this huge machine that will try to guess what I want to do with it, and hopefully it will wind up on the lathe." It's very unnatural.

Re:Tabs and MDI

[sporty]

The wide success of "Tabbed browsing", heralded in by Opera seems to indicate Microsoft was wrong to call MDI "depricated" and attempt to force users to a "document centric" rather than "application centric" view of the computer.

It's funny how excel uses MDI. Then again, all technologies aren't bad. Just using them everywhere isn't always great.

-s

Re:Tabs and MDI

[cymen]

Well I for one sometimes forget I'm using tabs and hit Ctrl-Tab in X/KDE to switch between pages. If I were able to choose to switch between all applications and all tabs of applications using Ctrl-Tab I would probably choose to do so(*). Those shrill screams you just heard was the UI guys having a nervous breakdown after reading that last sentence ;).

* to spell it out in detail:
Hitting Ctrl-Tab in X/KDE would have a choice for all the open applications (if the application has tabs, then the first one would be the first tab) and all tabs of those applications (besides the first tab of course). In KDE maybe the current scheme of program icons could be copied with a bunch of icons of the same application below each main program icon if the program has tabs. Yes, I realize that tabs are created in aps so there is no universal way of getting what windows have tabs and making that application switch to the tab you want but...

Not to nitpick but...

[ubiquitin]

...can the new Safari beta be able to bookmark a set of tabs all at once? Chimera/Navigator does this, so that in the morning I can load about ten top news pages (including slashdot of course) all at once which saves a LOT of time. I'll be sticking with Chimera until Safari gets multi-tab-bookmarks.

Re:Not to nitpick but...

[tamen]

No, notyet. But as you say yourself, this is a beta, and not even a public (though it might seem like it) beta at that.
Im sure there will be bookmark-groups when it is publicly released.

Re:Not to nitpick but...

[Erik K. Veland]

This is probably the first or second iteration of tabs in Safari altogether. It's surprising that they work so well already. There definitly will be this functionality, as hinted by ThinkSecret.

Re:Not to nitpick but...

[Ma�djeurtam]

Also in the Cool-Chimera-Feature-I-d-Like-To-See-In-Safari Dept.: Chimera has a "open this link in a new tab behind this one" accessible using the middle mouse button (that is its scrollwheel).

I don't think Apple will implement it (it would mean that they actually acknowledge that mice have more than one button), but it is a killer feature.

Re:Not to nitpick but...

[3-State Bit]

it doesn't work for me (I have a clickable middle scroll wheel on a USB mouse -- right-clicking and scrolling work fine, but not middle-clicking). Are you sure you aren't thinking of navigator under windows or linux?

If you're talking about Mac OS X, can you tell me how you got middle-clicking working?

Thanks.

Re:Not to nitpick but...

[jweatherley]

I've got an MS intellimouse and I set up the wheel-button to do a Cmd-Shift click for Safari - pressing the wheel opens a new background tab.

dopey me...thanks for the house rules

[djupedal]

agree...not agree...what do I care...this is /. - not some cubscout meeting with rules. The day this place starts making sense is the day I move on.

You'd have more luck gettin popular agreement here by stapling your opinion to your ass.

Funny thing about my opinion...I never care whether anyone takes it or not. But when the back-chatter comes around as others talking out their little brown holes, it's kind of fun to be able to see them squirm.

Or was i absent the day they handed out ./ debate manuals...joke.

Ok, as for proof...NDAs tend to get in the way, you know? Makes being able to read between the lines more than just a dating skill.

to activate the Safari debug menu, do this:

[ubiquitin]

1. Quit Safari.
2. Open a terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
3. Relaunch Safari.

Re:to activate the Safari debug menu, do this:

[MoneyT]

out of curiosity, are there any other programs that have a debug menu

Re:Windows Ho!

[Apaturia]

Now why would Apple port Safari to Windows? What's next, you're going to ask them to port iPhoto, iDVD, etc, because they're great apps?

I'm not trying to be a flamebait here, but let's be realistic.

Upside Down Tabs???

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's nit-picking, but the tabs look like they are hanging from the top edge, not attached to the window below it like Chimera does. Of course, if I wasn't nit-picking, I wouldn't be on /..

Re:Upside Down Tabs???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's because "Safari's tabs are attractively designed and fit with the platinum interface motif." The article then describes what you noticed: "The highlighted tab has the appearance of hanging down from the toolbar above it." Not exactly intuitive or logical, but damn, doesn't it look great? Gotta love when companies put expensive shiny brushed metal front plates on their products.

Re:Upside Down Tabs???

[FunkDaddy]

I was thinking the same thing! Look weird to me...

Re:Upside Down Tabs???

[ptimmons]

Upside down tabs... hmm...
BATS??

Re:Upside Down Tabs???

[14cfr01]

Nit-pick away! Upside down tabs break the metaphor! The whole idea is that the tab is supposed to be connected to the page, and grabbing the tab should activate the page. If I wanted upside down tabs, I'd put them on the bottom of the window. They'd still be attached to the page. Hopefully Apple will change this in the final release.

Re:Upside Down Tabs???

[maxentius]

I have a weird feeling that the tabs will be metaphorically connected to the bookmark bar, not the page itself. After all, bookmarks will have to become capable of holding several tabs. Maybe in the final the tabs will dance around in weird ways when a new bookmark is selected.

It still is silly.

Also I've noticed that, unlike Chimera, the tab width is maximum-limited. Also not as good.

Everyone?

[Otter]

Geez, is everyone here running unreleased pre-betas of Safari?

I'm reminded of when some ZDNet columnist wrote a column on OS X DR3 based on Apple's press releases. He got an avalanche of emails saying, "Are you an IDIOT? Have you even SEEN DR3?" which, of course, he hadn't, being that it was a developer-only release. DR3 was warezed so widely, though, that just about every Rhapsody-starved Mac user was running it (myself included).

I guess I'd better reinstall Hotline and start clicking porn banners to get a nick/pass...

Re:Everyone?

[tamen]

Im also suprised about the availabillity of the new Safari Betas. It might be connected to the low file-size. The newest beta is only 2.5mb. Even people in modem-land will gladly download that. Compared to the multi-gig downloads real warez-hogs do every day this is peanuts.

Re:Everyone?

[ollie_ob]

To prevent massive Slashdotting I'm not going to link directly to the beta from here, but if you go to Dave Hyatt's weblog and have a look at the comments for the most recent story, there's apparently a working link there. Ollie

Re:Everyone?

[transient]

He speaks the truth. I just downloaded it from there.

Re:Everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

as of 10:00am central time today (monday), the link works. I have tabs in safari baby! yeah!

Re:Everyone?

[CompVisGuy]

Thanks for the "link".

The location of the beta is indeed as almost specified above.

I now have tabs in Safari -- thanks.

I was using Chimera, but it would crash after running for about a week (OK, so pretty reliable compared to some browsers...); although Chimera has tabs, it doesn't have many other features one expects from a browser (being all minimalist and stuff...). The Chimera team haven't released in a while due to legal issue with the Chimera name, but they say that version 0.7 is just around the corner, and I guess we can expect some significant changes. I'll certainly keep a copy of Chimera on my iBook (taking the total to ... 4 browsers now):

* Safari v62
* Chimera
* Opera
* IE (yeugh!)

It'll be nice when Apple have completed Safari (it certainly won't be complete without tabs!), as 4 browsers is ridiculous!

So, here's wishing luck to the Chimera and Safari projects!

Re:Everyone?

[Ponty]

And it looks like hell. I just don't know how people can abide gecko-based browsers. They're just as ugly as sin.

Re:Everyone?

[transient]

Sure enough. My German is crap.

Re:Everyone?

[okeby235]

Great so now you are going to get thinksecret, mozillazine and the poor sucker who is hosting beta v62... :)

Re:Everyone?

[zephc]

I had Rhapsody DR2 running on my 350 MHz x86 machine a long time ago. It was a trip to see the Mac interface on a PC. =]

force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[X_Caffeine]

I hope that Apple is bright enough to have an option that forces all "open in new window" javascripts to "open in new tab." This is possible in Mozilla and Phoenix (but not Chimera), but requires a plug-in installation.

I've seen many new users of tabbed browsing become baffled by new windows popping up all over the place. If tabbed browsing is to be integrated, it needs to be done right. This seems like the sort of humane interface element that Apple used to have a real knack for, but since OS X you never can quite be sure.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[GeckoX]

What do tabs and new windows popping up have to do with each other?
You seem to be saying that windows only start popping up once you start using a tabbed browser, which is just not the case.

Sorry, I just don't get your point, other than if you are requesting a pop-up killer ala mozilla which is obviously a good thing, but again totally unrelated to tabs.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[klui]

I hope not. Open in New Window should do as it says rather than doing something else.

You're right. Tabbed browsing should be integrated properly and what you've suggested is not what I would consider "done right"; in fact, it would baffle new users even more.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[singularity]

You are missing what the original poster wanted, though. He is referring not to the "Open in new Window" menu command, but rather the JavaScript command. Suppose I am working in a tabbed browser, and I have all my open pages in one window, under five tabs.

I click on a link that has a JavaScript command to open in a new window. Note that I never wanted it to open in a new window, the web designer decided that. So now I am suck with two open windows, one with five tabs, and one with one tab.

I would rather have the JavaScript command instead open the new page in a new tab, meaning I would have one open window with six tabs.

That is the choice the original poster was talking about. I want to decide where the link goes, and not have the web designer decide for me.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[Graff]

I click on a link that has a JavaScript command to open in a new window. Note that I never wanted it to open in a new window, the web designer decided that. So now I am suck with two open windows, one with five tabs, and one with one tab.

Even better would be to have the ability to kill that JavaScript command entirely and just have it act as a normal link. Nothing is more annoying than clicking on a link and having it open a window when you didn't want to. If I wanted a second window to open I would have command-clicked on the link. Actually the most annoying thing is when I DO command-click on that JavaScript link without realizing what it is and it causes a blank window to open.

Please web designers, do not mess with the UI of the browser. Let the user decide what action to take instead of "helping" them out.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[WaKall]

I think he meant links whose href's say to open in new window (source driven), not the open-in-new-window click modifier (user driven).

I wonder how long until we see tab-aware HTML source and support from browsers. My guess is that once IE DOES support tabs, it will also extend it's notion of HTML to support open-in-new-tab semantics for unmodified clicks.

Re:force Open New Window to Open New Tab

[klui]

Yes, I understood what the original poster meant. Until the JavaScript standard is extended to include tabs, open in new window should not have dual meanings in my opinion.

Re:Windows Ho!

[tdemark]

Actually, it _might_ be worth it for Apple to port the apps over and sell them (maybe $99 for all but iDVD, $149 for all)

Probably could generate a good revenue stream, get PC users "used" to Apple's interface, making them more apt to switch (plus, the fact the iLife apps are "free" with new Macs, and, except iDVD, free to existing Mac users doesn't hurt either).

- Tony

This is Great News

[6R1MM]

I know a lot of people (including myself) who are clinging to Chimera because of the tabbed browsing interface. At its current (non-leaked) state, Safari is just not economical in regard to RAM when you're browsing multiple sites simultaneously. I'd imagine most people set their browser windows to be fairly large. And when you have 2 or 3 of these double-buffered partially transparent windows taking up roughly 75% of your screen estate, I feel like I've gone back to the pre-OSX days when I'd manually cascade several browser's titlebars down my screen. Apple might as well just make Quartz Extreme a pre-requisite to use Safari if that's the direction they want to take. So 'up yours' to all the tab naysayers (Twirlip of the Mists in particular) and hopefully they'll follow through with tabs in Safari.

Re:This is Great News

[entrox]

Care to back up your claims with a few facts/numbers instead of pulling things out of your back?
Here are some numbers from my machine (768MB RAM/128MB VRAM):

New Safari opened: ~9MB.
Slashdot loaded: ~13MB.
New window opened: ~16MB.
Apple page opened: ~18MB.
New window opened: ~21MB.

So what do we see? A new window takes up around 3MB. Is this "uneconomical", like you say? No, I rarely have more than 4-5 windows open so this is merely a drop in the water. Memory is cheap these days you know...

Re:This is Great News

[raju1kabir]

So what do we see? A new window takes up around 3MB. Is this "uneconomical", like you say? No, I rarely have more than 4-5 windows open so this is merely a drop in the water. Memory is cheap these days you know...

Depends on how you browse. Between my workspaces and windows, I have over 50 Galeon tabs open at the moment on this Linux machine. It's using 62M of RAM. I could close a few of them without loss to productivity, but not many.

50 * 3 = 150MB, not a trivial amount.

Re:Windows Ho!

[joebp]

Now why would Microsoft port IE to Mac? What's next, you're going to ask them to port Office, and, uh, uh, wait... damn.

Apple should make up their mind....

[masq]

It's hard being a mindless Apple zealot with Apple changing their minds so much. Our job as zealots is to screamingly defend whatever Apple does without thinking or considering what's best for the user or common sense. We defend Apple Corporation's interests over the users' desires at all costs. Our job is to claim tabs suck when they don't have tabs, the G4 1Ghz is as fast as the Pentium4 3.0Ghz, RISC is better than CISC, slower memory and busspeed is a GOOD thing, proprietary software is freer than open source, Safari Beta is more stable than established and mature browsers, paying for .Mac is a privilege, Steve didn't lie when he said "Free Forever .Mac", using the DMCA is justified when Apple does it but not anyone else, etc etc.

Originally, all us zealots had to violently attack everyone who said tabs were a good idea, saying they were crude and unintuitive. Now, we have to do a complete reversal and furiously attack anyone who is against tabs. It just never ends.

The life of a spin doctor is a tough one, but immensely satisfying.

Re:Apple should make up their mind....

[masq]

Dude, this is Slashdot. If I wasn't misguided, I wouldn't *be* here.

Re:Not yet, mate...

[Erik K. Veland]

Now let me just put you back in a tabbed window here in v62 of Safari.

The comment was in case Apple should care that he was using the leaked beta, which they don't. Well, not much anyways. The "uh" was to hint at that he wasn't really telling the truth.

Re:Windows Ho!

[samael]

How would a back button work?

And the workarounds don't actually work either, as various people have commented in the thread.

obligatory doh! (Re:Oh?)

[cymen]

The first part was supposed to mention that Galeon & Phoenix embed or reuse Mozilla stuff, not the IE engine as it reads now... I'm on my 3rd cup of joe too so no excuse!

What about Keychain integration?

[The Bum]

Now that Safari will presumably be getting tabs, the next feature that's needed is Keychain integration similar to that in Chimera. In fact, Keychain integration was #1 on my list (just ahead of tabs at #2) of new features I'd really like to see in Safari. Yeah, I know the Keychain will work for login dialogs and web sites that have been written to support it, but what makes Chimera really nice is that it'll use the Keychain for sites that don't explicitly support it.

Re:What about Keychain integration?

[brarrr]

i started using safari v62 w/ tabs on saturday... and it has keychain integration in its infancy - it asks for permission to decrypt the correct passwords when entering sites, but does not place them in the fields as required. so its coming, but slowly.

v62 is the first i've started using safari, and am liking it about the same as chimera for now. once there are prefs to open tabs in teh background, and a way to open up multiple sites in different tabs at the same time, i'll switch for good.

another benefit of the debug menu is being able to specify which browser you are represented as - so going to wellsfargo.com i can say i am MSIE and they let me use the site.

Re:What about Keychain integration?

[TracerJPN_USMC]

cmd shift tab opens tabs in background...

Re:What about Keychain integration?

[KefkaFloyd]

v50 had that keychain bit for encrypted and passworded sites. It's always been there. I think he's referring to Safari acting like Chimera in the way that it uses the Keychain as a password manager for forms, which has yet to be implemented in Safari.

Seriously impressed...

[tandem_repeat]

Downloaded it...am running it and loving it...tabbed browsing with that certain Apple "I don't what"...

clarificiation

[X_Caffeine]

In Mozilla browsers, when a link is defined like [a href="blah" target="_new" ], clicking on this link opens the new page in a new window.

When a user is using tabbed browsing, they are aggregating all of their windows into a single window. Clicking on "_new" links in tabbed browsing mode should open documents into new tabs, not new windows.*

"Right-clicking" and selecting "open in a new tab" is not an acceptable solution because it is unintuitive, not all users even have right-buttons (don't tell me to explain keyboard shortcuts to my grandma), and if a user in unsure of which links open into new windows and which ones are normal links, they need to adjust to a habit of right-click/open-new-tabbing EVERY link they encounter. I think you can agree that's pretty absurd behavior.

*an exception might be made for links that trigger new windows with specified sizes (like those small comments windows many blogs use)

Re:clarificiation

[jbolden]

Hell some links open new windows other change the current window. It already is unintuitive, the mistake was allowing new windows not tabs.

Safari 4 All

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your Safari Beta (with tabs!) HERE:

http://www.domestikalien.com/imagenes/safari_v62 .d mg

Re:Safari 4 All

[Mad Browser]

Looks like this link is now dead... Anyone have another?

Re:Safari 4 All

[pressman]

Nope the link still works. YOu just have to remove the space between d &m in the tle.

http://www.domestikalien.com/imagenes/safari_v62 .d mg

Re:Safari 4 All

[adhesiv]

looks to be another link at the top Download

Tabs ... next Bookmarks?

[krray]

Wow. Apple listens. Day 1 I sent a bug report to them for their own website. I could see tabs on the site, but not in my browser?

I wonder if they'll do one of my other requests. Sync'ing the bookmarks across .Mac connected systems. One bookmark file. Always managed. Always the same.

Re:Tabs ... next Bookmarks?

[krray]

Oh my goodness ... and there are people as stupid as you.

I fully understand the differences you nit-wit. The original point of topic still stands...

Dumb ass.

Re:Tabs ... next Bookmarks?

[jkusters]

Sync'ing the bookmarks across .Mac connected systems. One bookmark file. Always managed. Always the same.

This would be way cool, especially if it could be accessed by other platforms (like the WinXP box I use at work).

JOhn.

Re:Tabs ... next Bookmarks?

[bhamm]

Sync'ing the bookmarks across .Mac connected systems. One bookmark file. Always managed. Always the same.

Absolutely.. This is the feature that I'm waiting on more than anything else. Heck i could even tolerate multiple windows vs. tabs if I could just keep a single bookmark file sync'ed across .Mac

Makes sense that they'd do this to bolster the 'you need .Mac' argument. Hope its coming soon..

Couldn't they think of anything better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the site is hosed, but while we're on the subject, is there any better solution than tabs?

When you think about tabs, the history list, SnapBack, and bookmarks, you can see they are all a bit similar. They all take you to different pages. Tabs are treated specially. Maybe they shouldn't be?

Different ways to think about tabs:

* Per-window, per-session Bookmarks that retain form entries and other state.

* "SnapForward" .. pages you want to jump to in the future, rather than the past.

* nonlinear per-window history list .. again, tabbed windows are sites you want to add to the list, so you can visit them in the future.

I guess what I'm saying is, I wish Apple or someone would think about the "essence" of tabbed browsing, and come up with something *better*.

And the "tabbed browsing is MDI is evil" folks might even like it. Hint: think about each browser window representing a *browsing session* rather than a *web page*, and it will go down easier. (As if web browsers are poster children for GUI design in the first place).

Maybe Apple thought about it, and decided that tabs were best because they were familiar to people. But that's not Apple's style.

Now I'm not complaining about Safari specifically, in fact when the official Safari with tabs comes out, I will have little reason to use any other web browser, but I can't help thinking the tabbed browsing interface can be made even better.

Re:Couldn't they think of anything better?

[burns210]

so, put simply, you want Apple to Think Different?

Re:Windows Ho!

[NaugaHunter]

Umm... no. They wrote a Windows interface for the iPod because a) it is a relatively simple, specialized file manager and b) it sold iPods. Apple is a hardware company. The iLife apps exist as a bonus to Mac users, an incentive to upgrade or switch to new Macs. It costs money and time to port software, and you know that iPhoto and iMovie are heavily invested in Cocoa, Quartz and other Mac-exclusive properties. Porting even just iPhoto would involve porting all the exporting/publishing options, plus support hundreds of camera/hardware combinations. They do not have the software engineers to do any of these ports, which would in the end on deter people from buying Macs since the price difference with PC's is much more than the $100 or even $150 you suggest.

Given the overall progress on the iApps, not to mention Safari and OS X in general, I personally think they are managing their development projects pretty well. They are riding out the recession better than most companies, and the more distinct software solutions they develop will make their products look even better when the recession ending combines with Windows DRM backlash. OK, that last was an unprovoked slam, but it is something to be aware of when looking at the big picture. Apple has said and acted in varying degrees that they want to give customers tools, not restrictions, and I think they just keep subtly positioning themselves to jump when the axe falls.

Of course, that's just my hop^H^H^Hopinion. I could be wrong.

...or use Safari Enhancer

[TomatoMan]

Safari Enhancer does this and a few other things, and also allows you to import bookmarks from browsers other than IE (I just imported my Moz/Chimera bookmarks with it).

Thinksecret down?

[b3uk]

Hey is Thinksecret down, or is it just me? Do I smell a 'cease and desist'?

Re:Thinksecret down?

[b3uk]

or simply /.ed?

Re:Thinksecret down?

[EggZact]

That was my first thought. Kinda seems unlikely for a site to be /.'ed by an Apple section post.

Anyway it is down on my end too.

Re:Thinksecret down?

[Alex Thorpe]

Since I get an instant 'could not connect' message, it could well be Apple's team of ninja-lawyers. It just doesn't feel like the Slashdot effect.

Re:Thinksecret down?

[Saxton]

...and macosrumors.com too?

origin of tabbed browsing?

[Tumbleweed]

I thought it came from Opera first?

Re:origin of tabbed browsing?

[prinzip]

Yeah but Mozilla have something that opera do not have:

It can parse webpage in respect to the W3C standard...

and more important:

we don't whant to know who had the first the ida of tabs.. no?

Re:origin of tabbed browsing?

[fault0]

Actually, Opera7 is more standards compliant than Mozilla is. Booyah.

Re:origin of tabbed browsing?

[squiggleslash]

Not exactly. Opera had a standard Windows MDI mode with a "task bar" at the bottom (which isn't a standard Windows MDI feature but is a fairly obvious feature to add.) It wasn't quite tabs, but was similar.

The first implementation of tabs per se, IIRC, was GNOME/Mozilla's Galeon's. Tabs are the standard way of implementing MDI in GNOME, and someone thought it'd be a good idea to have them in Galeon. Note that this is different to being a straight copy of Opera - the innovation here was born from using GNOME's standard MDI technology to implement an MDI version of the browser. It wasn't that someone with extreme myopia saw someone clicking on buttons in Opera and switching between different pages and thought "Gracious, that person's using TABS to move around!" Aside from anything else, the Opera "task bar" buttons are at the bottom...

It was Galeon's implementation that prove to be a roaring success and drove their adoption in other browsers.

It's remarkable how, in the space of two years, a complete urban legend can originate about something where two minutes playing with the technologies and implementations would dispell such myths. Still, the technology industry seems to be littered with them...

Re:origin of tabbed browsing?

[Apparissus]

Actually, there was a little known mozilla plugin (I can't remember the name) that implemented tabbed browsing before galeon did. I remember snagging it from Themes.org. It was a royal pain to get working, but boy did it blow my friends/officemates away! :-)

My feature

[papasui]

This would be something I'd like to see implemented (and many web masters probably would like to see not implemented). The ability to set a timer for a webpage to refresh, on an individual page basis. So on sites that I frequently view, I don't have to refresh constantly, I already know that the page has been reloaded recently. Web admins would probably hate this as it would put additional load on the server as the pages refresh, but I know it would make me happier. :)

Re:My feature

[ZxCv]

The ability to set a timer for a webpage to refresh, on an individual page basis.

Ever heard of meta refresh? Look up the "meta" tag and how to use its "refresh" attribute--works wonderfully in every browser I've ever used.

Re:My feature

[tulmad]

Wow, that'd be cool if you could insert meta-refresh tags into other people's webpages! I think what he wants is to be able to make a webpage (that he didn't write mind you) refresh on a timer.

Re:My feature

[Go Aptran]

Opera on the PC has this feature. You can can set how often you'd like a page to refresh. Very handy for those of us who are... ahem... fans of cam portals.

I assume that Opera on the Mac is the same but I've never been able to get it to install let alone run it ;^(

Remember, tabbed browsing is not MDI.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Check out Dave Hyatt's weblog on this issue.

Re:Remember, tabbed browsing is not MDI.

[bill_mcgonigle]

First, Hyatt is not a UI programmer. He works on WebCore.

I see. He's a low-level guy without any real browser interface experience. Except for that Chimera stint.

He is a very smart guy, but he doesn't know shit about user interfaces.

Lessee, credibility with regard to browser interface design - the guy who started Chimera, or some random AC? Hmmm, thoughie.

Re:Remember, tabbed browsing is not MDI.

[mr3038]

First, Hyatt is not a UI programmer [...] but he doesn't know shit about user interfaces

What, exactly, does the fact, that he is not a professional UI programmer, have to do with the comment he wrote? I find that comment perfectly reasonable and it's indeed (almost) exactly how I feel using Mozilla's tabbed browsing vs. Opera's MDI windowing. The key difference between Mozilla's tabs and MDI is that there's no window management in Mozilla's tabs. MDI app has always, more or less, it's own window manager.

If you want to see a really, really bad example of MDI, just view the Metalworks demo in Java 1.4.1_01. Just try to open some windows, minimize some of them and resize the main window after that. Looks pretty stupid, eh? Compare this to Mozilla's tabs where a tab is always the same size with all the other tabs inside the same main window and the resizing is done by resizing the main window. Seems like a pretty intuitive way to work for me. Another important usability feature is that you can have multiple main windows open in paraller. Most apps have either all windows detached from each other (e.g. Gimp) or all windows inside the main window (e.g. older versions of Opera).

Re:Remember, tabbed browsing is not MDI.

[mr3038]

Open two windows. Try dragging a tab from one window to another. [...] Try reordering tabs within a window. [...] Try taking two windows and combining them into one with two tabs. Can't do it!

Doesn't work in Mozilla. Works in Phoenix (I know, MacOS cannot run that) once you download Tabbed Browsing Extensions (one mouse click on a web site and two OK buttons). I guess the feature will be ported to Mozilla (it's only a piece of JavaScript and XUL). Currently the developers have more important stuff to do... Mozilla's implementation could be better, but it's already much better than anything the window management that come with MacOS or Windows can do.

There's nothing intuitive about it. A window is a document.

Think about it the other way around: the internet isn't a collection of documents. It's a one big document and browser windows are only views to it. It's intuitive to have multiple paraller views to such a huge document. In fact, it's that huge that you have to make groups from those views (tabs in different windows) to be able to handle as many views as you would want to use and still you can view only really tiny part of the whole document.

Yeah, you can also think pages as stand alone documents but it's only one way to think it. Note that nobody forces you to use tabs and Mozilla and Safari work fine without those.

Contrary to common belief, a change isn't always a bad thing.

Re:Remember, tabbed browsing is not MDI.

[raju1kabir]

Open two windows. Try dragging a tab from one window to another. [...] Try reordering tabs within a window. [...] Try taking two windows and combining them into one with two tabs. Can't do it!

Doesn't work in Mozilla. Works in Phoenix

They work in Galeon as well. Always gets me when I leave work (where I use Galeon) and go home (where I use Chimera, and those things don't work).

I have it and its blazen

[Anonymous Coward]

Luv goes to the KDE developers for this beautiful browser.

but there _is_ an easy way

[-ndi-]

You only really need to have tabs when there isn't an easy way to switch between windows.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for tabs, but there is an even easier way to switch between all windows of the current application in OSX, Cmd-` cycles through them. This may be common knowledge, I just thought I'd point it out for completeness...

Re:but there _is_ an easy way

[tapin]

to switch between all windows of the current application in OSX, Cmd-` cycles through them.

If only that were the case.

One of my usability peeves with OS X: Cmd-tab switches between applications, not windows. That's fine. Cmd-backtick switches between windows in the current app. That's fine too, even though I have to say I was more used to alt-tab doing both for me in other OSes.

The problem arises when trying to keyboard-navigate to windows of an app that are minimized to the dock

Unfortunately, cmd-backtick doesn't "switch between all windows of the current application". It only switches between all non-minimized windows of the current application.

Now, given that I don't have multiple or virtual desktops, I'm forced to hide unused apps and minimize windows of apps that I'm using, just to keep my desktop reasonably organized. And it still doesn't work too well. Ah well.

Now, if they would only release Linux?

[FredFnord]

Gee, if they followed all the standards, there'd be two terrible consequences...

First, their OS would look exactly like Windows, because, after all, that's the de facto standard.

Oh wait, you meant that they should follow all the UNIX standards? Well, then it would look exactly like Linux.

The idea here is to add some value to the OS. Netinfo is a coherant and easily configured alternative to Text File Hell. You may not think it adds value, but there are quite a few people who do. You can't just dismiss that unless you assume that you are superior to all of them, and that they're all misguided. (Of course, since this is slashdot, that's allowed, I guess.)

The other problem that would spring from Apple following the UNIX 'standards' slavishly? People like you wouldn't have anything to complain about.

Sheesh.

-fred

Re:Now, if they would only release Linux?

[Kplusplus]

Actually... You can you your /etc/groups and /etc/passwd files to create users in X. All you have to do is go to /Applications/Utilities/Directory\ Access.app

Then check BSD Configuration Files on.
That is all since lookupd is configured by default like so: Cache FF DNS NI DS

Notice that Flat Files show up before NetInfo.

By turning this on you also get /etc/fstab, and /etc/hosts not being ignored. Happy UNIXing in Mac OS X.

P.S. This only exists because people like yourself complained during 10.1 and Apple added it for 10.1 so people whenever you feel something is subpar or could be better, http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/. Let Apple know.

Re:Now, if they would only release Linux?

[Kplusplus]

Spelling matters not. Had it not been for my horrendous typing that would have read You can edit use your...

Errors? Memory leaks?

[Sophrosyne]

Since this is a leaked beta has anyone encountered any problems/memory leaks?
I am using this now and the tabs are nice-

Re:Windows Ho!

[GeckoX]

How would a back button work?

Do I really have to answer that?

Sure, it may be a minor inconvenience this bug, but totally unworthy of hopping up on the soap box.
Do you really think anyone cares that you won't use Mozilla until this is fixed? No, we don't.

Now for a hint: You are the one clicking links in whatever application, email or whatever. You can't remember that you have done so? You can't click through your back button, or use the convenient drop-down list of past documents attached to the back button...oh shit, I said I wasn't going to explain this to you.

And moderators, mod me flamebait again as I am sure you will, BUT, if the original comment I responded to wasn't flamebait and my response to that was, well, we already know what kind of fucking hypocrits lurk around here.

Refresh button

[adhesiv]

Is it me or when opening a new tab and the page loads, then switching to other tabs the refresh button stays in cancel mode. Well it is beta so I guess I can't ask for too much.

google: bookmarklet

[phossie]

do the search (and anything related you can think of). this is simple and easy, not to mention incredibly useful. you could set it up yourself, or use an existing project. a friend coded one of these up as a toy project - and now a bunch of us rely on it daily. (i'm not linking to it because it'll be revised in a big way quite soon and i don't think he wants the responsibility.)

another mirror

[davoodoofunk]

Posted another mirror because the other seem bogged down. Get it at www.soopah256.com/~jonathan
link here

its still here

[ihatewinXP]

::looking at this window in a tab:: - not bad, especially for a (not even) first release. thank you apple for listening and thank you AC for the link.

Apple: THANK YOU for listening, and PLEASE,

[3-State Bit]

remember to allow us to bookmark tab-groups.

Tabbed bookmarks are live-and-die for me.

PLEASE remember to allow us to bookmark groups of tabs!

I'm writing on Safari now, but if I wanted to get serious work done I would have to open Chimera (where all my bookmarks are, almost all of them tab-groups).

Thanks a million for listening to us!

Clairvoyant web browser?

[commodoresloat]

"SnapForward" .. pages you want to jump to in the future, rather than the past.

The day my web browser knows what page I want to go to in the future is the day I quit web browsing.

I know, I know, it's a pyrrhic victory at best, since my web browser will know what day that will be before I do.

Color me cynical

[hysterion]

Apple listening

From January 9:

Wild conjecture: Suppose you were Apple, and had long planned to include tabbed browsing. (As in, you actually hired the guy who put it into Mozilla, and then went on to do it again in Chimera.)

You could either include it right away -- and have all of us whiners concentrate the whining on something ELSE...

...OR, you could save it for later -- and then masterfully demonstrate how well attuned you are to user feedback!

Re:Color me cynical

[hysterion]

Right -- no question about that!

Mirrors, md5sums, and some notes...

[phyxeld]

It's for real. I'm writing this in it now. I'm a bit paranoid, so I scoured around for multiple coppies before running anything. I've gotten it from all three of these urls:

http://www.domestikalien.com/imagenes/safari_v62.d mg
http://www.jfedor.org/misc2/safari_v62.dmg
http://www.soopah256.com/~jonathan/safari_v62.dmg

and they all had the same md5sum (eca1fe732e242786744edf5e434b2330). The disk image file itself has an apple liscense, so I think this really is an official apple beta.

Tabs are off by default, but can be enabled in the Debug menu. Once enabled, cmd-T makes a new tab, as does cmd-clicking on a link. I'm a big fan of chimera's cmd-[ and cmd-] for moving between tabs; mozilla's lack of support for those shortcuts has always bugged me. Safari v62 doesn't use those keys, but it does let you move between tabs with cmd-left or cmd-right (arrow keys). Yay safari! I wonder when we'll see the real release of this beta...

Re:Mirrors, md5sums, and some notes...

[phyxeld]

s/cmd-/cmd-shift/g for ($parentcomment); # oops

Re:Mirrors, md5sums, and some notes...

[neuroticia]

Ok, now THIS is sweet.

It's one of the first browsers that I've actually liked either on the Mac or on Windows. It performs its job the way it's supposed to perform its job, and doesn't get in your way or interfere with the site it's displaying. And the tabs, ohh the tabs. =] Finally I can use a tabbed browser that's not resource-hogging enough to take over my entire system, and it won't scatter AOL icons near and far. Not quite "there" yet (duh, it's a beta) but I can definitely see it giving Explorer a run for its money. Especially if Apple were to decide to port it to Windows temporarily to gain some market share.

*sigh* Bliss.

-Sara

Re:Mirrors, md5sums, and some notes...

[jericho4.0]

Thank You. So. Much.
I am presently in browser heaven.

Re:Windows Ho!

[overunderunderdone]

I agree with you that they are unlikely to port the iLife applications since they are intended to drive hardware sales BUT you also said:

...and you know that iPhoto and iMovie are heavily invested in Cocoa, Quartz and other Mac-exclusive properties.

You'll remember that Cocoa is the updated OpenStep and that it used to run on Intel chips as either part of the NextStep operating system OR on top of Windows - Remember Gil Amelio's "Rhapsody for Intel" and "Rhapsody for Windows" strategy? I know Apple's Marklar project is keeping MacOS X up to date on intel chips (essentially Rhapsody for Intel) I wonder if they have continued to develop Cocoa in such a way that Cocoa for windows is still possible, or even being maintained in some secret lab somewhere. I suppose Quartz could throw a wrench in the works but it is an intrigueing possiblity. Apple is developing all this new software to drive hardware sales but having all of that software built on what is still (internally) a cross-platform environment will give them a lot of options on when, where and how to jump should the "axe fall".

Secure Proxy Support Fixed

[bedouin]

It seems Apple has finally fixed support for secure proxies in this release too. In previous versions if you were using a secure proxy the page just wouldn't load. I still can't login (properly) to PHPNuke sites though.

I've found that Apple's officially released versions of Safari have been more stable than the other betas, so I'll probably just stick with v60 for the time being. Funny thing is, as someone else mentioned, after not having tabs for a month or two I've grown accustomed to just opening new windows.

Re:Windows Ho!

[samael]

I mean, how would the back button help?

I go to (for instance) my email program, open 5 or 6 links from my mailed news, and then find that I don't have 6 new windows, but that I've lost one (or more) of my open windows.

That's not at all useful to me.

Re:Windows Ho!

[NaugaHunter]

Cocoa for Intel Darwin is far more likely, though moving to the intel platform would introduce new fights with cloners. As near as I can tell since Apple is using fairly standard components as it is, there wouldn't be much financial incentive to move to intel. I'm not in the know, but keeping OSX up to date means that if PowerPC advancement officially stopped they wouldn't have to start from scratch to move on. In fact, one outside possibility is pentium & powerpc on the same board - hey, 68K on the same chip wasn't that much crazier, and it's just a variant of Dual processors. (OK, I'm glossing over a lot, that's just a thinking point.)

Anyway, I would argue that moving to intel may be relatively easy for the entire, properly written, OS X environment, but Classic would definately be out, and there would still be numerous programs that took short cuts that wouldn't work.

But I'm all over the place there. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think the market on Windows would support another photo manager, and those for people that want to use iMovie or iDVD Apple would much rather entice onto a new Mac with other software to make the transition easier, rather than make a hundred bucks after porting them to Windows. And while they may be planning everything to be able to switch the motherboard, that has to be a Worst Case Scenario. Look at how much slack they're taking between supporting OS X and OS 9 and people are still using OS 8.6. They aren't throwing a whole nother conversion in unless it's sink or swim.

Re:Windows Ho! OT

[darkgreen]

ok, so i know it's got nothing to do with anything you've said, but the word is "their" and not "thier"

kudos for actually using it correctly, though. =)

For a second there...

[tunah]

I dunno what it was, I was looking at the submission and picturing an apple employee tapping out morse code on the tab key.

I was curious, so I opened the story in a new tab... then I got it.

Keychain support!

[ppc970]

Well, you've got it. There is keychain support in v62. I just went to a site that I had keychained in Chimera, and Safari used the login through the keychain. Did it more smoothly than Chimera to boot. So, there you go.

Comparison of Chimera, Safari, tabs, windows

[whee]

I've gathered some data and made graphs of Chimera versus Safari when dealing with tabs and windows. Memory usage and cumulative CPU time are measured, and compared.

Have a looksie.

Re:Comparison of Chimera, Safari, tabs, windows

[3-State Bit]

I'm sorry, what's RSS? I assume that's a unit of memory, but I can't find it...

command ~

[Dokushoka]

Faster than a mouse, you can switch pages, and without the clutter of tabs.

huh.

[toothfish]

safari seems to identify itself as v0.8.2 and v0.9 in the "open as..." menu. try it with an HTML document. i wonder if that means apple intends to release it as v1.0 soon...

Tabs vs. Windows? Bah

[tuxedobob]

I don't really care. If there isn't a keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs, I just won't bother. Maybe Cmd-` can be remapped to it?

I often see reasons like "it's faster" as to why tabs are superior to separate windows. Maybe, if there's a shortcut.

I also see "less RAM usage" as a selling point for tabs. So? I just upgraded from 512MB to 1GB in my computer. No real performance difference. In fact, it might even be slower now, since the hard drive spins down more. I remember a thread or story around here somewhere saying that the performance gains on Mac OS X are negligible after 256MB.

Sorry, it's just hard to get excited over a new feature when there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what you're currently using.

Oh, and whoever had 50 tabs open in Linux: you're supposed to close them when you're done with them!

Re:Tabs vs. Windows? Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...if you'd been paying attention, you'd have seen that there is a shortcut. Cmd-Shift-Right/Left will switch back & forth between tabs (at least, I believe that's correct; I'm not at my home computer with Safari v62 right now to check).

Dan Aris

Re:Tabs vs. Windows? Bah

[tuxedobob]

Oops, sorry. I view comments in Newest First, and I didn't make it that far down the page. ^^;

On the other hand, those three keys aren't nearly as comfortable as two. Ah well, I guess I still don't see what the big deal is, but Apple remains true to form in adding to its software what the users want.

Re:The king is dead! Long live the king!

[pressman]

Concisive?

Perchance might you mean concise?

Re:Strange sense of Interaction Critique

[vsync64]

Did you read the parent? It said Cmd-Shift, not Ctrl-Shift. On a Mac keyboard (at least the one I'm using right now), Command is down on the bottom row, by the spacebar. Control is always either on the bottom left corner or on the far left side of the home row.

And I understand chording. It's not a difficult concept. I don't see how you can claim it's not an extra keystroke, when there is quite clearly another key being pressed.

I'm not claiming my choice is superior. I'm not advocating where your fingers "aren't supposed to stay". I was just refuting the specious claim that "Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown are nowehere near as intuitive as Cmd-Shift-Left, Cmd-Shift-Right". A random elitist Mac user claim with no evidence or statistics or anything to back it up.

Apple is a better citizen

[nallen]

they are listening better these days, it is a good trend, the open source guys they hired may be changing the culture for the better after all. cool.

OK, it's broken now...

[CompVisGuy]

I had a couple of wonderful days of Safari with tabs; then Safari started doing a weird thing:

Clicking on some hyperlinks now downloads the file, rather than displaying it in the browser window (I'm talking .html files here), same with typing in some URLs.

I've restarted Safari a few times (didn't do a system restart, as I think that's weird, but...).

Anyone seen this? Solution?

Comedy!

[SymbioticCognition23]

In case anyone has not had a chance to read it, here is Dave Hyatt's most recent blog post...had me laughing for a bit. .. if there were a Safari v62, and it did happen to leak to the public, and someone did happen to run it, and that person did happen to discover a bug with text-decoration, well then I would hypothetically be most grateful, and would in fact fix such a bug with the utmost expedience. In fact, it might even be fixed already, assuming of course there were such a build, and it did in fact have this problem.