Safari Beta Takeup Tops Firefox, IE and Chrome

nk497 writes "The release of the beta for the next version of Apple's Safari browser last week helped drive Apple's market share above ten per cent. The Safari beta has gained users at a rate of about 0.5 per cent a day since its release, topping one per cent by day four. For comparison, Microsoft's beta of IE took six months to hit one percent, Chrome needed almost a month, and Firefox 3 took a week."

Comments

Sticking with Safari 3

[argent]

Until they fix the title-bar abuse, I'm sticking with Safari 3.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[gabrieltss]

Yes. I HATE the new look of Safari (Beta 4). It's horrid! I've gone back to beta 3.2.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[bondsbw]

This should help.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Until they fix the title-bar abuse, I'm sticking with Safari 3.

I prefer the new title bar. It saves me a little bit of vertical space without losing any utility. I call that a win. I suppose they could add a preference for the "old way" for curmudgeons that don't like change.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[e4g4]

I agree - the new title bar takes a little getting used to, but it recovers a fairly significant amount of dead space (all that blank space to the left and right of the selected tab's title, making it certainly worth a little bit of (initial) discomfort. As to the preference for the old way, it's easy:

sudo defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Okay, so it's not a checkbox, but meh - you only need to do it once.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[0100010001010011]

Actually, you don't need sudo. (Unless you run safari as root). It's a 'per user' setting.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[JoeFromPhilly]

Agree. There's an ambiguity between "I'm clicking this to drag the window" vs. "I'm clicking this to change the active tab" that's really irritating. Even though it was the only change I didn't like, it was enough to get me to stop using it. Or it would've been if they hadn't preserved a way to get the old tab behavior back via the command line (someone mentions it in another response).

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Agree. There's an ambiguity between "I'm clicking this to drag the window" vs. "I'm clicking this to change the active tab" that's really irritating.

I guess I don't see the problem. It works intuitively for me. I click a tab and it switches to that tab. I click a tab and hold the key down and drag and it moves the window. What use case are you having a problem with?

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[Savage-Rabbit]

bash$ defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[Hatta]

This is the problem with apps managing their own tabs. Tabs are just a way of managing windows, we already have window managers for that. We even have window managers that support tabs. All web browsers should focus on displaying web pages, and let us choose the window manager that suits us best.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[jjackalb]

There's an ambiguity between "I'm clicking this to drag the window" vs. "I'm clicking this to change the active tab"

Actually, its more of an ambiguity with "I'm clicking to activate the window" vs. "I'm clicking this to change the active tab"

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[JoeFromPhilly]

I'm basically just trying to move the browser window with a lot of tabs open so that I can see a bit of some other window (a terminal or checkbook, usually). What ends up happening is one of the following:

1. I forget to click on the active tab as I drag and it selects a new tab. Sometimes.
2. Once, and I'm not sure how I did this, but the tab detached from the window and became a new window.
3. Sometimes I click on a tab to activate it, but because my finger wobbles a bit on the track pad it thinks I want to drag the window and so nothing happens.
4. Other times it does what I want, but even then it doesn't feel right. I drag windows around the desktop by using the title bar drag space. When I click a control, I expect it to have some sort of effect on something. When the two are combined, I have no intuition about what it will do. Will it behave like a control, or a drag space?

I don't feel that the UI confusion is a good trade off for saving a couple pixels, and it adds no new capability that I care about. I hope title bar tabs go the way of the pull out drawer and the awkward gestures associated with it. Or at least that I can turn it off.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I forget to click on the active tab as I drag and it selects a new tab. Sometimes.

Umm, for me clicking a non-active tab and dragging moves the window. It doesn't bring the background tab to the foreground. Even clicking the "new tab" button and dragging does not make a new tab if you hold the button down and try to drag as you would for moving the window. Perhas the Windows version is different or am I still misunderstanding your problem?

Once, and I'm not sure how I did this, but the tab detached from the window and became a new window.

The only way to do that I now of is to right click a tab and select "move to a new window" or select the same option from the Window menu. If it happened randomly somehow, that sounds like an implementation bug, not a usability issue.

Sometimes I click on a tab to activate it, but because my finger wobbles a bit on the track pad it thinks I want to drag the window and so nothing happens.

It sounds like your click speed and/or mouse pad sensitivity is misconfigured. If you're having problems with tabs in Safari, it probably also causes problems in other applications that require fine controls.

Other times it does what I want, but even then it doesn't feel right.

This is just learnability and your conditioned behaviors. Anything unfamiliar like this might feel a bit off, which is why most users who switch OS's dislike the new OS for some time, it is just different not necessarily bad.

I don't feel that the UI confusion is a good trade off for saving a couple pixels, and it adds no new capability that I care about.

A lot of people, like myself, really care about saving a whole tab bar's worth of vertical (premium) space when using the Web. It's the same reason I always turn off the bookmarks bar. This is catering to power users more than anything, but in that it has an advantage. Very basic users don't use tabs. Very advanced users want the space. I guess it is mostly the middle of the road users that will take a bit to get used to this. I think it is a win, and doubt it will go away, but hopefully they'll give you a way to revert to the old behavior so you don't have to deal with it.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[e4g4]

Quite right. I certainly hope no one is running Safari as root.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[edalytical]

No, if you think about it the tabs belong in the title bar. Tabs are like windows (except they share a window), every UI element (back button, forward button, address bar, search bar) is an element of the tab. Just think about it for two seconds! I love the tabs in the title bar. It is logical and it is easier to use.

Besides there is an option to put the tab bar back, just search for it.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[argent]

I've thought about it. Tabs aren't like windows: I've used browsers where tabs were like windows, it's called "MDI", and it sucks.

Besides there is an option to put the tab bar back, just search for it.

Doesn't work on Windows, I've tried it.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[argent]

This is catering to power users more than anything

Power users have screens that are big enough they don't begrudge losing 2% of the screen height.

Mad geeks who try and act like power users on ultranotebooks are the only ones who need this crap.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[Moryath]

And of course the fact that they forced it as a download with the latest version of iTunes (which ALSO, incidentally, runs like crap on a non-Mac platform) has nothing to do with this "record"...

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[Entropy2016]

Have you tried doing this yet?

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Power users have screens that are big enough they don't begrudge losing 2% of the screen height.

I disagree. I'm pretty close to the definition of a power user, but all my main systems for years have been small or medium widescreen laptops that can plug into an external monitor when at my desk. Having more vertical space is almost always one of my biggest limitations even at my desk since I still use the laptop screen even if I'm also using a larger screen as well.

Mad geeks who try and act like power users on ultranotebooks are the only ones who need this crap.

The notebook and ultra notebook crowd certainly include their share of power users in my experience. Would you consider the attendees at Blackhat to be power users? How many people there each year don't have a medium or small laptop?

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[644bd346996]

No. Power users are the ones who worry about that 2% even when they already have a pair of 24" monitors. That's what makes them power users: they want to get the most out of whatever computer they have.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[Nixoloco]

No, as others have stated, Apple does not push out the Safari 4 beta through the iTunes updates. They push out a Safari 3 update for the Safari that is already installed, but users have to go to the Apple website and explicitly choose to download the Safari 4 beta.

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[argent]

As a system administrator, I've always called the people who think they need every skerrick of every resource available to them to be dedicated magically to whatever they want, no matter whether other people have different needs, "lusers".

I guess if they have two 24" monitors you could call them "power lusers".

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[jriskin]

Personally I appreciate anything that recovers vertical space. We live in a world of vertical webpages on widescreen monitors...so lame...

Re:Sticking with Safari 3

[edalytical]

I've thought about it. Tabs aren't like windows: I've used browsers where tabs were like windows, it's called "MDI", and it sucks.

MDI was just a really bad implementation of tabs. Same idea horrible execution.

Beta 4 slower than Beta 3

[gabrieltss]

I have been using Safarai for Windows 3.2 for a while (use it for testing compatability with web pages I build). I downloaded the Beta 4 and ran it through the same web pages I normally do for testing compatability and found Beta 4 ran slower than the Beta 3.2. So I uninstalled Beta4 and went back to Beta 3.2.

Re:Beta 4 slower than Beta 3

[Canazza]

That's a disturbing moniker...
"Safari for Windows 3.2"
you aren't Chinese by any chance? If you are we'll have to tell your masters you've been hacking the great Firewall...

fyi

Re:Beta 4 slower than Beta 3

[master_p]

Windows 3.2? is this a new version of Windows? when did it come out?

Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari is broken, it can't even load hotmail

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[August26]

Maybe it's Hotmail that is broken.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[morgan_greywolf]

No. Hotmail comes with every computer, along with Live Search. You can get to it by clicking the blue 'e' thingie.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[nschubach]

That blue 'e' thingie is the Internet... If you're machine doesn't have it you won't be able to play the Yahoo games.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[intheshelter]

Stop it, you're making the milk come out of my nose with that comment!

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[gardyloo]

I hope you were drinking milk. Actually, I kinda don't.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[indi0144]

that 'e' thingie is an ubber operator in which you put the number for the internet you want being brought to you via the tubes, it's a fine piece of engineering so I beg you that you treat it with a little more respect, what? you don't need live search? you can dial you numbers on hand? hahaha good luck with that.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I create shortcuts to Firefox that use the IE image.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[master_p]

In Japan, computers need no stinking 'e' to access the internet, computers have the internet preinstalled!!!

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[cuijian]

Hotmail is sending bad HTML to Safari. If you enable the develop menu (in advanced preferences) and go to hotmail using Firefox's user agent then everything works fine.

Re:Safari doesn't work with Hotmail

[Requiem18th]

And make lil Foxkeh cry

goin' on safari

[bigdaddyhame]

someone tells me the new version is significantly faster than the previous one, that's my main complaint, sure I'll switch. And yes, it's faster than Firefox on the Mac side so it was a no-brainer. ... at least until a faster version of Firefox comes along.

Re:goin' on safari

[msobkow]

The latest release of Safari is indeed fast on Windows, but it didn't give me the option of re-importing my bookmarks from Firefox, so I didn't play with it too much. I liked what I saw, but not enough to switch browsers. Besides, I rather like AdBlockPlus.

I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Math

[Alsee]

about 0.5 per cent a day... topping one per cent by day four

-

Not Meaningful

[Nemyst]

I don't think that kind of thing is actually meaningful at all. Sure, they are gaining more people to try out their beta. The issue is with whether they'll be able to keep them.

Look at Google Chrome; the browser's first few weeks were all rosy as people flocked to the browser. After a few months, though, things got back to "normal" and users went back to their usual browser after the hype machine had died down and the novelty wore off. If they can get that percentage and KEEP it, then we can say they've achieved something.

Re:Not Meaningful

[mdwh2]

Indeed. The other thing to note is that "how quickly people download it" isn't necessarily a useful statistic. Whether people all download it within a hour of release, or a month, doesn't really matter if it's still the same number of users.

There is the question of reliability of statistics, anyway - how do they take into account issues such as fake user agents, and caching? (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers - Opera in particular is penalised by the methods used to generate statistics.)

On that note, I'm reminded how Opera seems to be disliked here on Slashdot - despite being a decent IE alternative long before other alternatives such as Firefox existed - supposedly on the grounds of the browser not being Open Source, so I take it that Safari will be equally disliked here too, right? (For the pedants, yes I know Safari uses WebKit, but that doesn't make Safari Open Source.)

Re:Not Meaningful

[N1AK]

On that note, I'm reminded how Opera seems to be disliked here on Slashdot - despite being a decent IE alternative long before other alternatives such as Firefox existed - supposedly on the grounds of the browser not being Open Source, so I take it that Safari will be equally disliked here too, right?

Safari is made by Apple, that fact alone is enough for a very sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to ignore any reason to dislike it.

Opera IS a damn good browser, and it is a shame it doesn't get more credit. Personally I choose to use FF but it doesn't mean I can't appreciate good software when I see it regardless of licensing model.

As an aside, I can't help but think that bragging about the number of people jumping on a product Beta is strange. Surely the fact that Safari users moving from Version 3 to the Beta, says at least as much about how little they like the old version.

Re:Not Meaningful

[Cederic]

Safari is made by Apple, that fact alone is enough for a very sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to ignore any reason to dislike it.

Although it's also enough for a sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to ignore any reason to like it.

It's the translation of Newton's laws into the world of fanboyism.

Re:Not Meaningful

[mdwh2]

Safari is made by Apple, that fact alone is enough for a very sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to ignore any reason to dislike it.

Of course a sizable portion don't like Apple products. Just as a sizeable proportion don't like Microsoft, or Linux, or AmigaOS. Since most people like some products, and not others, it follows that for any given product, there'll be a sizeable portion who don't like it. I don't think there's anything special by that. What's more noticeable is the number of people who can't seem to stand any criticism of Apple products, or think that because they like it, it must be the best thing ever.

Re:Not Meaningful

[Splintax]

On that note, I'm reminded how Opera seems to be disliked here on Slashdot - despite being a decent IE alternative long before other alternatives such as Firefox existed - supposedly on the grounds of the browser not being Open Source

Although this is no longer the case, I think the reason many ./ers don't like Opera is because for a long time, you either needed to pay for it or use an ad-supported version.

Re:Not Meaningful

[Lars T.]

Safari is made by Apple, that fact alone is enough for a very sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to ignore any reason to dislike it.

Safari is made by Apple, that fact alone is enough for an even more sizable portion of the Slashdot readership to hate it no matter what.

Re:Not Meaningful

[chrismeidinger]

Strategically, Google Chrome isn't a browser it's a challenge. Google wants to ensure that javascript speed is one of the prime metrics in browsers to ensure acceptable performance for their apps. Whether anyone actually uses Chrome is immaterial to google.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Threni]

"There are now at least 85,000 Elvis's around the world, compared to only 170 in 1977 when Elvis died. At this rate of growth, experts predict that by 2019 Elvis impersonators will make up a third of the world population." - The Naked Scientists 3rd December, 2000.

Why? Trust.

[Lord Grey]

I think the reason behind this is due to trust. Specifically, trust in the "it just works" history that Apple currently enjoys. Mac users are used to that, expect it, and believe that something like a new Safari will actually work and may even perform as advertised. They're willing to give it a try at an early stage. I did: I'm typing this reply now in the Safari beta. And hey, it does Just Work, at least so far.

Now, I'm not saying that Apple always deserves that level of trust. They've made mistakes in the past, some of them real doozies. But in general, the average Mac user has a fairly high regard for Apple products. More so than Microsoft users for Windows products, certainly.

Re:So what?

[dotancohen]

Didn't Google Chrome get 3% market share in like a day or something? Here's the /. story on that:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/03/1343226

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[August26]

Apple update doesn't push Safari 4 - you have to go to the apple website and download and install it yourself.

No source

[p_quarles]

The central claim of the summary is completely unsourced. If you click on the link in the article that purports to backup the claim of a 10% market share (which sounds outlandish to me, but not impossible), you get a pretty run of the mill domain name parking page. So, there's no way of examining the claim or questioning the methods. This doesn't belong on the front page.

Re:No source

[p_quarles]

My apologies. After looking more closely, it's not a parking site. But there's no link to the actual data, just the main page of the site that supposedly collected the statistics.

Re:No source

[chdig]

I'm having a hard time understanding where the "10%" figure comes from too. The article links to a stats page which lists the stats for IE, Chrome and Firefox at 68.17, 1.16, 21.96 respectively (as reported in TFA).

But, for Safari, the article says 10.91%, but the stats page says 7.42% -- that's a big difference!

Can anybody find where this 10% figure comes from (my personal guess is outta thin air)

Re:No source

[SIR_Taco]

Was it the Safari Beta 4 default homepage that was bringing in the statistics?

Re:No source

[Xest]

10% is indeed BS.

Even the most Apple biased browser stats I've looked through top it out at 8.3%, the more objective sites put it at around 4%. The thing is, even most Mac users I know use Firefox rather than Safari.

I don't even think Apple has 10% of computer market share which makes the claim even more unlikely unless there is some specific reason Mac users are more likely to be internet users than Linux or Windows users are. See here:

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-os-x-market-share-drops-in-feb-as-vista-use-rises-0236001/

Re:No source

[UnknowingFool]

The central claim of the summary is completely unsourced.

Which would make it perfect for slashdot. You must be new here.

Re:No source

[maxume]

Perhaps they have ~100 users on some internal site, 10 of which happen to use Mac.

Re:No source

[oDDmON oUT]

"I don't even think Apple has 10% of computer market share which makes the claim even more unlikely unless there is some specific reason Mac users are more likely to be internet users than Linux or Windows users are. See here:

h**p://www.slashgear.com/apple-os-x-market-share-drops-in-feb-as-vista-use-rises-0236001/"

This is almost a given in a tight economy.

Apple does not price it's products "affordably" (read - cheap), so when someone chooses a new computer based on the lowest possible price point they are going to get The-Only-Other-Game-In-Town, Vista.

But does this mean that Vista market penetration is necessarily rising?

No.

It does mean that the metrics used to measure Vista marketshare by Net Applications may have risen for the month, but not that it truly rose overall (BTW, did anyone actually see those numbers/spreadsheets/data to substantiate the claim?).

Next month may see a downturn in those numbers, as those nice new shiny netbooks and laptops are hit by conficker, or users grow tired of the UAC, or Chicken Little says the sky is falling, and owners decide to upgrade (legally or otherwise) to XP, server 2008, Ubuntu, Debian, or what ever else tickles their fancy.

As for me, I remain skeptical. I know several people who are putting XP on new hardware, and several more who said they would, if the spectre of MS support for it discontinuing didn't weigh on their minds.

Re:No source

[abhi_beckert]

From what I can see, they're stating that safari grew by 0.5% of the total marketshare each day for at least 4 days, which doesn't sound completely outrageous to me, though obviously it will fall slightly as the "just checking it out" factor goes away.

0.5% for 5 days == a two 2% increase, and net applications claims safari has had over 8% since some time in december 2008:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1

I personally think safari 4 is a massive improvement over safari 3, so some of the people trying it out will probably stick around. It'll be interesting to see where the marketshare is in another month or two.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How many of these new users actually even know they are new users ? I bet the majority of them are idiots who just click on the apple update for their itunes/ipod and done even realise Apple are basicaslly pushing crap onto their PCs that they done even know or want.

Zero. This is a beta release and is not distributed via software update yet. You have to go to Apple's Web site and download it.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

about 0.5 per cent a day... topping one per cent by day four

-

Sure it's right. I'm surprised you don't see it like that. Here at /. it is often pointed out that it's the number of zeros at the end matters. Apple (or some fan of apple) just rounded up 0.25 to 0.5.

Now, if they were saying 0.50 per cent a day there would be a problem. As it is, it's just another technically correct, yet purposely misleading statistic (like 9 out of 10 dentists prefer such and such).

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[quenda]

On the bright side: By day 200, they will need to provide a Linux version.

This would be good news for KDE only if...

[bogaboga]

...the KDE folks would "dump" KHTML for Webkit. I just mean "default to Webkit in Konqueror." Such a move would raise Konqueror's profile which cannot be a bad thing.

Right now, Konqueror is a non issue when it comes to browser statistics on the internet. In some statistics, it is lumped like other browsers into the "other" category like here . And over here , Konqueror is missing all together! Sad indeed.

While I say this, I know egos are high in the Open Source world, so what I am suggesting has little chance of being adopted.

Now, before I get modded a troll, I would like to know whether what I am suggesting is a very bad thing.

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[larry bagina]

QT is planning on including WebKit as a standard feature at some point (they may already). When that happens, KDE will drop KHTML and use WebKit instead.

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[cabjf]

I don't see how it could be bad. While competition is good, too much competition, from an open source perspective especially, dilutes the effectiveness. How many different groups do we need reinventing the wheel?

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[Midnight Thunder]

QT is planning on including WebKit as a standard feature at some point (they may already). When that happens, KDE will drop KHTML and use WebKit instead.

They have already started using WebKit for certain portions of KDE. From the 'KDE 4.1 beta' news release:

"Developers have been busy enriching the core KDE libraries and infrastructure too. KHTML gets a speed boost from anticipatory resource loading, while WebKit, its offspring, is added to Plasma to allow OSX Dashboard widgets to be used in KDE. "

I thought 4.2 was meant to start using WebKit across the board, but I can't seem to find any references in that regards.

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[shutdown -p now]

What I really wish is for the Gnome folks to dump Gecko for WebKit in Epiphany (the Gnome default browser).

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[Ant P.]

I would like to know whether what I am suggesting is a very bad thing.

Yes. For one thing, KHTML regularly wipes the floor with every other engine out there in CSS3 support. Firefox 3.1 is just now catching up to what Konqueror 4.0 could do over a year ago, and if Arora/Midori are anything to go by, Webkit has been removing features.

Re:This would be good news for KDE only if...

[Ilgaz]

I got Fink (-project.org) for OS X installed so installing KDE 3 was really easy.

Konqueror and KHTML has their own powers especially as a system wide HTML rendering framework. The stability and maturity of KHTML is at amazing levels with comically low CPU usage. If I had chance to have Flash support, it would be my choice for browsing.

What I understand is, they pick the nice features Apple enhanced in Webkit without the cost of stability and implement it.

Safari's market share isn't all correct too if you look that way. Google chrome, Adobe Air, Nokia S60 browser are all Webkit browsers or have webkit in them.

Let me tell you what is sad in share numbers on this G4 Mini 1.42 Ghz which can browse the web on 720P HDTV easily. Opera. It is more obvious after press drooling for top sites feature which _is_ their invention and numerous other things.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

...just rounded up 0.25 to 0.5.

Yikes! I just read my parent post again. This is why one shouldn't be posting late at night.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[Phoenixhawk]

How many of these new users actually even know they are new users ?

I bet the majority of them are idiots who just click on the apple update for their itunes/ipod and done even realise Apple are basicaslly pushing crap onto their PCs that they done even know or want.

It was a fair question I was thinking the same thing, after a few rounds with the virus that is apple update, installed safari on a couple of my computers after being told explicitly not to install.

I'm a avid Firefox user, much like the Netscape of old, it just works, and I can tweak it with addon's to be what I want it to be. However as an iPhone owner, I get shafted with no choice.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[outZider]

Plus, these statistics are not based on downloads, but on usage. If it were based on installation, IE would likely have a far stronger showing.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[outZider]

SquirrelFish Extreme was unveiled about a week after Google unveiled Chrome and V8. If you're going to whine about Safari putting tabs on top like Chrome, you could say that Google stole Opera's UI.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[samkass]

The new JavaScript engine (codenamed SquirrelFish) predates Chrome's and is faster than Chrome's. You've been able to use it in WebKit nightly builds for months now. And it's exactly as compatible as Chrome since Google took Apple's rendering engine to use for Chrome.

Firefox is nice enough and I definitely prefer it on Windows. On the Mac, though, it's just a slow browser with an old-fashioned UI.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[Signius]

I am prepared to stand corrected on the fact that this isnt being pushed at present by the insidious apple update. This isnt to say it wont be though. Also the reason i am unaware of it not being pushed by apple update, is because i removed all the apple crap off my system because of apple software not doing what i want it to do such as the horrific crap that is quicktime. You tell it not to do things like assocaite with certain file types and it completely ignores you and over-rides your choice regardless. If apple had alloewed me to make the decisions of what i want my computer to do then i might not have chose to remove all of it and have nothing to do with them.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[falcon5768]

as pointed out above, unless you explicitly went to the site to download 4 beta, you did not get updated it. Its pretty clear these are legit downloads from people who WANTED to download the beta.

Re:So what?

[Nursie]

It did, and then dropped back to near zero as people said "that's pretty good" and then went back to their regular browsers.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[Assmasher]

Actually, it just did when I just updated iTunes about 15 minutes ago. I do NOT have Safari on this machine and it had ticked Safari as a 23MB (iirc) 'update' that was in the bottom half of the dialog off on its own. Nice of them to check mark that download for my own good, eh? ;)

Re:Are they still sneaking it in via iTunes update

[Assmasher]

Yep. To see if they're still doing it I asked iTunes to update and lo and behold, the Apple Software Updater comes up and lists Bonjour and iTunes in the top half of the dialog, and near the bottom, off on its own, is 'Safari' 23MB (iirc) download, already pre-checked for me. Hmmm... I wonder if I had automatic updating configured if it would simply show up on my machine? LOL.

Re:Are they still sneaking it in via iTunes update

[I confirm I'm not a]

If they are, they're doing it very well. I got hit with a QuickTime and iTunes update yesterday, didn't really pay attention to it and just agreed to everything. I checked for Safari just now, wondering if I'd agreed to download it as part of yesterday's update - but no, I don't have it.

Am I missing something?

[MiKM]

Net Applications, the site that ITPro is using as the source of its numbers, lists Safari's market share as 7.42% - a decrease from last month, when it was at 7.7%. Am I missing something, or is ITPro just doing a shoddy job at citing its source?

Re:Am I missing something?

[foniksonik]

Just FYi, the site linked to in the article only shows Worldwide stats on it's free overview page. So that 7.42% is a worldwide statistic. Which considering the costs associated with a Mac is pretty impressive.

You have to pay for a subscription to that site to see their US and other breakdown stats.

Re:Am I missing something?

[mdwh2]

But their stats for the other browsers match exactly. So if they're comparing browser usages from one report, to Safari's share in another, that's hardly fair anyway!

As another poster notes, their set of stats adds up to over 100%!

(And I love how you twist the expense of Macs to be a good thing.)

Re:Am I missing something?

[chdig]

I don't think you read the very first sentence of TFA:
"Apple has topped the ten per cent mark for worldwide browser market share" -- from a UK website, not a U.S one.

As you saw in the stats page that the article linked to, it also read "worldwide" stats, but at 7.42%

Something doesn't add up

Re:So what?

[bondsbw]

You obviously didn't RTFA (or even the summary), which says "Firefox 3", not "Firefox 1". The GGP should have said 2008, and then realized that "It's hardly a fair comparison between 2008 and now" would just be silly.

Re:So what?

[shinma]

And the original article discusses Safari 4 beta's adoption vs. Safari 3 beta, which did not come out in 2004, so the post that says "when Firefox came out most people didn't realise they even had a choice. It's hardly a fair comparison between 2004 and now" is the one that obviously didn't read.

Nor did you.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[he-sk]

Are you sure it wasn't a Safari 3 update?

I ran Software Update last night and it did not install the Safari 4 beta.

Re:Questionable Stats

[shinma]

I'm on a mac, and my software update didn't even offer me Safari 4 beta. You have to go to Apple's website and choose to download it.

No add-ons

[morgan_greywolf]

The problem with both Chrome and Safari is a lack of an add-on community. One of the things that continues to make Firefox a success is that the user community has added all the niche functionality anyone would ever want and more.

Re:No add-ons

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The problem with both Chrome and Safari is a lack of an add-on community.

Well, they certainly don't have the market share of Firefox, but they do have useful and usable plug-ins on Safari. Also, this beta revamps the plug-in architecture of Safari to some degree, while still conforming to the Netscape plug-in standard.

Re:No add-ons

[morgan_greywolf]

Firefox's add-ons aren't just plugins. They're browser extensions that can make the browser do just about anything and look just about anyway you can imagine. For example, there's an extension called 'All-in-One Sidebar' that basically adds Opera's sidebar functionality to Firefox. Before the Awesome Bar came into being, there were extensions that did this.

Re:No add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a difference between plug-ins and add-ons. Netscape plug-ins are a given for any browser. Add-ons are what make firefox so extendable, and that's what the GP is talking about.

Re:No add-ons

[neumayr]

It's actually forcing them to continue use ff on a regular basis. As soon as people even try to give another browser a chance, coming back to firefox makes them download tons of updates for all those little addons, which stop working as soon as there's a ff update.
They won't want to go through that procedure again, so they'll just have to either stop using ff alltogether, or give up on using anything else as their main browser.
It's a very effective kind of vendor lock in.

Re:No add-ons

[nametaken]

Agreed. Chrome with plugins would be killer.

As it stands I can't see a site's Google pagerank with the Google browser.

Re:No add-ons

[bonch]

http://www.pimpmysafari.com

Re:No add-ons

[morgan_greywolf]

Not quite the same thing. For one, most (all?) of these 'extensions' -- which are not really extensions, but instead are clever Mac OS X hacks -- will not work with Safari on Windows.

Re:No add-ons

[tvon]

Agreed, it's the one thing that I keep using Firefox for. What popular Firefox extension features have been ported for Safari generally don't work nearly as well. For example, I don't want to use a system-wide proxy for ad blocking, and as nice as the web inspector is it's not as good as he Web Developer + Firebug extensions for Firefox... not to mention that most Safari tweaks require input manager hacks which are sketchy at best and prone to breaking between Safari releases.

If Safari had a system in place for writing extensions I wouldn't even have Firefox installed on my computer, it's generally painful to use for any period of time in OSX (it's a bad OSX "citizen" and feels like a ported Windows app). Page load performance I really don't care about, what I care about is the 1+ seconds it takes to open a new Firefox window once I have a bunch (~5-10) already open. Safari is instantaneous no matter how many windows I already have open, as it should be on a quad core system with 8 gigs of ram.

Re:No add-ons

[Just Some Guy]

The problem with both Chrome and Safari is a lack of an add-on community.

Not really. Outside the geek community and their immediate friends and family, few people go out of their way to install extensions. I ran the numbers once and posted them on Slashdot, and although I'm too lazy to find a link, the end result was that something like .3% of Firefox users download them (based on estimates of Firefox installations and the stats for the most popular extensions).

You and I like the web developer add-ons, NoScript, etc. Most of the people around us have never even heard of them and wouldn't be interested if they had.

Re:No add-ons

[RajivSLK]

To put it bluntly your argument is pretty stupid. I'm not going to bother responding to the entire thing but my full response would be a lengthly version of this:

You will not use food even if it were the best way to avoid death by starvation imaginable, because the food corporations use Microsoft and Google products.

Try this instead:

You will not use food from (insert assumed big evil food corp, say Monsanto) if it were the best way to avoid death by starvation imaginable, because the food corporation does (insert something one disagrees with, say gmo food) and instead you will use food from another easily available source that may be less tasty.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I'm sure GP would use Safari if for some reason it was the only browser available but he has a perfectly good alternative and doesn't like apple. So big deal. I don't think his principles are at stake.

Lots of people bought "Green" "smart" cars in the past few years. Many people bought them in place of more polluting cars. By your logic, if such a green car was unavailable they should all walk or be called out for their 'uncompromising principles becoming compromised so quickly."

What complete rubbish.

Re:No add-ons

[morgan_greywolf]

Well, even Steve Ballmer knows that the main way you attract people to your platform is ... Developers, Developers, Developers. Like it or not, he's actually right. Developers are what created the Windows user-base and it's what's creating the Linux user-base.

Re:No add-ons

[mgblst]

I agree with the AC, I avoid using Microsoft products at all costs.

I have had to use Vista and IE 7 yesterday, it was pain full. It is like they have deliberatly hidden setting to make it harder. I couldn't even log off. I couldn't get IE to tell me what security zone it was in for the current page (it was a local file, so who the fuck knows). I hate Microsoft with a passion, do not trust them for one second, and will not be surprised when the fuck you all over again. If you are too stupid to pick up on that, then good for you buddy.

Re:No add-ons

[neumayr]

This doesn't make sense though. You don't have to remove a browser or your Mozilla profile to test another browser.

No, you don't. But during the time it takes to really test that other browser, there will most likely be many updates to FF and its addons - some of which will probably be incompatible to one another.

So, going back to FF, the user will be asked to wait for all those updates to download, install, and to acknowledge which of the many addons stopped working. That takes time, and will annoy.

I'm pretty sure this annoyance will keep people giving any other browser a real chance - going back is just to bothersome.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[L4t3r4lu5]

You're looking at it wrong. That's 0.5 increase of the previous day!

Day 1: 5m downloads! Fanboi day.
Day 2: 25000 downloads: Windows users who have heard of Apple, but don't want to shell out x000 for a pretty UI.
Day 3: 125 downloads: Linux users with WINE give it a go.
Day 4: 0.6 downloads: Someone posts a link in /. pretending it's Goatse. A noob clicks it by mistake.

Re:So what?

[Paaskonijn]

You and the GGP obviously didn't read the summary.

Yay! This is fun! Quick, somebody, tell me what I obviously forgot to read!

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It looks to me like all they've done is rework Safari to make it emulate Chrome.

They pulled in a much, much newer version of Webkit including the new javascript engine Chrome does not use. They added a huge amount of support for HTML 5, CSS 3, XML, SVG 1.1 and a lot of other cool, new technologies that have been languishing. They added resolution independent zoom, anti-phishing, and revamped their plug-in architecture. Those speed and functional improvements are the major items in my mind. They changed up the UI and the tabs are more similar to Chrome, as is the default start page, but neither is quite the same and while more visible at first blush, are pretty minor.

So, you could use Safari and get the features of Chrome at a larger memory footprint or you could just run Chrome.

Or, if you're running OS X you can't run Chrome because they haven't even released a version yet.

. Chrome isn't as full featured as Safari, but covers 95% of what people need for normal web browser.

If you're on Windows I'd argue Safari isn't your best choice as a browser... but then that is not Safari's main market. On OS X it crushes most of the competition including Firefox. It is fast and has features that have not been cloned yet. You seem to take issue with browsers cloning the innovations of others, I wish other browser makers would do it. Every time I find myself on a Windows box using any other browser I wish I could expand text boxes (like the one I'm typing in now) to be able to see my whole comment. It's been years now.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[L4t3r4lu5]

No... You were probably right.

Re:So what?

[mdwh2]

Indeed, that's the point - a sudden blip in users when a beta's released tells us nothing about long-term popularity, as is the case with Safari too.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[k.a.f.]

about 0.5 per cent a day... topping one per cent by day four

So, they started out with -1% market share?

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[Graff]

Actually, it just did when I just updated iTunes about 15 minutes ago. I do NOT have Safari on this machine and it had ticked Safari as a 23MB (iirc) 'update' that was in the bottom half of the dialog off on its own. Nice of them to check mark that download for my own good, eh?

That's interesting because I have updated to the latest iTunes through Apple's updater and at no time did it offer to update to the Safari 4 beta. I'm currently using Safari 3. Maybe you just have an outdated Safari 3 and it offered to update you to the most recent Safari 3 release, not the Safari 4 beta.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[morgan_greywolf]

There already is. See Epiphany 2.26 and later.

These "rates of change" mean nothing

[Chrisq]

These "rates of change" mean nothing when you have a very small share. If I produce my chrisbrows browser and test it myself, the day I give it to a friend I have achieved a growth rate of 100% per day, beating Safari, Opera, Firefox and the lot.

Re:Why offer a beta as a default download?

[geoff2]

Most Mac users won't even visit the Safari page, however, since all Mac users get stable Safari updates bundled into Mac OS X updates. So the folks seeking out the Safari webpage to download it are probably looking for the beta version.

I used it for a while

[m85476585]

I used Safari 4 beta for a while since it was faster than Firefox, but then it crashed and forgot all my open tabs. I'm back to Firefox now (actually Shiretoko since Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 had a bookmark export bug that wouldn't let me switch to Safari).

Re:I used it for a while

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I used Safari 4 beta for a while since it was faster than Firefox, but then it crashed and forgot all my open tabs.

On what OS? It has been rock stable for me so far on OS X. I haven't tried it on Windows (and probably won't) but I'm curious about the stability.

Re:I used it for a while

[m85476585]

OS X. I think it was a Flash Player (10,0,2,54) that made it crash, though.

Re:I used it for a while

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Hmm, I have a slightly older version of Flash and it has not caused any problems. Even Silverlight seems to be working fine. It's good to keep in mind though. Thanks.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[InsurrctionConsltant]

That will be Safari 3.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, that's all they've done, is it?

The new JavaScript runtime was in the works long before Google announced Chrome and V8.

Webkit itself has been significantly changed since Safari 3. Lots more bug fixes, performance improvements, and a ton of new features. Almost all of which Chrome benefits from as well - the actual rendering engine is by far the biggest and most complex component of any web browser. Apple did almost all of the work on that, not Google.

Not questionable - BULLSHIT stats

[denzacar]

From TFA:

Overall market share among the top five dominant browsers remained largely stable through February, according to Net Applications.
.
.
But the main change came with Apple's Safari, after the version 4 beta of the browser was released last week.
The beta release helped push Apple's browser market share to 10.91 per cent, or 1.88 per cent more than the same time in the week before its release. Last month, it was 9.04 per cent.

Uhh... No.

Last month, according to above mentioned Net Applications, Safari's share was 7.42%.

Same numbers you will get if you click the link in TFA to see that 10.91% market share.
Cause you CAN'T SEE THE WEEKLY REPORT UNLESS YOU PAY.

But, if the above claimed 9.04% is any indication at the accuracy of TFA (compared to the actual 7.42%) - then Safari probably jumped about 0.26%.
Or less... or more... who knows. Maybe there were only 5 copies downloaded?

I mean... if you pad your stats by 22% (21.83% - the difference between 7.42% an 9.04%) - who knows what the real numbers are then?

Re:Not questionable - BULLSHIT stats

[mdwh2]

Indeed.

Same numbers you will get if you click the link in TFA to see that 10.91% market share.
Cause you CAN'T SEE THE WEEKLY REPORT UNLESS YOU PAY.

Even the idea that the 10.91% is part of some report we can't see is highly unlikely to be true, as the "latest" numbers given for all the other browsers are the same as in the report that is linked to.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[h2oliu]

Yeah,

And is it me, or was the total > 100 %

68.18% IE
21.96% Mozialla
10.91% Safari
  1.16% Opera
--------------
102.21%

Just curious.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[FudRucker]

i just tried Safari 3 & 4 with wine-1.0.1 in Slackware-12.2 Safari-3 would run but terribly buggy, Safari-4 would install but not run at all, so all you Linux users thinking of running Safari with wine dont bother...

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[certain death]

HAHAHA!!! So...I am thinking you don't like Apple much, eh? :o)

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[mdwh2]

I wrote a long post which appears to have been eaten. In summary:

Even allowing for rounding, the growth per day must be less than 0.26125%. Their other statistics are quoted accurately, indeed, to not just 1, but 2 decimal places. There is no way it is reasonable to represent the growth as "almost 0.5%" per day.

I'm not sure how we can trust an article that doesn't get basic maths right.

Secondly, their article is a blatant lie - the original source http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0 lists Safari as 7.42% (the other browsers are all reported accurately).

The Safari Figure is False!

[mdwh2]

Indeed, well spotted - the answer is to be found by looking at their original source that they link ( http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0 ). Guess what? Whilst all the other browsers are reported correctly, Safari is not 10.91%, but 7.42%. With this figure, the total comes to less than 100% (the remainder presumably taken up by the other browsers). So they've inflated Apple's share by 3.49%, or in terms of proportion, it's almost 1.5 times the true value!

(Are we going to hear an article that this is now part of a pro-Apple agenda? I think blatantly lying about usage statistics is far worse than saying people don't use Iphones in Japan, after all...)

I don't know if it's intentional, or incompetence, but together with the "4 times 0.5 equals 1 percent" blooper, I think we can safely put this article in the trash.

Re:The Safari Figure is False!

[pushing-robot]

Net Applications only gives weekly and daily statistics to paying subscribers.

It's not a surprise that Safari's average for the last month was lower, considering the new browser was just released last week.

Re:The Safari Figure is False!

[mdwh2]

Net Applications only gives weekly and daily statistics to paying subscribers.

So if there's a updated version of stats, why didn't they use the latest version for the other web browsers? Check the figures - for all the other browsers, the figures matched with the link exactly. This means they're not comparing like with like. How do you explain the total coming to over 100%?!

It's not a surprise that Safari's average for the last month was lower

Um, you miss the point - the article says that the figure was 9.04% last month. So this is still inflated over the statistic given in the link. Are you suggesting that the data is two months old or more?

And where is a reference for your claim? The website I'm looking at is being dynamically updated - in fact, it's changed since I looked this morning. So I'm getting updated statistics. Why would they update it continually, but have it two or months behind? And even if that was true, IT Pro are still telling fibbs in that the other browser stats they quote are also not up to date.

My God - this statistic has been exposed as a lie, and still people are trying to twist it to be true. Only on an Apple story.

That's not the Safari 4 Beta

[danaris]

If you actually paid attention, you'd be able to tell that that wasn't the Safari 4 Beta, but just an update to Safari 3.

As several others have noted in this thread (whom you apparently ignored), you have to deliberately go out and download the Safari 4 Beta from Apple's website.

Dan Aris

Re:That's not the Safari 4 Beta

[Assmasher]

Not true, it was not an update. I have never installed Safari on any machine. If I had "actually paid attention"? LOL. Maybe if you'd "actually been here" you'd understand.

Re:That's not the Safari 4 Beta

[Assmasher]

As it turns out, when trying this again on a different machine with iTunes, and making sure to 'pay attention' for your sake, Apple is still trying to install new software on my machine with pre-checked installations, at the bottom of the dialog, for MobileMe Control Panel AND Safari 3.2.2. Not an update, "New Software." If you'd like to argue with Apple themselves over their inappropraitely named "New Software" which you'd like to contend is an update, feel free. BTW, The Safari install is listed as 22.39MB.

Re:That's not the Safari 4 Beta

[Assmasher]

Who said 'Safari 4' beta? I was pointing out that Apple tries to sneak software on your machine.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

... all you Linux users thinking of running Safari with wine...

[cricket sounds]

Was anyone really thinking of running something like their Web browser in WINE? I mean, I'll use it to run the odd bit of Windows software, but only if there aren't any other options. I guess I can see it for smoke testing browser compatibility, but since WINE is a big question mark in the middle there, it makes more sense in my mind to go another route, like VMs or a dedicated, remote machine.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Logic and Reason]

"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... AAY!"
-Disco Stu

A net interface win

[glennrrr]

Imagine you were seeing a computer GUI for the first time. And were comparing two programs one of which had tabs like Safari 3 and one of which had tabs like Safari 4. Which would you prefer?

• Safari 4 devotes half the screen area to window dragging + tabs.
• It's easier to drag tabs around in Safari 3
• Because Safari 4's tabs fill the width of a window: longer titles
• It's easy to pop a tab off into it's own window in Safari 4
• It makes logical sense that the URL field is part of the web page, thus below the tab

So, since I very rarely re-order tabs, I can't see that the new tabs are anything but a big win. Putting them on top is both logical and gives me an extra 20,000+ pixels worth of useable browsing area.

Yes and nope.

[Balinares]

Qt already ships with WebKit as of Qt 4.4, released a while ago. Mind you, I don't consider it usable yet, seeing as the included WebKit is a little dated and lacks such features as, you know, Netscape plugin support (so no Flash).

Qt 4.5 will ship a more recent and useful version of WebKit, however, with support for such things as W3C selectors API, 100% ACID3 compliance, HTML5 audio and video, CSS canvas drawing, masks and reflections, and a few more things.

Nevertheless, KHTML is still set to remain Konqueror's default rendering engine, as far as I understand, for reasons of trust, quite simply. I don't necessarily agree, mind you, but I do understand, if nothing else, the wisdom of keeping a hand on the source code for urgent security fixes, rather than wait that it goes through the whole chain of Apple - WebKit - Qt - KDE.

Mind you, this is KDE, so switching to WebKit by default is probably one setting away. Probably in Configure file associations > text/html > Embedding, move webkitpart to the top of the preferred service list. I'm going to do that right away, actually.

Re:Yes and nope.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

f nothing else, the wisdom of keeping a hand on the source code for urgent security fixes, rather than wait that it goes through the whole chain of Apple - WebKit - Qt - KDE.

I don't understand. How is it harder to make urgent security fixes to the open source code of KHTML rather than the open source code of Webkit? You write your patch, release the changes and compile. Now maybe Apple and Google and Nokia and other contributors to Webkit won't like your fix or implement it or pull those changes in, but I don't see why you'd have to wait for Apple to do anything in an emergency.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[SIR_Taco]

That's why they shouldn't have used floating points... I think they have a precision problem.

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[guruevi]

Safari 4 is Beta and doesn't come bundled, it's a separate download. It's not even offered through software updates or pushed by marketing as the thing to load because it's still Beta. Just a link on the website, similar to Chrome. But Chrome isn't available on Mac and is only 90% complete. This is a decent software company that has a minor market share and can't afford losing their user base over sub-par software. Beta's come fully featured (like any decent software creator does) and have some minor/major bugs that need ironed out, not like Microsoft or Peoplesoft where they shift the meaning of Trunk to become Beta's, Alpha's to become Release Candidates and Beta's to Final Product.

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah it's really fucking hard to gain share when the browser comes bundled with your OS...

...except the beta we're talking about doesn't come bundled with the OS.

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[ViViDboarder]

Yea it's a good thing that Safari 4 beta came bundled with the... Oh... Wait... No you had to go to the website and dl the OS specific installer to try the beta... Thaaaats right. Next time, before you speak, you should learn what you're talking about. Mmmkay?

New UI

[sootman]

And for those who want teh snappy without tabs-on-top and other changes, go here to learn how to revert back to the old ways. I hope these still work once it's out of beta! I like my title bar on the top and a progress meter that actually shows progress, thankyouverymuch.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Angeliqe]

The article summary is the one that is misleading. He probably just didn't reread it. If you RTFA... "Split out day-by-day, the Safari beta release grew its share of users by almost 0.5 per cent a day following its release, to 1.04 per cent on day four, which Net Applications said amounted to around 10 million users." This means the growth rate was 0.5 per cent a day for 3 days after it's release. Then the growth rate (not total growth), on day 4, it was 1.04 percent. This means the total growth rate over the 4 days was 0.5 * 3 + 1.04 = 2.54...consults calculator...yah, that's right. Someone forgot to review their Calculus book. See tangent lines association to rates of growth.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[Ogive17]

What about a pop-up like iTunes that says there's a new version?

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[pavon]

The Safari 4 Beta is not being installed on new Macs or pushed out via the update system. Every person that is using it had to download it manually, just like with Google Chrome.

Manditory Beta ?

[Saint Gerbil]

So I went to the apple site and tried to get a copy of a non beta browser, surprise I cant.

How can they call it a Beta if it already replaces the last version.

Is it on the updater yet ?
Is it still ticked by default ?

If ms or firefox did that they would be crucified.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[GameMaster]

The first thing I thought when I saw the post was "How is it being distributed/advertised compared to other browsers?". While they have a much smaller install base than MS, Apple has a much more controlling attitude which made me wonder if they were pushing this to any network connected Apple system by default. If that's the case, then the uptake rate is, wholely, artificial and will stall as soon as the majority of Apple systems have finished updating.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[pohl]

Although this is answered several other places here, I'll reiterate: this is only a beta, and is not being distributed by software update. Therefore, none of the uptake can be said to be 'artificial' in the manner you imply.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[pohl]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I went to Apple's site, typed "Safari" into their search field, and among the links on the first page of results there is the page you seek.

Also note that if you do download the beta of Safari 4, it actually contains two installers: one to try the new beta, and another to revert to the previous stable version. This is true on OSX, at least. (I don't have a Windows machine.)

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[LoverOfJoy]

I'm on a windows machine. When I googled 'apple safari' I came up with http://www.apple.com/safari/. When I go there it says: "Introducing Safari 4 Beta. Take a look at the remarkable new features of the world's fastest web browser." in huge letters and a link to download Safari 4 Beta with no mention of Safari 3. I'm sure if I clicked around I could find the non-beta but it's nowhere clear on this first page.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[pohl]

Yeah, Google sent you to a marketing page for Safari, which is currently being used to promote the beta. If you really want the older version, the search engine on apple.com would be a much better resource.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[LoverOfJoy]

Okay, so I went to apple.com and typed in 'safari' into the search engine there. I got the same site as the top result: 'http://www.apple.com/safari/'

Maybe it's the next result down...that one says, "What is Safari" I click on it and it advertises Safari 4 Beta 'http://www.apple.com/safari/what-is.html'

The next is a download page... 'http://www.apple.com/safari/download/' for Safari 4 Beta... or Safari 4 Beta+Quicktime. But no Safari 3.

Skimming through, I honestly couldn't find Safari 3 in the later results (plugin pages, iphone pages, etc.). I'm sure if I looked long enough I'd find something but for this Windows user, if I was going to try out Safari, there's no way I'd hunt long enough to find anything but the Beta.

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[ViViDboarder]

You just uninstall Safari 4 to get back to 3. If you mean you want 3 and you have none then look to the bottom of the download page, there is a link that says "Looking for Safari 3? Download here!" http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Re:Manditory Beta ?

[Lars T.]

It never ceases to amaze me how many people read about a brand new beta version and drop all to hurry and download the previous stable version. Not to mention all the people who try really hard to not notice the link to something they "want" even though it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Safari's Share is 7.5%

[CritterNYC]

Safari's share is more like 7.5%. And it's lower than that on most technology oriented sites.

I would generally agree

[Burz]

...but up through Safari version 3 Apple has "stepped in it" when it comes to the browser UI and SSL security. It stinks.

There is no highlighting of the domain name or identity of the https website, there are no extended validation cues, and the lock icon is shown in the corner of the window titlebar far away from the website address.

Just as bad is having no status bar as the default, so people are less likely to notice that a URL-looking link doesn't go to the same place as shown on the page. This also trains users not to expect the status bar, which is a vital source of security context on other browsers.

So I hope that Safari 4 is better, but given Apple's record in this area I won't be holding my breath.

Re:I would generally agree

[holt]

...there are no extended validation cues...

Actually (and I just checked), but Safari 3.2.1 (on Leopard, at least) displays the name of the extended validation cert owner next to the lock icon in the top right corner.

Re:I would generally agree

[ThrowAwaySociety]

the lock icon is shown in the corner of the window titlebar far away from the website address.

So there's no way to fake it with a favicon?

Re:I would generally agree

[Burz]

Favicons don't show up in the status bar, which is where Firefox 3 shows the lock right next to the domain name.

Re:I would generally agree

[abhi_beckert]

I think some third party extensions to safari might include favicon spoofing as a potential vulnerability, but without hacking safari it certainly can't be done.

The favicon's are no-where near where the lock icon is displayed.

Benchmark Lies: Safari Beta vs Firefox Stable

[CritterNYC]

In the press releases where they claim to be the fastest, bestest browser, they're comparing the beta release of Safari 4 to the shipping release of Firefox 3.0 instead of the beta release of Firefox 3.1 which is more accurate. This is typical of most of Apple's marketing.

Re:Benchmark Lies: Safari Beta vs Firefox Stable

[A12m0v]

They did compare it to Fx 3.1

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[commodore64_love]

Who cares? This whole article is just a "pat yourself on the back" for Apple fans to justify to themselves why they were so smart to buy a $4000 computer that could have been bought for $1000 if they acquired a generic brand instead. I know. I'm a recovering Appleholic myself. Been there; done that. The only fact that matters is - How many people are using Safari today?

8%

Tiny.

can you steal open source?

[way2trivial]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10041995-92.html

"Open-source software may be moved freely from one project to another; though license particulars sometimes erect barriers, both Chrome and WTL use relatively liberal licenses. "

so- you say they 'stole' the UI-- does that mean it's ok to move code freely, but not UI appearance?

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[drinkypoo]

Actually, what probably happened is that a whole shitload of people downloaded Safari to see if it didn't suck yet. There is no word on what metric this alleged "market share" is based on, where the statistics came from, or why you should believe these people. "IT Pro" indeed. Who the fuck is Miya Knights? You might as well base your assumptions on a random article on Slashdot by some guy called drinkypoo.

Same problem on Chrome...

[Benfea]

...and yeah, I kind of think the problem is with Hotmail. With Chrome, there's a workaround you can use in which you lie to hotmail.com about what browser you're using. Perhaps something similar will work in Safari?

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[outZider]

A recovering Appleholic from 1997? Where on earth is this $4,000 to $1,000 comparison coming from? Look, I own a Mac, but I will take large dumps on Apple very often because most of the praise is undeserved. This crap, though, drives me absolutely insane. I tried really hard for two years to get a laptop with the same quality and weight as my Apple laptop for even close to the same money, and after two years of screwing around, bought another Apple.

The last time it was 4:1 was in the late 90s, and no one wants to relive that.

Re:Questionable Stats

[conureman]

I'm on a PC, and my software update didn't even offer me an opt-in warning. You have to go to Windows Explorer and choose to uninstall it. I rarely open IE, but did so the other day and discovered that MS had hijacked and upgraded it. man this OS sucks.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[UnknowingFool]

Mostly likely you got a Safari 3 update not the Safari 4 beta.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Archimonde]

How cool would be to have -100% market share?

On a more serious note is there a difference between -2% and -100% market share?

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[conureman]

I don't do itunes. I have been using the Safari beta the most over Chrome and Firefox for the last week or so. Doesn't seem to clunk too hard. I quickly un-installed whichever Safari I had tried before, as it didn't suit. IE8 installed itself when I wasn't looking, coulda been the girlfriend, I don't know. THAT would be the bogus stat, if she knew how to open it, but the icon is gone.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[nametaken]

Just curious... does the forcefully installed v3 advertise beta 4?

Re:Opera

[conureman]

I suppose it's been updated since it failed my last audition, some years ago. Thanks for the reminder, I'll give it another bash.

10% of what?

[chopper749]

Add up everybody's share, and it comes out to 145%! These numbers are completely meaningless.

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[antibryce]

the people who just use the browser their OS comes with aren't installing a beta of that browser by hand.

also Safari is available for Windows, fyi.

Safari runs on Windows too.

[argent]

As I pointed out in a previous article, that doesn't work on Windows.

Re:Safari runs on Windows too.

[Lars T.]

As I pointed out in a previous article, that doesn't work on Windows.

No, you actually have to edit a XML file to do that on Windows. http://observationpoint.org/articles/2009/02/ The com.apple.Safari.plist file is located in the C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Apple Computer\Preferences folder.

It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

The URL field is not part of the web page, neither is anything else in the toolbar and bookmarks bar. It makes no sense at all to have static content shared by all tabs inside the tab.

It's just an ugly hack.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The URL field is not part of the web page, neither is anything else in the toolbar and bookmarks bar.

What do you mean? The URL field shows you the URL of the tab you are looking at. How is that not part of the page? The toolbar items are forward, back, autofill, reload, search, and bug report. All of those, excepting search are specific to the tab you have in the forefront.

As for the bookmarks bar (I always make it go away), it is related to navigating away from the page, but I don't see how moving the tabs higher makes it any more or less useful.

Studied UI design and usability for years so feel free to get technical if you have a real objection.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

What do you mean? The URL field shows you the URL of the tab you are looking at. How is that not part of the page?

It's not part of the page because the URL field is in the same place, and has the same shape, on every page. It behaves the same way on every page, you don't get it turning into a search bar on Google and a Knowledge base lookup on Microsoft.com.

As for the rest of the toolbar items, you might as well argue that the menu bar is part of the page. Or the keyboard, since the behaviour of keys on the keyboard depend on what widget you're focussed on.

Studied UI design and usability for years so feel free to get technical if you have a real objection.

Argument from authority is one of Slashdot's most popular logical fallacies.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's not part of the page because the URL field is in the same place, and has the same shape, on every page.

But it has different contents on each page. I don't see how this is a UI problem. Why is it objectionable to you?

you don't get it turning into a search bar on Google and a Knowledge base lookup on Microsoft.com.

No, you have it displaying different URL information, information pertinent to that tab.

Studied UI design and usability for years so feel free to get technical if you have a real objection.

Argument from authority is one of Slashdot's most popular logical fallacies.

An argument from authority is when I assert I'm right because I have better credentials. Telling you I have such credentials and inviting you to go into technical details, is not an appeal to authority. You're awfully defensive.

So maybe I'm just slow. Why is it a usability flaw to put the tabs above the toolbar if it removes unused whitespace and gives the user more real estate for viewing pages?

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

Why is it a usability flaw to put the tabs above the toolbar if it removes unused whitespace and gives the user more real estate for viewing pages?

Because it breaks the visual metaphor that makes tabs so effective and easy to understand and use.

And if saving space was that important, they could get rid of the menu bar completely and make it a contextual menu on the title bar, they could get rid of the toolbar and add more title bar icons, and make the location box a hover-tip on the title bar, and so on.

If you want to save space, you ought to remove all the window decorations and use keyboard commands only. I've used window managers like that. Don't care for them myself, but I'm sure you can hack OS X to emulate them if you want.

The whole point of the GUI is that the value of the metaphor is high enough to make it worth burning a few percent of the available real-estate on it. Playing games with the UI to scrape up a few extra pixels is daft.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[glennrrr]

Why is it a usability flaw to put the tabs above the toolbar if it removes unused whitespace and gives the user more real estate for viewing pages?

Because it breaks the visual metaphor that makes tabs so effective and easy to understand and use.

Well the original visual metaphor is that of tabbed folders on a desktop. It seems as though the tabs in tabbed folders are on the very top of the folder, which seems consistent with how Safari 4 does things.

To be more consistent, I guess, the tabs could be protruding into empty space like BeOS did things, but it's nice to have Safari's very wide tabs for showing the whole title of a page if you have only a handful of tabs open.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Why is it a usability flaw to put the tabs above the toolbar if it removes unused whitespace and gives the user more real estate for viewing pages?

Because it breaks the visual metaphor that makes tabs so effective and easy to understand and use.

I don't see how. How does having the tabs above the toolbar break the metaphor? Ever go through folder of tabs, where within each folder there were forms that all had the same fields at the top, but which were filled out differently depending on the contents of the document? I certainly have. If anything I'd argue that having a URL hown above the tab, which changes whenever you change tabs conforms less to the metaphor of tabs. Clicking a tab I'd expect everything below it to change and nothing above it, but in your preferred arrangement the URL field changes as I click tabs and what the other buttons affect changes as well.

And if saving space was that important, they could get rid of the menu bar completely and make it a contextual menu on the title bar

They could... if space were the only consideration... but it obviously is not. The point here is you don't lose any functionality by moving the tabs or slow down access to anything. At the same time you save space. Your proposals all slow or drastically change how one has to perform tasks in order to gin the space.

The whole point of the GUI is that the value of the metaphor is high enough to make it worth burning a few percent of the available real-estate on it.

Yeah, the smallest amount for real estate possible for the task to be easy, leaving more room for you to get your work done.

Playing games with the UI to scrape up a few extra pixels is daft.

By that logic, we should have huge buttons since they are easier to click. Luckily UI designers try to balance overall usability instead of ignoring one aspect in favor of another.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

The "top of the folder" is the top of the web page, not the top of the window.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[glennrrr]

And I guess that begs the question, what is the physical object in this metaphor you are speaking of. In what I'm describing, the window as a whole is a folder with tabs, which is laying on the virtual desktop of my computer's screen. If I choose "Hide Others" in Safari 4's File menu here on my MacBook, that's what it looks like. Sort of; assuming my desktop had a big poster of the aurora borealis as a blotter. If you look at it from the perspective of the original desktop metaphor that makes visual sense.

I guess what you are saying is that the area under the bookmarks bar in Safari 3 is like its own little desktop, and on that desktop, I can have nothing but a single tabbed folder. That doesn't seem like much to hang a metaphor on.

As it happens, I'm helping design a refit to an older desktop application; and we are looking at a tabbed model for keeping documents organized. Not being a cutting edge visual design firm, we will probably gravitate towards the interior tabs of Safari 3, but I do like the physicality and back to first principles nature of Safari 4. I know people have complained about the heavy shadowing on the tabs, but it really does look like a tabbed folder (made out of aluminum) laying on the desktop.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

And I guess that begs the question, what is the physical object in this metaphor you are speaking of.

Tabs treat the web page as documents in a folder. The cover of the folder, the title on the folder, sticky notes on the front of the folder, the drawer that the folder is in, and so on... these are not part of the document in the tab in the folder. The stuff at the top of the window, that's the "outside of the folder". The stuff inside the tabs, that's the document.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The stuff at the top of the window, that's the "outside of the folder".

The URL is the place the document was retrieved from. It changes as I switch between tabs. Logically, it should be grouped as part of the document then, right?

The stuff inside the tabs, that's the document.

So if I'm looking at a document and I want to go back one link, I click the back button, but its behavior is contextual depending upon which document I'm viewing. It doesn't make all the tabs go back a link, just the current tab. If it isn't part of the document it should apply to everything according to the metaphor, right? Instead it is the back button for that document, i.e., that tab. So it should be in the tab, right?

As far as the tabbed documents metaphor, this seems to fit it better, not worse.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[Requiem18th]

I cannot speak for Safari but as a Firefox user having the tabs on top of the toolbar or the location bar would be a bit too odd for several reasons.

  Firstly, the location-bar is a toolbar widget, it can be dragged, replaced or removed from the toolbar, it is a conceptual sibling of the other toolbar widgets and inhabits the same "environment" so the location bar must acompany it's siblings in the toolbar.

  Secondly, the toolbar is an application centric methaphor and can and often does provide tools that operate on all tabs, placing buttons to, for instance, save all tabs to del.icio.us inside one of the tabs is confusing at least.

  But since Safari probably has no toolbar configurabilities or multi-tab skills I guess it could be made to work, but it doesn't seem very forward thinking to me.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But since Safari probably has no toolbar configurabilities or multi-tab skills I guess it could be made to work, but it doesn't seem very forward thinking to me.

Actually, you can configure the toolbars in Safari and you can save all tabs, but that action is via the menus not via a button and none of the default buttons affect multiple tabs.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

The URL is the place the document was retrieved from. It changes as I switch between tabs. Logically, it should be grouped as part of the document then, right?

No more than the index or other meta-information on the folder should. If you "save the whole page" to your desktop, the URL changes when you read it, but the content doesn't.

I click the back button, but its behavior is contextual depending upon which document I'm viewing.

No, it moves you "back one page". It doesn't change depending on the document, so when you're viewing Microsoft.com it doesn't switch to "previous article". It moves you "back one page" even if you got there from a completely different place than the author of the document expected.

It doesn't make all the tabs go back a link, just the current tab.

Neither does command-back, and command-w doesn't close all tabs. But the keyboard isn't "part of the document". The "document" is what you get from the website, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The URL is the place the document was retrieved from. It changes as I switch between tabs. Logically, it should be grouped as part of the document then, right?

No more than the index or other meta-information on the folder should. If you "save the whole page" to your desktop, the URL changes when you read it, but the content doesn't.

Yes, the content certainly does, because it is no longer live, and any dynamic/streaming elements re no longer functional.

No, it moves you "back one page". It doesn't change depending on the document, so when you're viewing Microsoft.com it doesn't switch to "previous article". It moves you "back one page" even if you got there from a completely different place than the author of the document expected.

It usually moves you back one link, not one document. The common case for using the Web is to follow links in the page, not type new URLs all the time. Either way, it applies only to the tab in the forefront, not to all the tabs. It is specific to that tab and applies only to that tab and if you have a different tab up it causes a different action.

Neither does command-back, and command-w doesn't close all tabs. But the keyboard isn't "part of the document".

The keyboard is an interface to the UI. Since it is not on the screen, we don't need to argue about where it should be spatially to make sense with the metaphor. We do have that consideration for GUI elements. You're dodging my point. Admit it, having he tabs at the top fits the metaphor better.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

It usually moves you back one link, not one document.

But that link is not a link in the *document*, it's meta-information. If you follow a link from another website, that link back to the original site dos not exist anywhere in the document, it's not part of the document.

The keyboard is an interface to the UI.

So is the toolbar.

You're dodging my point.

No, I'm disagreeing with you. Please don't follow the usual "interweb argument" logic here and start accusing me of lying for having the temerity to disagree with you.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But that link is not a link in the *document*, it's meta-information.

From a technical perspective, yes. From a UI perspective, no, the back button, the forward button, and links are all ways of navigating forward and backward through links. You can't jump from UI metaphors to technical methods and expect that to hold up when discussing usability.

The keyboard is an interface to the UI. Since it is not on the screen, we don't need to argue about where it should be spatially to make sense with the metaphor.

So is the toolbar.

Actually, the keyboard is an input method, just like the mouse. The keyboard, however, does not interact with objects displayed in the same space, which makes it qualitatively different in terms of the metaphor.

You're dodging my point.

No, I'm disagreeing with you.

Yeah, but you haven't provided any evidence or even arguments as to why having the tabs below the controls fits better with the UI metaphor. You just asserted it.

Re:It's just an ugly hack.

[argent]

From a UI perspective, no, the back button, the forward button, and links are all ways of navigating forward and backward through links.

From a UI perspective, the outer envelope of a folder is what you pick up to flip back and forth through the documemt inside.

You can't jump from UI metaphors to technical methods and expect that to hold up when discussing usability.

I'm not jumping anywhere. I am simply describing how *I* experience the UI metaphor of the tab model. There's nothing "technical" involved in having links inside the document (defined by the document) behave one way, and links outside the document (defined by the browser and how you got there) behaving another.

And, yes, I think it's a really stupid idea to use "back();" as the target of a link when you have better internal navigation information, because that makes it harder to segue from the internal navigation of the document (the thing inside the tab).

Yeah, but you haven't provided any evidence or even arguments as to why having the tabs below the controls fits better with the UI metaphor.

Sure, "THE THING INSIDE THE TAB IS THE DOCUMENT YOU ARE VIEWING".

That is the metaphor.

Anything that is not part of the document, does not belong inside the tab.

The location of the document on the web is not part of the document.

The controls for navigating the document are not part of the document.

Bookmarks referencing other documents are DEFINITELY not part of the document. Your response is that you don't use the bookmark bar. So people who do, they get bookmarks subsumed into the document. The application menus aren't part of the document, but on Windows those go inside the tab as well, but on the Mac they go outside. Which of these two completely different approaches you think makes sense... that doesn't matter, because they can't BOTH be simultaneously right, but putting the tabs in the title bar forces you to do both.

There's no way you can make the UI metaphor consistent if you stick the whole application in the document.

I've pointed all this out, before. You can't say I haven't presented them. You don't agree with them, but that doesn't mean I haven't presented them.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[Simetrical]

Every time I find myself on a Windows box using any other browser I wish I could expand text boxes (like the one I'm typing in now) to be able to see my whole comment. It's been years now.

You mean "any other browser but Chrome"? That's a WebKit feature, and works perfectly fine in Chrome last I checked.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Just curious... does the forcefully installed v3 advertise beta 4?

Not that I have seen. I found out the beta existed from a news article.

It just works

[colin_n]

Im not going to speculate on statistics or comparisons with other browsers. I switched to Safari 4 beta a few days ago because it's fast and it just works.

Once you switch the tabs to their normal spot, Safari 4 is an incredibly quick and nimble browser.

Same reason that IE is the most common browser...

[argent]

When it's the default browser on your desktop, it's going to get more attention.

Which wouldn't be such a problem if Internet Explorer wasn't such a security nightmare, of course.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[L4t3r4lu5]

This wasn't an informative post.

Deadpan really is lost on the internet.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You mean "any other browser but Chrome"? That's a WebKit feature, and works perfectly fine in Chrome last I checked.

I do all my browsing from OS X, so I only played with Chrome briefly (no OS X version yet). When I tried it early on the feature did not function, although there was a UI component for it (it just didn't do anything).

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[A12m0v]

CSS Animation! and other CSS and HTML5 goodies!
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/

Hate Apple all you want, at least when it comes to the web they care about standards.

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[falcon5768]

Really? How big of you troll...

Re:Not convinced these are genuine users

[pohl]

You're "prepared to stand corrected on the fact that this isnt being pushed at present by the insidious apple update. "

Wow, how big of you to be prepared to stand corrected. At what point will you actually stand corrected? Actually, I am looking forward to being prepared to stand corrected that your inaccurate accusation against Apple is not an insidious Hater posting by someone who can't get his facts right.

I don't know which is worse. Your initial inaccuracy, or your lame attempt at a retraction while still tossing an unwarranted insult. At any rate, I am prepared to hear your sniveling dishonest reply.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the lame attempt at a retraction was worse. The original inaccurate accusation could have been corrected with graceful humility in the face of fact.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[pmarini]

doesn't it compile already ? ;-)
on the serious side, it shouldn't be that difficult to port any MacOS application to Linux, am I right ? and then we'll have a serious competitor to Firefox on Linux !!
sorry, on the serious side again, where does the new title-bar appear in the Windows version ? I saw some screenshots of the MacOS version and the tabs are above the main "window", is the same on Windows ? (that would be weird, like the first time that I saw non-rectangular splash screens, after Apple had been doing that for ages with arbitrary "regions"!)

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Perf]

I once wrote a cheesy program.
I gave a copy to my friend and he ran it on his computer.
I had 100% growth rate on the first day of release.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Perf]

"There are now at least 85,000 Elvis's around the world, compared to only 170 in 1977 when Elvis died. At this rate of growth, experts predict that by 2019 Elvis impersonators will make up a third of the world population." - The Naked Scientists 3rd December, 2000.

By the year 2525, 107% of the earth's population will be an Elvis impersonator.

Re:How many unintentional installs?

[DeskLazer]

there's other posts above; safari is not pushing version 4 through the apple updater [only version 3]. that doesn't mean I dislike it any less, as you and your wife do.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[FalleStar]

Every time I find myself on a Windows box using any other browser I wish I could expand text boxes (like the one I'm typing in now) to be able to see my whole comment.

FYI, Google Chrome has had this functionality for a while now. I believe it's been an included feature since the alpha builds were released. Now if only I could have Adblock & NoScript for this I'd be all set :(

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[Zymergy]

Yes, thank you. And to be sure my point is proven, despite my very VALID and well thought out points from my post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1145785&cid=27039799
Would you care to make a wager that the Apple Fanboys will mod me as Troll/Flamebait? COUNT ON IT!
THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

iSafari (Beta or otherwise) has *NOTHING* to do with iTunes.
Forcing its installation via the 'Apple Update' for an UNRELATED Apple product (iPod) is clearly a valid point and ON topic. It skews *actual* useage.
WHAT? Mods call that fact pointed out with other cited iCrippling limitations of the iPod/iTunes by iDesign as troll/flamebait?
I sense fruit-company Bias here... :o)
Bet they would be pissed if it installed Firefox or Opera whenever they ran "Apple Update". Same difference...
I would love to use the snappy iPod hardware if it were not so heavily/deliberately crippled...

IF I could use iPod iHardware without installing a single piece of iSoftware (like the Creative Zen and numerous other portable media devices that will NEVER install iSafari on my stepfather's system!) I suppose I would have been more positive on the iPod iTunes and iApple iUpdate in my anti-iPost...

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[evil_aar0n]

Did I miss something? My Mac is as up to date as the Software Update tool can be, but I was not "forced" into this particular update. I have two iPods - shuffle & touch - and did not notice any update for either of them.

Now, I do agree that the frequent iTunes agreement update is annoying, but it's not enough to make me pitch my MBP and go back to Windows, or Linux.

The observationpoint patch doesn't work

[argent]

I have already tried that, and that leaves you with a broken tab bar. Only the currently viewed page has a tab visible, the remaining tabs are pushed to the pulldown menu on the right of the tab bar.

Re:Title bar is fine... more logical

[argent]

I don't use Google Chrome or Opera either, because they have the same idiotic layout. Am I penalizing myself for not using them as well?

My browser of choice on OS X is Camino, and on Windows it's Firefox.

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[certain death]

I am talking windows here. The update may be different on Apple products. I would try to confirm this if I had an Apple computer, but alas, I do not.

Re:Why? Trust.

[Syrente]

While it's fair enough to say that, I've found that "Just Works" principle applies to all major OS distributions (well, except my first few Gentoo installs). Apple's marketing compaign for "It Just Works" generally works by the principle of "Anything that Might Not Work We Disabled." That said, the Safari 4 beta seems interesting, and I've heard good things about it, but I, for one, shall not buy into this "It Just Works" ethos when I download it. Which I shall do subsequent to this post.

Naturally

[ThatsNotPudding]

deploy your browser in the same manner as a trojan (as part of a Quicktime 'update') and the uptake will be pretty high. Perhaps they should whip up a 'Pro' version that skims the users' credit card info as well: AppleCare for all!

Re:How many unintentional installs?

[Dzimas]

I quite like Safari - not sure why you think I don't. However, I have a universal dislike of the various toolbars and crapware that is bundled into installers, and I expected Apple to be above all that.

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[Zymergy]

Not sure if iTunes for Windows and its "Apple Update" feature is the same as the version of "Software Update" for OSX?
I would be willing to guess that Safari was already on your OSX MBP and perhaps the MBP 'Software updater' and/or the iTunes 'Apple Updater' did not upgrade your version of Safari automatically (or it was already done so and you did not notice).

I have witnessed the Windows implementation of the "Apple Update" that is present in the last several versions of iTunes will gladly inform (uninformed users)that they need updates installed to their Apple Software and the new installer will install Safari/Quicktime/Bonjour/et al as well as the desired iTunes updates on your Windows PC. (only users that understand the fact they do not NEED or better yet may not WANT the other software which the iTunes update installs also...)

For the Record: I am not Anti-Apple. I actually *love* Apple hardware (most of it) I even had a Newton!. I like OSX too

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[spyder913]

The tab/title bar works the same on Windows.

How many of those are just updates?

[koan]

In other words how many are actual new converts as opposed to current users.

Re:Same reason that IE is the most common browser.

[edalytical]

I see more people use Firefox on their Macs. I'd use Firefox on my Mac too, if it wasn't such a piece of junk.

How to lie with statistics, chapter 3.14x10^44

[Ancient_Hacker]

Half a percent a day growth seems mighty underwhelming if you're starting from zero.

It's also a fallacy to expect anything to continue at its current pace. Cockroaches would fill the galaxy in a month if they reproduced like they do behind your fridge.

How many stay on it?

[rdean400]

I downloaded it, tried it out for a while, and then went back to Minefield.

Apple - Works, Just

[mdwh2]

Seems like pro-Apple mods can't bear to hear that other products work too. Opera's a perfectly fine product, as is Firefox.

Perhaps the mod would like to share with us how to enable full screen mode in Quicktime for Windows, since I am obviously mistaken?

(And unfortunately my experience with Apple Quicktime on Windows is that they don't Just Work - even basic functionality such as full screen mode isn't available. Not to mention the hideous and non-standard UI - something they are supposedly praised for. Maybe you mean it Works Just on Macs, but I'm not enthusiastic about downloading anything else they release for Windows.)

Here's a ref, btw: http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/qtime.htm - not much has changed with the later versions.

Re:Apple - Works, Just

[daver00]

I can barely get Quicktime to do anything on my windows machines, ever. I'm amazed that itunes can play music! Oh and theres the MPEG encoding issues whereby anything with 64 bit tagging data will not be recognised in Quicktime, and thus itunes, and thus an ipod, despite this being a part of the MPEG standard (google quicktime 202 error). This has been an outstanding issue sine 2005.

Apple software on windows is buggy and inoperative without fail, and behaves like goddamn spyware the way each Apple product will try and install all of its friends.

not necessarily

[BigBadBus]

as the poster above says, it depends on who you ask: my own stats at http://www.paullee.com/computers show no usage of Safari 4 at all since the beta was released

Re:Why? Trust.

[mdwh2]

quicktime - the most reprehensible video codec ever - it's almost as bad as malware with all the crap that installs with it - even when you tell it not to.

itunes for pc - egads - how many times do you have to say no - don't install this or that, and watch it try to install anyway. again - malware grade software installer

safari - crashed multiple systems, and couldn't open basic sites - will never install another version - ever - oh - the calling home stuff built into it - on par with the latest botnet.

osx - how many macs have been bricked by faulty updates? more than apple would like you to know...

apple hardware - at a minimum 4 times more expensive than it should be - just for a name or apple logo? hardly worth it...

It's a shame that on Apple stories, the mods abuse negative mods for things they disagree with - it's the only category I have to browse at -1.

I haven't used Safari, but I am in full agreement with the rest, especially Quicktime. Given how people rightly dislike things like Realplayer here on Slashdot, why does Quicktime get accepted, when it's far more annoying, invasive, and you even have to pay for basic functionality such as full screen mode? Oh, because it's Apple, and they're held to a different standard.

This reminds me of when someone was repeating the "Just Works" mantra, and claiming that whenever he uses Windows to do things like watching a video, there's always things about it that distracts him from just trying to get on and do it. I said I'd never experienced this, but funningly enough, I concede that that evening, I did have frustrations when trying to do something as basic as watching a video on Windows.

It was a quicktime video.

Id use it if they changed 2 things:

[moniker127]

A- Works with stumbleupon
B- Works with windows 7's feature where if you pull the title bar of a maximized page, it shrinks it back to normal. Double clicking the title bar is so 2007.

Re:And XMLHttpRequest is still broken...

[abrax5]

post it on bugs.webkit.org

Safari is "ShoveWare"

[careysb]

Anyone (including PC owners) that has an iPod most likely has iTunes installed. iTunes constantly bombards the users with "click here to update" messages, which by-the-way, also installs Safari unless you are observant and un-check the Safari box. I'll stick with Firefox.

Yes and No

[CritterNYC]

The did in the graphs, but in their statements about how awesome they are and how much faster, they only compare it to Firefox 3.0

Love it

[alexibu]

Seems really quick, great UI improvements.

Must have been a tough decision to go with 'windows standard' font rendering by default. People must be so used to crappy blocky rendering that smooth stuff might scare them away from a new browser.

This browser drags my XP installation into the 21st century.

Alex

Refresh Button

[cprocjr]

The only problem I have with it is the refresh button being moved into the address bar.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[commodore64_love]

>>>Next time you buy stereo equipment, make sure you don't pay over $100 for your 7.2 surround sound or you'll be a stupid fanboy sucker. I guess that goes for your next car too.

Thanks. I agree. I think people who pay $35,000 for a Lexus/Acura when they can buy virtually the same car with a Toyota/Honda badge for around $20,000 are also foolish.

NO, sorry

[Burz]

My bank has an EV cert which shows up in Firefox 3 as a green address bar. The same https address in Safari 3.2.1 (using default settings on OS X 10.5.6 on my G4 machine) shows nothing to distinguish the cert.

The EV stuff isn't even that important compared to the mistakes of visually separating the lock from the address/domain, and of not singling out the domain from the rest of the URL.

Re:NO, sorry

[abhi_beckert]

You don't have to show a horrible green fucking bar to comply with EV.

All you need to do is check the new EV values and inform the user if the certificate is invalid. Which safari does do, and has done since EV certificates began being used.

Re:NO, sorry

[Burz]

There is only one way to fully check a CA-signed cert and having EV data doesn't change that. The cert gets validated whether or not it has EV data; The difference is that the EV-marked certs state that the CA went a bit further to verify the cert holder's real identity.

The browser doesn't do any extra checking for EV. Its simply a signal from the CA to the user, a signal that Apple blocks unless the user makes an effort to click on the lock and read through the cert (not likely).

Like I said, EV isn't really important if the user pays attention to the domain spelling and lock icon at the same time. Too bad Safari doesn't help users there, either.

Re:NO, sorry

[holt]

I don't know what to tell you. It worked fine when I was doing my taxes--displayed the same text (albeit formatted a bit differently) that Firefox did.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[mcrbids]

On OS X it crushes most of the competition including Firefox. It is fast and has features that have not been cloned yet.

Yeah... if it renders your website properly. (I can't)

If you can get *all* your plugins to work with it. (I can't)

If you prefer having a just different enough way of doing things on each platform that you never know where to find things. (I don't)

If by "crush" you mean "makes you wish you were running it" because that's the effect (for me) of Safari on Mac. Mozilla isn't perfect, but it's damned nice, and doesn't suffer the above problems. It's decent, sure. But Firefox has it beat hands down.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[The Dark]

By the year 2525, 107% of the earth's population will be an Elvis impersonator.

If man is still alive...

Re:Are they still sneaking it in via iTunes update

[Ilgaz]

It doesn't even appear in ''New Software'' section which was implemented after that scandal.

BTW I don't think that sneak in was a major conspiracy, it was just Apple confusing Windows with OS X and Windows userbase with OSX userbase.

I checked on bootcamp installed Macbook running XP and Apple SW update.

Someting Wrong

[solidot]

68.17%+21.96%+1.16%+0.70%+10.91%=wtf(1.029)

Re:Forced upgrade, not uptake

[Guy Harris]

Not sure if iTunes for Windows and its "Apple Update" feature is the same as the version of "Software Update" for OSX?

It's not. There may be some shard code or concepts, but "Software Update" for OS X is more like "Windows Update" for Windows, possibly with the added capability of updating Apple software that's not part of OS X (dunno if Windows Update will, for example, download and install any updates to Office that are free).

I would be willing to guess that Safari was already on your OSX MBP

Given that it's Apple's own browser and that OS X ships with a browser, yes, it is.

and perhaps the MBP 'Software updater' and/or the iTunes 'Apple Updater' did not upgrade your version of Safari automatically

No, it didn't. It offers you upgrades, but doesn't (at least by default) force them on you itself. (Sometimes when you upgrade one piece of software you have to upgrade others, e.g. you might think an iTunes upgrade won't require a reboot, but sometimes it turns out to require a QuickTime update in order to play videos again, and that will require a reboot.)

I like OSX too

Assuming you're not just trolling, you mustn't have used it recently, or mustn't have used it much, or you'd know that Safari comes with OS X as its built-in browser (similar to IE on Windows and Konqueror on OSes that come with KDE as the desktop environment) and that Software Update is an OS update feature and doesn't forcibly update software.

STOP this!

[alexandreracine]

If you don't, you'll fill all the tubes!

silly

[jipn4]

Safari started from zero, so the first day, it had an infinite growth rate.

Comparing growth rates is meaningless for products that have such disparate market shares.

And 0.5%/day isn't even particularly impressive; that means it's going to grow six-fold in a year. That's singularly unimpressive for a newly released product.

On the other hand, IE and Firefox can't grow six fold in a year because they'd have more than 100% market share then.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[scotch]

lol - i've got that Laibach album on now. Must be a cover of something, what is it?

Re:Why offer a beta as a default download?

[linuxci]

The reason for the rapid rise of Safari 4 Beta recently is that Apple have taken the frankly appalling decision to push a beta version of the browser as the default one to download when you go to http://www.apple.com/safari/ (and even deviously put the word "BETA" in a fainter, smaller font so you won't notice it).

Microsoft do the same with IE8 on their main download page.

Re:Why? Trust.

[Pfhorrest]

why does Quicktime get accepted, when it's far more annoying, invasive

Because on the Mac it's not, and most people championing Apple are Mac users. From what I hear about QuickTime, iTunes, etc on Windows, it sounds atrocious, and I can't imagine how Apple can stand having something so horrible tarnish their "it just works" image.

and you even have to pay for basic functionality such as full screen mode

This has always pissed me off though, and until OSX I kept to an older version of QuickTime Player that didn't have that disabled. (QuickTime is not a player application but a whole media framework: file formats, codecs, APIs, etc. QuickTime Player, any version, calls on the underlying QuickTime API to handle everything; so sticking to the old Player while updating the framework didn't have any negative side effects).

fullscreen = Ctrl F

[cheekyboy]

Yes, in the past, the idiot prick who decided that full screen should be pay only was a tool, smeg head. (Listening Jobs?) I mean seriously, is there any one feature that you would want to take away that gives you 1000x less users?

Now today, no one cares about qt, its all divx/mp4/mkv

Re:Why? Trust.

[Koiu Lpoi]

These things get modded down not because of the mods "disagreeing" with his post - it deserved to be modded down. His exaggerations are to the point of trolling - some of those ("on par with the latest botnet"!?) are, to be short, wrong and serve no purpose other than to make others angry. If the same post had said the same things about Windows, Linux, Cars, etc., it would have still been modded down. You may agree with his sentiments (and I do too), but if you agree with the actual message, you probably don't know what you're talking about. And nevertheless, it doesn't change the fact that he, in the end, doesn't deserve to be modded up. If you want to spread the facts about something, do it in a way that isn't meant to intentionally piss people off.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Alsee]

i've got that Laibach album on now. Must be a cover of something, what is it?

The original is Zager and Evans - In the Year 2525. It topped the charts for a while in 1969, quite a few groups have have done cover versions.

Note that Laibach's version you're listening to is very very different from the original. The music is preformed very differently and Laibach entirely rewrote the plotline of the lyrics. The original starts with the year 2525 and advances 3535, 4545, 5555, 6565, 7510, 8510 and 9595. It runs forwards the fate of the human race as technology replaces our humanity. The final verses are the same except it's ten thousand years and a billion tears. While the plotline of the lyrics is completely different, the distinctive "mood" behind them is preserved pretty closely. If it's that distinctive mood you like about the song, you'll probably like the original too. The original does strongly sound it's 1969 date - which may or may not fit your taste.

-

safari 4 is no option

[cheekyboy]

its too buggy, and just fails in some JS/ formated text boxes. Its a lot slower than chrome after extensive use, not just a quick start up. Though im happy there is an option other than FF/GC too. It will get better.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Alsee]

Thank god for your second post. I was going nuts here trying to understand your original reply to me, thinking I was missing some /. reference. God damn IdiotLoop post :D

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Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Alsee]

This means the total growth rate over the 4 days was 0.5 * 3 + 1.04 = 2.54...consults calculator...yah, that's right.

I don't understand your New Math either! *My* calculator gives me a bit over 2.563 for that.
Put away the calculus book and review compound interest. Percent growth isn't additive :D

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Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Alsee]

Your sig is hysterical.

You walk into a bar and look at this daunting menu of 200 varieties of beer from across the globe, and they carry prune juice. You don't care about Australian Microbrews vs English Lagers, you're in a bar and you just want a goddamn glass of beer. So you chuck the 200-beer menu and tell the bartender "just give me a glass of whatever's most popular". The bartender thunks a glass down in front of you and you blindly grab it chug some down. You gag and choke and damn near vomit, and eventually manage to scream WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP?! The bartender says "prune juice". "We offer 200 varieties of beer from across the globe, and prune juice. Yesterday we had 403 customers. We sold two glasses of each variety of beer, and three glasses of prune juice. Our most popular selection is prune juice."

The average normal public is split across the dozen-or-so channels for average normal news. People on the left and the center-left and in the center and the center-right are split across nearly a dozen channels for normal news. Radical rightwing Fox News captures essentially 100% of the far right segment of the population. It's the most popular news channel, but it makes the majority of the population want to vomit.

Fox News - the prune juice of news.

-

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[jc42]

How many people are using Safari today?

8%

Tiny.

Hmmm ... This could be taken as an example of what's so screwed up with the computer "market". To make the canonical automotive comparison: If a new make of auto were to capture 8% of the market in just a few weeks, it would be considered one of the most successful product introductions in the history of the industry. If you're anywhere in the "developed" world, try watching any busy stretch of road for a while, and try to spot a car model that makes up even 1% of the traffic.

But in the computer biz, 8% is called "tiny". If your product isn't the market leader and controlling 90% of the market, you aren't worth mentioning (and thus most of your potential customers don't know you exist). Try telling a BMW or Acura owner that their car isn't significant, because it's under 1% of auto sales. But computer people make such comments in all seriousness.

Re:Comparison to Chrome

[Lars T.]

Chrome needed almost a month...

Yeah it's really fucking hard to gain share when the browser comes bundled with your OS, way to go Apple, fucking bravo. I think I will spend the day screaming "Go Steve" at random occasions, as a tribute to this fucking moonlanding Apple just did.

So your argument is that it wasn't actually Safari that had a huge jump in market-share, but actually Mac OS X. Does that prove you're an Apple fanboi?

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Angeliqe]

I have no idea where you're getting 2.563 since you didn't bother to explain what numbers and operations you were putting into the calculator, it's a moot point. I was just using the numbers from the summary, which are stated to approximate, so I approximated the total over 4 days by adding it. It's close to what you say it is anyway. I was just replying to the original that thought the total growth was 1.04 over 4 days.

Re:Okay, but why do we want it?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yeah... if it renders your website properly. (I can't)

I haven't had a problem with any Website in years using Safari.

If you can get *all* your plugins to work with it. (I can't)

I don't install a lot of them, but everything I've tried works.

If you prefer having a just different enough way of doing things on each platform that you never know where to find things. (I don't)

This might be fundamental difference between us. I don't like my browser crippled to use the feature set of the least functional OS I use. I'm a power user. I use OS X when all other things are equal because it has more functionality... unless you use Firefox.

Mozilla isn't perfect, but it's damned nice, and doesn't suffer the above problems. It's decent, sure. But Firefox has it beat hands down.

I don't generally use Firefox on OS X for two big reasons:

• it is slow
• It can't use system services and other OS X features.

Both are important, but the second one might warrant more detail. I've spent years training my spelling and grammar checkers. They work in all my programs whether they are word processors, chat, terminals, layout programs, word processors, or text editors. They don't work in Firefox. No matter what Firefox claims, I've never gotten it to use the default system spelling checker and I really really don't want to train yet another dictionary that MPLS and a hundred other technical terms are not misspellings. It also can't properly handle my text manipulation services like auto-translation, line endings, replacements, bibliography auto formatting, etc., and mouse gestures and other services.

So sure, I could go and try to find mozilla plug-ins to replicate all the functionality I already have in every other program, and then I could train all those plug-ins over time to be nearly the same, but it will never be as easy and I'll still be using two use cases instead of one. Firefox is a good browser, but it is the jack of all OS's and the master of none. I'm sure it is fine for casual users, but it fails miserably for the more advanced features.

Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Alsee]

you didn't bother to explain what numbers

Sorry, with your mention of calculus I figured you'd have the math-geek radar to spot the problem based on my mention of 'compound interest' and 'not additive'. Percent-growth (like compound interest) is not additive, it's multiplicative. If you are getting 10% interest on a $1.00, after a day you gain 10 cents and have a $1.10. However the next day you gain 11 cents (10% of $1.10), you then have $1.21. Not $1.20. 10% growth is multiplication by 1.1, additional days combine by multiplication. 1.1 * 1.1 = 1.21.

0.5% growth is multiplication by 1.005, and 1.04% growth is multiplication by 1.0104.
1.005 * 1.005 * 1.005 * 1.0104 = 1.0256319063

I was just trying to be funny, nit-picking your post just so I could pile a second "New Math" gag on top of the first "New Math" gag.
Now let us all observe a moment of silence, as we bury this joke. It is quite thoroughly dead now, chuckle.

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Re:I'm getting old, I don't understand the New Mat

[Angeliqe]

Ah, I actually thought of that, but made a simple mistake of using 1.05 instead of 1.005 (confusing 5% with 0.5%) and getting something completely different. Concentration sometimes slips while at work. On a completely different note, a joke modded "Insightful" will usually die a horrible death.

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