Safari 5 Released

pknoll writes "Apple has released the fifth version of the Safari web browser, which adds several new features. Reader mode detects multiple-page articles and displays them in their entirety at the click of a button, and most importantly, there is now an official extension API."

Comments

It's fully functional.

[JustinRLynn]

Yes, but will it block porn? I wouldn't want my Apple(TM) experience ruined.
-- Begin program section
Sarcasm++

Re:It's fully functional.

[RivenAleem]

Here's the official site to test it on: www.goat.se

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the best porn browser.

Re:It's fully functional.

[Jurily]

No, just the bad words.

Re:It's fully functional.

[JustinRLynn]

Nice try, but I see what you did there.

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:It's fully functional.

[dangitman]

Opera is the best porn browser.

I dunno, that singing fat lady kind of turns me off.

Re:It's fully functional.

[jayspec462]

That's how you know it's over...

Re:It's fully functional.

[aliquis]

I to want Apple to decide what webpages I may want to see (or put up on display for others.)

Re:It's fully functional.

[AnonymousClown]

Opera is the best porn browser.

I dunno, that singing fat lady kind of turns me off.

Speak for yourself. A lot of us like the fat-singing-hairy-milfs!

Re:It's fully functional.

[aliquis]

Safari 5 javascript performance may be 2.5% faster than Chrome 5

But Opera is faster than a potato!

Re:It's fully functional.

[RivenAleem]

And it gets modded Troll :(

Re:It's fully functional.

[Hurricane78]

You haven’t been to the right kind of opera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MR6D7tL38U
Although I may be a bit more kinky than the average guy. ;)

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

We usually refer to them as "Americans".

Re:It's fully functional.

[dekemoose]

I assure you, when porn browsing is over you'll know it. It's kind of a spent feeling.

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually firefox is the best porn browser, extensions. DTA.

Re:It's fully functional.

[phantomcircuit]

Just so that it's exceptionally clear, ALL of the benchmarks used to show that safari is faster were written by apple. SunSpider specifically has a history of intentionally not fixing bugs in the public version that adversally effect firefox javascript performance.

Take their results with a grain of salt the size of texas.

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps Alaska as it is the largets state

Re:It's fully functional.

[aliquis]

ALL of the benchmarks used to show that safari is faster were written by apple.

Oh, thanks, I didn't knew.

Take their results with a grain of salt the size of texas.

That however I already did. Been looking at enough of those Apple-new-product-page-with-benchmark to notice that they aren't reliable or usable at all.

(Of course) they always only show the benchmarks which will show them the biggest advantage so you won't get an objective comparison (which render them useless), but in some cases it's been even worse. Like for instance than they claimed some old mac (G4?) was better for gaming than a computer from Dell (P4?)!
How? Picking a Dell with an even lower-end graphics card (which imho even makes it a lie) than their mac had of course!
Atleast compare the best vs the best, the same price vs the same price, or the same hardware against the same hardware but with different software solutions.

Oh, and please don't call it "3.5" retina display with 960x480 resolution", call it: "Retina display: >300 DPI 3.5" IPS-panel with 960x480 resolution."

Re:It's fully functional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive a stupid question but, why? What makes it a better porn browser than Firefox? Or IE? Should I be using a single browser for my porn and another for my non-jacking-off stuff?

Re:It's fully functional.

[aliquis]

I'm a troll because I don't trust the manufacturers benchmarks to give me an objective conclusion on what is the better product?

Or because I don't think a gaming benchmark solely based on FPS to claim a G4 computer plays games better than a P4 one when they use different video cards is very useful?

Haha

[somersault]

Instead of manually entering your scripts, menu items, stylesheets, and commands in a complicated text file

Comedy gold :)

Re:Haha

[TheKidWho]

What are you doing here? You have to finish writing that OS and network driver in Assembler using vi.

Re:Haha

[Ngarrang]

Instead of manually entering your scripts, menu items, stylesheets, and commands in a complicated text file

Comedy gold :)

Exactly how dumb does Apple think its users are that a text file is now considered 'complicated'?

Re:Haha

[timster]

Can't a text file be as complicated or simple as it is?

Re:Haha

[somersault]

Oh that's what I was doing, but I accidentally built a Slashdot client into the network driver, that's what happens when the source text file gets too complicated.

Re:Haha

[JustOK]

I think emacs has a macro for that.

Re:Haha

[TheKidWho]

No, that's what happens when you suffer from feature creep.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Any sufficiently advanced program is indistinguishable from Emacs.

Re:Haha

[0100010001010011]

Text files aren't 'complicated'. Writing the Javascript and CSS to make them work the way you want is.

I've written a few GreaseMoney scripts, but I know how to program. To the lay user, I doubt they even know what 'GreaseMonkey' or Javascript is.

I know people that would like to customize their 'browser experience' but would get lost at UserScripts.

Knowing Apple, its most likely a pretty GUI around some basic text files. I know it may come as a shock to the Slashdot crowd, but Linux, GUI, config files, etc are pretty intimidating to a newbie.

If it wasn't for OS X, I wouldn't have ever gotten into Linux, OpenSolaris, PHP, C, etc.

Terminal was always there, just never opened. I opened it a few times to move files around. Used some hints from Mac OS X Hints. Enabled SSH, learned PHP and C through copy and paste coding until I understood how to write it on my own. Years later I run a SheevaPlug (do you honestly think a complete newbie would figure out uBoot and such?), OpenSolaris server, XBMC. Installed Ubuntu on my Girlfriend's laptop all because of Terminal.app and some natural curiosity.

If this "Simple GUI" gets some middle/high schooler or college student going "I wonder what this Plugin builder does" opening the auto-generated text and tinkering. Good for them.

Re:Haha

[LaminatorX]

ctl+meta+shift+/+.

Re:Haha

[TheKidWho]

That's cheating!

Next thing you know you're going to start using things like object oriented programming and SDKs.

Re:Haha

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. There's nothing simpler than a text file.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

That means Slashcode isn't "sufficiently advanced"?

Re:Haha

[somersault]

What about empty files? Or setting up an iMac?

Re:Haha

[Lumpy]

The driver cant send email or twitter yet.... It is lacking in features.

Re:Haha

[oztiks]

A few things worth noting -

Thanks to HTML5 offline support, designers can build web applications that store themselves on your computer, where you have immediate access to them. Along with the application, web developers can also choose to store the application’s data on your system, so you always have the information you need. Applications and data can be stored in a traditional SQL-like database serving as an application cache or as a “super cookie,” which stores data in the familiar cookie format.

When is Microsoft going to come crashing down with their patient infringement on this ...

Safari gives you even more search options with built-in Bing search, in addition to Google and Yahoo! Search. Just choose Bing in the Smart Search Field, start typing, and get search suggestions that help you find what you’re looking for fast.

Its about time someone built a browser that complies with Bing's shoddy development standards but if I was Apple wouldn't be bragging about it though :)

Re:Haha

[aliquis]

Yeah because writing assembler code in vi will make it so much harder!!

Or maybe that to was a joke? Joke^2?

Re:Haha

[somersault]

Thanks to HTML5 offline support, designers can build web applications that store themselves on your computer, where you have immediate access to them. Along with the application, web developers can also choose to store the application’s data on your system, so you always have the information you need. Applications and data can be stored in a traditional SQL-like database serving as an application cache or as a “super cookie,” which stores data in the familiar cookie format.

Sounds like a malware author's wetdream..!

Re:Haha

[aliquis]

Sure there is, a binary file.

The text file is open for interpretation thanks to all the damn different charsets around.

Re:Haha

[TheKidWho]

Real programmers don't use IDEs.

http://xkcd.com/378/

Re:Haha

[pcolaman]

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft and Apple struck a deal for that, considering Microsoft and Google are mortal enemies, no one gives a shit about Yahoo anymore, and let's be honest here, Microsoft doesn't lose a lot of market share to Apple so they aren't as likely to be mortal enemies as fans of either company tend to be.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

There really should be a '-1, I'm a tool' rating.

By the way you're missing vowels, capitalization and punctuation. And you're a tool.

Re:Haha

[beelsebob]

Exactly how many grannies do you know that don't mind writing a config file?

Re:Haha

[soppsa]

Are you building an Android UI by mistake?

Re:Haha

[NatasRevol]

Try searching for 'HTML5 database' to see what Apple has implemented.

Re:Haha

[UnknowingFool]

Exactly how dumb does Apple think its users are that a text file is now considered 'complicated'?

Specifically this was for the Safari Developer program where Apple wants people to write extensions to Safari maybe like Firefox. I suppose you write all your code in notepad, vi or similar but I like having a basic UI wrapper for coding. It might not be as all encompassing as eclipse or VS but some help would be nice.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

Auto-generated anything is *useless* to learn from. Might as well open the source code to the IDE driver in Linux and say "hmm, I wander how to program in C"

If you want to learn how to program your first language, get your For Dummies. And if you cannot be bothered to read and understand that book, it is hopeless.

Re:Haha

[Ngarrang]

Exactly how dumb does Apple think its users are that a text file is now considered 'complicated'?

Specifically this was for the Safari Developer program where Apple wants people to write extensions to Safari maybe like Firefox. I suppose you write all your code in notepad, vi or similar but I like having a basic UI wrapper for coding. It might not be as all encompassing as eclipse or VS but some help would be nice.

NotePad2 or HTML-Kit, but I get the point now from the responses that people have written. I guess this shows my age.

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

That sentence described how to develop Safari extensions... so, how many grannies do you know who are now going to develop Safari extensions?

Re:Haha

[Anonymous Coward]

You needed OS X to know OpenSolaris, GNU\Linux?
Please hand in your geek card on your way out.

Re:Haha

[Draek]

About the same I know that care about user-defined stylesheets and scripts.

Re:Haha

[icebraining]

I didn't knew what Greasemonkey was until I learned about it. Nobody is born knowing that stuff; some of us are interested enough to find out, others just want to press a couple of buttons and say they've built an extension.

Re:Haha

[DJRumpy]

So by your reasoning, any code examples should be discarded as useless? An explanation is fine and a good learning tool but it's not the be-all-end-all of learning techniques.

You can indeed learn by example (there's a reason that saying is so popular).

Re:Haha

[0100010001010011]

I learned VBA using the "Record Macro" function. Learned how it changed different properties, etc.

Used it to create a Matlab script to save plots directly to powerpoint and do some powerpoint manipulation.

It's how I learn. I could read every book in the world about a language and not pick it up. I either need to either be taught it directly (Like I was with Java/C/C++ in classes) or just copy and paste (as I did with PHP and the limited Perl I've done).

Re:Haha

[shutdown -p now]

You just wait for Web sockets...

Re:Haha

[morgan_greywolf]

No.

A binary file is open for interpretation as well, only it's worse. At least with ASCII or Unicode text, there's a standard. (UTF-8 is a compromise between the two and is the standard text file format on Linux, Macs and most Internet protocols)

Binary files, OTOH, can be everything from a simple list of values (like a TARGA graphics file, which is just a list of pixels), to a file consisting of hundreds of independent data structures. The only way to know a particular binary format is to some source code or a spec describing the format.

ASCII or Unicode text files, on the other hand, are typically pretty transparent and readable by a human without the assistance of the source code that reads or writes it.

Re:Haha

[brantondaveperson]

How about no text file?

Re:Haha

[mcvos]

Exactly how many grannies do you know that don't mind writing a config file?

I think I know of one, though I've never met her personally. If granddads count, it gets a lot easier.

Lots of second generation nerds are having kids nowadays.

Re:Haha

[eyendall]

Instead of manually entering your scripts, menu items, stylesheets, and commands in a complicated text file

Comedy gold :)

Exactly how dumb does Apple think its users are that a text file is now considered 'complicated'?

Quote

No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Unquote

Re:Haha

[aliquis]

The binary file _IS_ binary, nothing to interpret. The data is what it is.

If you start talking about what you _DO_ with the data then most likely every single text file will be different to any other text file since they will have different contents. Whatever it's an eggdrop config file, a list of your e-mail passwords or c source code file doesn't matter much. With the c source code file your messages within the program may still end up looking different depending on the charset used since the same value/binary number may mean something totally different.

Re:Haha

[morgan_greywolf]

The binary file _IS_ binary, nothing to interpret. The data is what it is.

Little-endian? Big-endian? If it's a set C structs, what do those look like? Without the source, there's no way to know.

If you start talking about what you _DO_ with the data then most likely every single text file will be different to any other text file since they will have different contents.

Same with binary files; that's what I just said.

The difference is that without knowing any parsing details, I can read, say, /etc/passwd or an ldap.conf file. I can't do the same with, say, a Windows registry file; I need something like regedit or PowerShell or whatever.

Re:Haha

[aliquis]

Same with binary files; that's what I just said.

Yeah, which was the point.

Whatever.

Re:Haha

[catmistake]

Does anyone have good recommendations for introductory books for getting started with this arcane "text" technology?

Re:Haha

[oztiks]

I'm not too sure what to make of this, if its just a blind defense at Apple but Microsoft and Oracle own most of the patents to cloud based database solutions.

Microsoft owns client-side SQL syncing .... so .... A bunch of Opensrc projects promoting HTML 5 isn't going really stop Microsoft if they really wanted to be bastards.

Re:Haha

[NatasRevol]

If MS actually owns client-side SQL, they might want to talk to the W3C.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/webdatabase/

All HTML5 compliant browsers will be implementing this.

"The worlds fastest browser"

[dsavi]

Just like Opera! I think that I'll stick with Firefox and Chrome.

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[Rockoon]

The difference is that while the webkit boys are making their javascript engine faster.. the opera boys are also making the browser faster.

webkit has a slight edge on javascript speed, I guess.. some benchmarks say so anyways..

..but opera (and chrome) are so much snappier than safari, at least on windows, and its not even a contest. We don't need benchmarks to see how poorly safari is running on windows compared to opera and chrome... the difference is visually apparent.

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[aliquis]

I think that I'll stick with Firefox and Chrome.

So you feel one fast browser is enough?

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[Anonymous Coward]

funny when I first loaded Safari 5, my first thought was "didn't I load safari? Where is this extra google chrome in my taskbar"

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why think?

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[dsavi]

You have a point but you just had to troll didn't you? I use FF because of the addons really. There are some I just can't live without.

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[Barrie_rdv]

One of the new additions is hardware acceleration on Windows though, so performance should be quite a bit better.

Re:"The worlds fastest browser"

[mcvos]

Just like Opera! I think that I'll stick with Firefox and Chrome.

I like Safari, but like Chrome, I only use it as a secondary browser for now. Opera and Firefox are still my main browsers.

Same as Readable App

[magister159]

The content extraction feature sounds a lot like the Readable Bookmarlet that I've been running across browsers for the last year.

Re:Same as Readable App

[Theaetetus]

The content extraction feature sounds a lot like the Readable Bookmarlet that I've been running across browsers for the last year.

With the addition of being able to extract data from a multi-page article.

Re:Same as Readable App

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe an idea floating around for sometime now?
I know it's also a Chrome extension.

Re:Same as Readable App

[Anonymous Coward]

And how soon do websites start poking around trying to disable this feature because it lowers ad views and revenue?

Re:Same as Readable App

[aliquis]

The content extraction feature sounds a lot like the Readable Bookmarlet [appspot.com] that I've been running across browsers for the last year.

Almost, except is doesn't seem to work for many pages. Atleast wherever I read that :D

Re:Same as Readable App

[Eunuchswear]

Actually it's Readability.

Source http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/08/safari_reader_based_on_open_source_project/

Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[AdmiralXyz]

And Chrome 5 is a speed demon itself. The difference is only 3 percent, and those are Apple's numbers.

Man I love this relentless focus on browser speed over the past few years. If it keeps up for a little longer, I might even be able to browse Slashdot.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Spad]

Don't be crazy, man cannot live at that speed!

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[somersault]

If it keeps up for a little longer, I might even be able to browse Slashdot.

That's almost what she said!

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[JustOK]

the boy will be okay then

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[dave420]

I just tried Safari 5 on Windows, and it's sooo slow. It's slower than IE. Chrome on the same machine (however) runs like shit of a shovel.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Low Ranked Craig]

I just ran some tests on my Mac using latest Chrome / Safari 5. Loading my Google homepage is noticeably faster in Safari 5 vs. Chrome. The average speed after 5 repetitions for loading in Chrome is just under 3 seconds, while in Safari it's about 2.5 seconds. Nonetheless, Chrome remains my browser of choice for many reasons; I prefer the tabs in Chrome to Safari, I think the address text box being included in the active tab makes more sense, I like the 4 nav buttons all together on the left as opposed to having the refresh button at the end of the address text box, I like that the address box is also the search box, and I like how the home/end keys work in Chrome vs. Safari.

Having said that I do prefer Safari to Firefox - Firefox just seems so bloated and crashy these days.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Don't be crazy, man cannot live at that speed!

Actually, that's not a problem. You just need a Guild Navigator to navigate your heighliner safely.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[aliquis]

Man I love this relentless focus on browser speed over the past few years. If it keeps up for a little longer, I might even be able to browse Slashdot.

Try it in Safari 2 before you decide speed isn't important.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[vlueboy]

Man I love this relentless focus on browser speed over the past few years. If it keeps up for a little longer, I might even be able to browse Slashdot.

On a related note, to speed and compatibility, what about the acid test? My Windows Safari 4 scored 100, but about 5 tests are slow: 26 40 43 65 69. The last one completes after 102 attempts on my machine, which I hope is better now.

Mind you, this is a Dell single core XP SP2 machine, but Safari's engine should produce faster but scalable results.
PS: Click on the "A" in acid3 to get the detailed result window.
PPS: Firefox 3.7 alpha 5 got a 97/100 on the same machine, with twice as many slow tests as Safari 4, but only 47 attempts at test #69

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari 5, OS X 10.6.3, Acid3: 100/100.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[AdmiralXyz]

On Macs, Safari has passed the Acid3 test with smoothness for a while now (in fact, I think they were the first). On Windows it's slower for the same reason iTunes on Windows is unbearably slow: Apple insists on using their frameworks, instead of the native Windows ones, to try and get the Apple look-and-feel. That probably hasn't changed.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[beelsebob]

Amazing how the two can be so different, given that they're using the same engine... You would almost think it had something to do with the Placebo Effect, or the Confirmation Bias, wouldn't you ;).

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[dwightk]

The thing that gets me on chrome is how its URL bar behaves in unexpected ways:

1. I'm used to starting typing and the suggested url being in the bar so I can just hit enter instead of down arrow, enter (obviously I have to hit down arrow sometimes, but still...)

2. I'm used to being able to paste something in and then edit it at the beginning by hitting the up arrow and then jump to the end by hitting down. Google broke this in Chrome and in Google.com

I didn't like the location of the refresh/stop button at first, but now I find myself looking there for it in every browser, so if I just used Chrome all the time I'd probably prefer how it works.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Gilmoure]

Might go plaid.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Shoe Puppet]

Actually, it's not the exactly same engine, Google has its own branch.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Firefox still beats them all with Adblock.

Chrome still lacks any real download filtering. Chrome's add block still downloads ads but it simply doesnt display them. I like chrome, but this kills it. Firefox actually performs much better because of this.

Firefox scrolls much better than chrome or safari.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[contrapunctus]

Also when you go back in firefox, it doesn't reload the page, it uses the cache. I hate that about safari.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried Safari 5 on Windows, and it's sooo slow. It's slower than IE. Chrome on the same machine (however) runs like shit of a shovel.

Shit of a shovel eh? Is that good or bad? Also judging by your handle, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess there was a lil something-something in your morning mountain dew there.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[stokessd]

I would think it was some sort of sample bias, but not having tried Safari on Windows, I can still believe it based on my experience with iTunes on Windows.

I use iTunes on my mac with lots of movies and tv shows and about 15000 music tracks, and it works smoothly and reasonably well (aside from movies being inside something called iTUNES). But iTunes on XP (maybe that's the problem) is a dog, slow, halting, problematic etc. And that's with comparable hardware.

Given the number of iPods and iPhones Apple has sold to windows users, I'd say it's criminal that iTunes runs as badly as it does on Windows.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[16K Ram Pack]

I presume it's down to it basically being an abstracted Mac application. They have a bunch of dlls in the install folder which relate to the APIs on OSX. So rather than having to recode it for Win 32, they can use a lot of what's there from the Mac.

Maybe Steve has a point about porting apps? ;)

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[makomk]

Amazing how the two can be so different, given that they're using the same engine... You would almost think it had something to do with the Placebo Effect, or the Confirmation Bias, wouldn't you ;).

Except they're not. The platform-independent bits are the same, but the platform-dependent code that actually draws to the screen is completely different in Chrome to that in Safari for Windows, and that does have big effects on performance. In particular, the Windows version of Safari traditionally used a rather slow and buggy closed-source library that emulates the Mac OS X APIs for drawing etc. Chrome on the other hand is optimized to run well on Windows.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Otterley]

You don't need Adblock with Safari. On OS X, at least, there's GlimmerBlocker.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[prockcore]

On Macs, Safari has passed the Acid3 test with smoothness for a while now (in fact, I think they were the first).

That's not what I'm seeing.

Test 25 passed, but took 35ms (less than 30fps)
Test 69 passed, but took 7 attempts (less than perfect).
Test 80 passed, but took 2 attempts (less than perfect).
Safari 4.0.5, on 10.6.3

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Eil]

Chrome and Safari should always be fairly close in performance, they both use the same code under the hood.

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Anonymous Coward]

With all these speed increases, browsers should be once again viable on that old P100 laptop in my closet

Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5

[Anonymous Coward]

AdBlock for Safari no doubt makes Safari faster than Firefox : get it at

  http://safariadblock.com/

It's a port of AdBlock for Chrome but it doesn't download the ad.

From the developers FAQ :

Q: Does AdBlock for Safari actually prevent stuff from being downloaded, or just hide it after the fact?
A: The former. Chrome doesn't support preventing resources from being downloaded, but Safari does, and I added code to support that. This also means that SCRIPT tags will be blocked in Safari by the EasyList rules, whereas in Chrome we've had to constantly bandaid this with custom rules to block the elements the scripts put onto the page.

Safari Speed & Chrome Speed

[neoshroom]

I just installed it and went to a website. I then opened Chrome, went to the same website, clicked and additional link and went back to the main page all in the time it took Safari to load up it's one page. That said, it does seem a little faster than Safari 4.

Re:Safari Speed & Chrome Speed

[Thinine]

Gee, I wonder if Chrome had the site in cache, since you've used it before. Reset both browsers to a clean state and then you may have a valid comparison.

Re:Safari Speed & Chrome Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, yea sure, the render time for a webpage in Safari is slow enough for you to switch to another browser and back.... do you know anything about anything?

Re:Safari Speed & Chrome Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

bah, I installed safari 5 and loaded up hotgayporn.com. Then I started up chrome, went to the same website, browsed, found a nice twink, loaded up his pic, and jacked off -- twice -- before safari was finished loading that one page with hundreds of embedded pics and videos.

Re:Safari Speed & Chrome Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

mikeFM is that you...?

Bye bye input managers

[m0s3m8n]

The extensions will be very nice. This is the only reason I would not use safari in the past. Apple was not supporting the use of input managers so this change is welcome.

Re:Bye bye input managers

[am 2k]

Input Managers can just mess around willy-nilly in your application (in any Cocoa application), how do you suppose that this could be "supported"?

Re:Bye bye input managers

[Spad]

The extensions will be very nice

But only if they get approved for publication in the App Store.

Re:Bye bye input managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Input Managers can just mess around willy-nilly in your application (in any Cocoa application), how do you suppose that this could be "supported"?

+1 for the use of willy-nilly

Re:Bye bye input managers

[Shoe Puppet]

Is that necessary? That's Safari on Mac, not an iPhone etc.

OK, so extensions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these like IE extensions, that don't actually work, or like Chrome extensions, which don't work very well?

IE doesn't have a functional adblock or flashblock addon.
Chrome has both, but the adblock and flashblock both download the ad/flash content and then don't display it. If I wanted that crap downloaded, I'd probably not be running the adblock and flash block in the first place.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[armanox]

I've found that just blocking sites in my hosts file works much better.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[Anonymous Coward]

That takes out some of them (it's what I do on my Android phone and it's better than nothing) but it can't block ads that are on the same host as the page you want to view.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[leifking]

Glimmerblocker is great, saves looking for extensions and covers any browser (it's an http proxy, and has auto filter lists for extra goodness).

Re:OK, so extensions...

[baka_toroi]

Score:5, Interesting for this comment? What's next?

"If you use dial up you can listen to the bits coming through your line and you can render web pages on your head -- omitting the ads!"

Re:OK, so extensions...

[dave420]

Downloading the content and not displaying it is only fair to the people hosting the websites you want to visit. If they don't serve up the adverts, they don't get revenue. If you don't like the adverts on a site, don't go to the site. Just spare the couple of KB, and get the site you admittedly appreciate some revenue to offset the bandwidth costs they incur to give you the information you want.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[hcdejong]

Call me when you can point to an offending element in a webpage, and have the right-click menu say 'Put this domain in my hosts file'.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[dave420]

Or, you could stop being a cheap-skate, and let the site you clearly want to visit not have to pay for the honour of you visiting them. I'd never think of blocking adverts on any site I frequently visit, as it denies sites I obviously want to visit of their revenue. It's rather selfish to block adverts.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. You keep supporting them and I'll keep having a web without blaring sound on every tab and shoot the monkey flash adverts.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[RivenAleem]

Score:5, Interesting for this comment? What's next?
 

Score:0, Troll for this comment

Re:OK, so extensions...

[vlueboy]

Call me when you can point to an offending element in a webpage, and have the right-click menu say 'Put this domain in my hosts file'.

That is an awesome goal. Flash ads don't include source info like pictures, so you can't right-click. You actually have to view the HTML hoping to find the offending hyperlink to swf content other than your one desired flash video on the page.

Unfortunately, hostfiles blocks cause people to ask me why their browser is "broken." Out of IE, Safari, Chrome and Firefox, only Safari gracefully hides the annoying "This page cannot be displayed [etc etc etc]" lines that replace every would-be advert blocked by my hostfile.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[vlueboy]

If you don't like the adverts on a site, don't go to the site. Just spare the couple of KB, and get the site you admittedly appreciate some revenue to offset the bandwidth costs they incur to give you the information you want.

Sadly, this was OK 10 years ago. These days, websites have 1-3 flash ads with unoptimized animations. The result is that my laptop heats up and performance degrades considerably even when I'm not watching the ad.

All my local OS's block a few like ads.doubleclick.net, clk.atdmt.com, qksrv.net and ads.x10.com.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[NatasRevol]

Well plugins like ClickToFlash still work.

Extension details can be seen here:
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

An awesome demonstration of what they're capable of:
http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/06/coda-notes-previe/

Re:OK, so extensions...

[NatasRevol]

You could build this yourself with Safari Extensions.

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/AddingContextualMenuItems/AddingContextualMenuItems.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009977-CH4-SW1

Re:OK, so extensions...

[rishistar]

I browse with Flash turned off. With Opera there's been Site Preferences for this for ages so I can get IPlayer and Youtube OK, and have the Enable Plugins Button on the status bar so I can toggle it on if required.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[dave420]

Then don't go to those websites! You do realise that because of people like you blocking their more traditional adverts, that they now have to resort to such adverts? If people just sucked it up and weren't so cheap, we'd still have adverts like back in the day - lo-fi graphics, no sound, and mainly text. Instead we have the cluster fuck we have now, because of greedy bastards.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[armanox]

Consider this (for a workplace) - have the hosts file redirect the blacklisted pages to an internal web server that just sends back a blank page.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[vlueboy]

With Opera there's been Site Preferences for this for ages so I can get IPlayer and Youtube OK, and have the Enable Plugins Button on the status bar so I can toggle it on if required.

I understand, but turning flash off completely or whitelisting a complete page linking to tons of ad sites isn't very good.

BUT... I think you mean that site preferences blocks specific 3rd-party domains, so I'll install Opera on Ye Old Clunker and update my opinion of it. Thanks

Re:OK, so extensions...

[vlueboy]

Hey, that's brilliant!

Finally, a good use for my locally idling webserver.
Thanks, armanox!

Re:OK, so extensions...

[mzs]

Oh of course because I run Safari as root.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[NatasRevol]

Get off the crack, buddy.

Re:OK, so extensions...

[krakelohm]

There may be a hint of a grain of truth in your statement, but realistically they are not 'resorting' to new flash ads because they are losing money on adblocking, they are going for the bigger buck plain and simple.

WebM

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it play WebM?

Re:WebM

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? There's a real codec, H.264, that works great, everyone uses, including nerds who like to rage about whether or not it's "free," like that matters.

Re:WebM

[Anonymous Coward]

And there's a real codec, WebM, that works great as well - and Google(read:everyone) uses.

Re:WebM

[TheKidWho]

Really? They use it? That's news to me.

Re:WebM

[larry bagina]

Nope. It's juat another stillborn google project. Throw a lot of shit at a wall and some of it sticks. The rest just smells like shit. Because it is shit.

Re:WebM

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? There's a real codec, H.264, that works great, everyone uses, including nerds who like to rage about whether or not it's "free," like that matters.

Right on Steve!

I'm sick of these people insisting that the h.264 licensing situation is a ridiculous nonsense. I want to sell a "pro" text editor that requires an additional license if the user distributes the text they produce on a "commercial" basis. Some more thoughts on that: bloo blah blee blah boo boo twpwpwpwpwp!

Re:WebM

[dave420]

No, it's just been open sourced, and the actual codecs for the format are nowhere near as mature or ubiquitous as H.264. Stop bullshitting.

Re:WebM

[prockcore]

Google has already started encoding youtube videos in WebM. Join youtube's HTML5 beta, then append &webm=1 to the search url and you'll only get videos that are in webm format.

Fantastic!

[JansenVT]

Browsers have come a long way, and as a web designer/dev, it is really great for the industry.

It also adds an "option" for searching using Bing

[I'm Not There (1956)]

Such a shame for a browser in 2010 that it needs an update for adding a search engine to the available search options.

For your safety

[Trufagus]

You can only view pages that have been pre-approved by Apple - and Apple gets 30% cut of anything revenue generated by the page.

As an added bonus, any media gets re-routed to iTunes - where Apple will take their 30% cut and wrap it in a container that prevents you from mistakenly trying to use it on a non-Apple device.

But this is all just to protect you and preserve the user experience (patent pending), of course.

Re:For your safety

[Anonymous Coward]

pretty much every device supports AAC you retard.

Re:For your safety

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that funny ... unless you are so blinded you can't see your own colon while your head is up your ass.

"Several new features"

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I must be spoiled by Chrome and its crazy update progressions. That was one of the worst major-version update changelogs I have ever read.

Re:"Several new features"

[imikedaman]

I just went and looked at the changelogs for Chrome and can't figure out what you're talking about. According to Wikipedia, Safari 5 combines the things added in Chrome 4 and 5 (extensions, enhanced developer tools, improved HTML5 support, performance improvements, improved Javascript performance, Geolocation, web sockets, drag and drop, etc.), and adds additional features like Reader that is built directly into the app.

Refuse to test it

[Enderandrew]

Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

If I really want a Webkit browser, I'll run Chrome and/or Rekonq. Chrome already has tons of extensions, is FOSS, and runs amazingly fast.

If Chrome supported a proper adblocking solution, I'd never need another browser. And yes, I know they had an Adblock extension, but it still renders ads in the background. I want to stop the ads from being downloaded or rendered at all.

Re:Refuse to test it

[SassyDave]

Chrome does have adblocking now. Does it not work for you?

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

>And yes, I know they had an Adblock extension, but it still renders ads in the background. I want to stop the ads from being downloaded or rendered at all.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. That adblocking is ad-hiding. It still loads all the crap from all the ad and junk sites, then hides the divs they're in. You may not see them, but your page viewing is still slow compared to FF with a real blocker. Chrome pages will hang while it waits for slug servers spewing ads, FF doesn't make requests from them, and up comes the page.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Two ways to adblock in Chrome: First, the extension. Second, you can install a Privoxy server on your local machine and have Chrome go through that. Both work, although I prefer the extension.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Phroggy]

Chrome does have adblocking now. Does it not work for you?

Another poster explained that Chrome's ad-blocking still downloads the ad, but doesn't display it. This is a problem for anybody on a metered or low-bandwidth connection (e.g. tethering through a cell phone, as I'm doing now) who don't want to download the ads, regardless of whether or not they get displayed. Of course, most people have broadband connections and don't care what gets downloaded in the background, as long as they don't have to see it.

In theory, web sites could try to detect whether an ad was downloaded or not, and refuse to display content unless you've also downloaded the ads. In practice, this isn't normally done, but if it were, with Chrome the web site would still work.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a hosts file

Re:Refuse to test it

[vlueboy]

Parent quote:

Chrome does have adblocking now. Does it not work for you?

But the GP and I have a different belief:

If Chrome supported a proper adblocking solution, I'd never need another browser. And yes, I know they had an Adblock extension, but it still renders ads in the background. I want to stop the ads from being downloaded or rendered at all.

It seems your post contradicts our belief about the state of chrome adblocking.
I have Chrome and Safari ready to mess around with --could you please give us the non-incomplete adblocking link?

Thanks
--vlueboy

Re:Refuse to test it

[baka_toroi]

Way to be an idiot.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

If I really want a Webkit browser, I'll run Chrome and/or Rekonq. Chrome already has tons of extensions, is FOSS, and runs amazingly fast.

Are you referring to the Chrome that tries to install a Google Toolbar when you install it? Apple's not alone in trying to push their software on you.

Re:Refuse to test it

[wiredlogic]

If Chrome supported a proper adblocking solution

If it's important enough, you can get an adblocking proxy filter that will let you use Chrome without the background downloads.

Re:Refuse to test it

[beelsebob]

Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people
iTunes update? What is this software? I've never seen it on any box at all... Perhaps you're thinking about Apple Software Update

Re:Refuse to test it

[SassyDave]

Here's the chrome adblock extension that I use. Works great for me. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom?hl=en

Re:Refuse to test it

[Enderandrew]

Chrome has never installed a Google Toolbar, nor prompted me to install one.

Why would Chrome install a toolbar for another browser when installing a different browser?

Re:Refuse to test it

[Fri13]

No it does not. As pointed in the post for what you are replying and what others have posted. The Chrome AdBlock only hides Ads but does not block them. If using Chrome, only way to block Ads would be using a system wide AdBlocker what does not allow Chrome to even take connection to Ad servers.

ReKonq is even better on that than Chrome because it can block all the slow and annoing Flash Ads and speeds up the browsing when you are on mobile or otherwise limited connection.

Re:Refuse to test it

[contrapunctus]

don't be an ass, he wanted to update iTunes and it wanted to install safari, who cares what the program is called.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't use Safari because it does things to your computer without asking you, but you're fine with Chrome despite it sending your browsing habits to Google?

Have you tried Iron?

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry me a river. All the companies make mistakes. Google just had their whole snafu with the Buzz launch. Are you never going to use Google products again? Do you keep from using facebook since they continue to treat your private data as public without asking?

One stupid idea that they thought would be good, ie using iTunes to introduce people to Safari, and you'd think they were kicking baby seals.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

Yes, those evil people! And they're unrepetant. They still to this day try to trick you into downloading Safari everywhere you turn-

oh wait, that's not true at all. They fixed it a long time ago. But one mistake and you're done with them for all time. A bit ironic for someone choosing to use the name 'enderandrew', don't you think?

If I really want a Webkit browser, I'll run Chrome and/or Rekonq. Chrome already has tons of extensions, is FOSS, and runs amazingly fast.

Chrome also tracks things about you and sends them to Google (admittedly depersonalized) so Google can use them to enhance its advertising services (remember, Google's customer isn't you, it's an Internet era ad agency). Chrome also installs Google Update, which automatically updates Chrome (and possibly other Google software in the future) in the background. Chrome doesn't even have to be running. Google Update does this without your consent, or even any notification that it's happening. Google can change anything they like in Chrome and shove it down your throat; there is no way to opt out.

It interests me that you have decided Apple is supremely evil for a one-time ill advised attempt to get people to try Safari by automatically checking a box in Apple Software Update, but seem to be completely oblivious to the icky things Google is doing. (And will continue to do... Google makes its money by riding the edge of invading your privacy through its 'free' products. Good luck convincing them to stop.)

Re:Refuse to test it

[Enderandrew]

I'm not judging Apple by one action. Apple has a history of repeating practically every evil deed Microsoft has comitted, and then some. I'm not sure why Apple keeps getting a pass.

Chrome updates software that I intentionally installed. It doesn't install software that I never approved.

Safari was pushed out automatically to people who never wanted it installed in the first place. There is a difference there.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is as much FOSS as Safari in that neither one is. Chromium is what you're thinking of.

If an auto-install of Safari makes you mad (even though it wouldn't run unless you opened it) you might want to look up information on the RLZ identifier.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

Cripes. There are so many people complaining about Chrome's lack of adblock, which is a pretty simple feature; but it is open source. Is nobody willing to maintain a fork of Chromium with proper ad blocking support?

Re:Refuse to test it

[catmistake]

Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

I know how you feel. Since Microsoft decided to push IE7 out via an update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Enderandrew]

Unless you have Windows set to auto-update without asking you, it didn't happen. And in that case, it pushed out as an update for the previously installed IE6.

It isn't like Microsoft added a completely new product without asking you.

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Michael, the author of AdBlock for Chrome (and now for Safari).

The Safari extensions API has support for not downloading resources, so the extension at safariadblock.com does prevent download of the ads.

The Chrome extensions API doesn't support this yet, but I've been driving people from the install page at chromeadblock.com to star the Chrome Issue requesting this feature, and it's quickly climbing to become the #1 most starred. They attempted an approach in the past but changed directions, so I assume it's still in the works but needed to be architected correctly.

- Michael

Re:Refuse to test it

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but it's not like Apple installed something that broke other things. IE7 rolled out and untold numbers of web apps went wonky. Besides, Apple never ever does stuff like that on Macs because Mac users don't stand for that sort of behavior from developers. Windows users are pretty much used to that kind of behavior, it's what anyone paying attention has come to expect, and many are appalled by it. Hate the game, not the player. What Apple did was out of the ordinary for Apple, but it wasn't all that out of the ordinary for the average Windows developer. Or did you not want that new browser toolbar, system tray chat client, and video downloader when you did a default install of some new wmv-only video 'codec?'

sendmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen a sendmail config file?

Re:sendmail

[morgan_greywolf]

That's why they wrote postfix and qmail. Well, okay, that's why they wrote postfix. djb wrote qmail because it helps to inflate his already overinflated ego. ;)

Re:sendmail

[smash]

thats why you write it sendmail.mc and then compile into sendmail.cf...

i an crack that feature

[Anonymous Coward]

and make it work ...er um better

ya really

[chronoss2010]

so if we cut out all the stuff one can do and see and say in the browser of course it will be fast cause your conversations and visits will be short

Extensions and Mobile Safari

[SpottedKuh]

Personally, I'm hopeful that the extension API is a unified API that appears in both Safari and Mobile Safari. My only complaint with my iPhone is the lack of an AdBlock extension. The web looks so ugly and loads so slowly without one!

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[Myopic]

Agreed, adblockers are the killer app for the web. Without them, the web is almost -- not quite, but almost -- completely useless. And AdBlock Plus is the gold standard, even though it could stand improvement.

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[cowscows]

It must be a miserable existence you live, where you're entirely unable to mentally block out advertising and get on with whatever it is you're doing, seeing as ads are everywhere.

I won't argue that some websites have ridiculously intrusive ads, but the simple solution there is to not visit those sites. For every website with flashy popup ads, there's another with similar content but tasteful ads.

Without advertising, half the websites out there wouldn't even exist, so I'd argue that ads make the web more useful.

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[Myopic]

Thank you for your sympathy. I probably wouldn't use the word "miserable" but it's close. I am indeed constantly annoyed at the pervasiveness of commercial messages. I do what I can to reduce the intrusion, such as enjoying radio and television programs as recordings (podcasts, DVDs, etc) so that I can skip ads; using adblockers online; discarding the extraneous packaging around many food products; declining to wear clothing with ads on them (such as the Nike swoosh and whatnot); and simply not participating in some activities which are ad-supported. It's limiting in some ways and a relief in other ways; I try to find the best balance for me.

Indeed, the "simple" way to avoid website ads is to avoid websites with ads. But you might be interested to know that with a small amount of additional effort I can also enjoy the websites *and* avoid the ads, by using an ad blocker -- thus getting the best of both worlds as it were. (I'm surprised you don't realize that, since it's exactly the topic at hand.) So, that is obviously better for me than not visiting at all. For most of those sites, I'd gladly pay the fraction of a cent per page that the advertisers pay, but I don't know many sites which offer that level of subscription.

As a last thought in regards your suggestion that websites wouldn't exist without advertising, I am reminded of the saying "...and if my aunt had a mustache, she'd be my uncle". That means, "and if everything were completely different, then everything would be completely different." I proffer that if 90% of web users used ad blockers, then almost all sites would have a micropayment option or some other kind of business model.

Anyway, I appreciate your sincere words. Be well.

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[cowscows]

And dealing with all that micropayment stuff would be just as annoying as dealing with web ads, and a whole bunch of cool websites would go out of business. Or I guess those websites could pay the bills by selling tshirts that you wouldn't wear.

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[Myopic]

Yep, right you are, both of those business models have drawbacks. And yet, both of them are above the threshold of acceptability for me, whereas the ad-supported model is below. (So, micropayments may be annoying, but I imagine them being less annoying, not "just as" annoying.)

But truthfully I currently have the absolute best of situations, where I get to enjoy all the web's content, don't have to look at ads, and don't even have to micro-pay for it. This is the freeloader model, and I am very glad that most people, apparently, don't mind the ads and generate enough revenue to support my freeloading. As a moral issue, however, I'm willing to pay my way, given the opportunity.

I have no problem with you viewing ads, so don't think I'm criticizing you. In a general sense, though, I do pine for a different web business model.

Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari

[ninjakoala]

Agreed, adblockers are the killer app for the web.

I agree. I just think "killer app for the web" has a different meaning than you.

Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[neoshroom]

Possibly, but here is an even better comparison with two cached pages. When you click "back" in Safari it loads the page layout and text first and then loads the images. Chrome loads the entire page at once, which is a lot less visually jarring. You can also notice this in the scrollbar which in Safari will keep changing sizes and in Chrome will stay the same same size upon hitting "back."

Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does. Don't get me wrong, they are both great, speedy browsers and I'm not exactly anti-Apple, being that I'm on a Macintosh, but Chrome 5 really is fast.

Re:Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[insufflate10mg]

Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does.

Really?

Re:Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[morgan_greywolf]

Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does.

o_O Oh, noes! It's a CPU and memory eating monster! It consistently takes more virtual memory and CPU % than itself!

Re:Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[pushing-robot]

On Safari 5 on my Mac it displays cached static pages instantly when I go back and forward. Images and all. Dynamic pages load piece by piece, of course, but I honestly couldn't tell the difference watching pages load on Safari 5 vs. Chrome 5. Content shifting as a page is being loaded is a sign that the html and css didn't explicitly state the size of graphics, so the browser has to re-layout the page as it loads the images. It happens in any browser, including Chrome.

Re:Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does.

I assume you mean Safari vs Chrome?

Re:Okay, so Cached vs Cached

[quacking duck]

Possibly, but here is an even better comparison with two cached pages. When you click "back" in Safari it loads the page layout and text first and then loads the images. Chrome loads the entire page at once, which is a lot less visually jarring.

If they both finishing loading from cache quickly, then I'll give this to Chrome. But if it's slower (especially if elements on the page aren't cached, like banner ads and content from remote Javascripts), then generally I want text and layout to come before the pretty (funny that, coming from a Mac user...).

Another reason I prefer content to render as it becomes available: what's really frustrating about Internet Explorer (as of v7) is that it doesn't load certain table content until it receives the closing tags. This is especially annoying when a piece of content in that table takes longer to prepare (content is being flushed to client as it becomes available on the back-end, rather than waiting for the entire page to be assembled first before sending). All other browsers will render everything before that point in the table code.

Multi-page articles

[dangitman]

Reader mode detects multiple-page articles and displays them in their entirety at the click of a button

That's an awesome feature, but can it reduce entire slashdot comment threads into a single comment? That would save a lot of time.

Re:Multi-page articles

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they all simply read: "FRIST POST in the year of Dying BSD on Cowboy Neal's Desktop!"

Re:Multi-page articles

[hattig]

And that comment would be: "lame"

Because it is so short, it would be scored -1, and thus not be viewable by default.

And productivity at geeky workplaces around the world would thusly increase.

Re:Multi-page articles

[hedwards]

Yeah, I can see the problem there. Geeks toiling in the geek mines under Apple would have time to rebel against Steve Jobs. And we can't have that, where else would we get our tightly controlled devices that ordain what we may and may not do.

Re:Multi-page articles

[imakemusic]

I bet they all simply read: "FRIST POST in the year of Dying BSD on Cowboy Neal's iPad!"

FTFY

Here we go again...

[holiggan]

You know how you can have the fastest browsing experience ever?

Browse with pictures and javascript turned off. In Opera, it's really easy to do it, and I use that "barebones mode" when I'm searching for info or doing "work-related browsing".

Re:Here we go again...

[foghorn19]

Absolutely. This is my default setting on Opera. Disable plugins as a default, too.

I enable images with keyboard shortcut and javascript/plugins on a case by case basis. The sites I frequent (./ and NYT etc) get to run with JS/p[lugins/images. the rest, barebones.

Still no volume control

[line-bundle]

I still want a volume control to shut the web up. But still want to be able to listen to my music.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

I still want a volume control to shut the web up. But still want to be able to listen to my music.

Amen!

I requested this feature years ago with no luck so far. The new extensions allow developers to add an extension that adds a button to the toolbar, but I'm not sure if their API is going to be sufficient to allow you to make a usable mute button, especially one that works on things other than the "audio" tag.

Re:Still no volume control

[TheCycoONE]

Per-application volume control is typically a sound system option; supported through Vista, Windows 7, Pulse Audio, OSS, and I assume OSX. Putting a volume control in the application itself would be redundant at this point.

Re:Still no volume control

[__aardcx5948]

Per-application volume control is typically a sound system option; supported through Vista, Windows 7, Pulse Audio, OSS, and I assume OSX. Putting a volume control in the application itself would be redundant at this point.

+1

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Disable plug-ins. No more fucking annoying Flash ads. Problem solved.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Per-application volume control is typically a sound system option; supported through Vista, Windows 7, Pulse Audio, OSS, and I assume OSX.

Wow, you're wrong on so many levels. You presume OS X has per app volume controls outside of apps, but didn't bother to check? Guess what, it does not. Each app is responsible for it's own sound controls and Safari has none. And even if it did have a control in the OS configurations, that's not very useful. Would you make the same argument that Songbird should not have a volume control, because you can just go turn it off in the OS config? That's more than a bit inconvenient don't you think?

Re:Still no volume control

[Shin-LaC]

I think you can use Jack OS X.

Re:Still no volume control

[Zoinky]

Nice job raging against the GP because your OS doesn't have a feature that's standard among pretty much every other modern operating system.

To respond to the second part of your post, no, it would not be inconvenient; it would be *ideal* to remove volume control from each application and have it controlled by the OS.

The key would be to not have it buried 10 layers down. While it's not quite ideal (imo) in every operating system, there is already a volume control widget in most operating systems. This widget can be expanded to list the applications accessing audio, and I can adjust their volumes the same way I adjust the volume for the entire computer. Even in Windows Vista, it's already in there, and is pretty easy to get to, and in Ubuntu at least, it's fairly simple as well.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice job raging against the GP because your OS doesn't have a feature that's standard among pretty much every other modern operating system.

I agree this is a weakness of OS X, but I didn't complain at all about the lack of feature, but about some idiot telling us he doesn't know what he's talking about but assumes it does have it without bothering to check. (And no I'm not being hyperbolic by calling someone an idiot when he claims "OSS" has UI feature.)

To respond to the second part of your post, no, it would not be inconvenient; it would be *ideal* to remove volume control from each application and have it controlled by the OS.

Really, you think music playing software and DVD playing software and the like doesn't need a volume control because the OS should handle it? I disagree. I like the idea of the OS offering the option, even standardizing the UI, but applications have differing needs and having a very large or very unobtrusive sound control can be very, very important depending on the application. App developers need control of this.

This widget can be expanded to list the applications accessing audio, and I can adjust their volumes the same way I adjust the volume for the entire computer.

Except we still need a quick one button mute for the foremost app, because that's the common use case. Gee my browser is blaring loud music at work, I think I'll dig through a hierarchical menu to get to it. Gah! No thanks.

Re:Still no volume control

[Shoe Puppet]

Regarding sound control, there's quite a difference beetween an audio player and just about any other application. Also, if Apple wanted to add per-application sound control to their software, they could just as well put it directly into the OS.

Re:Still no volume control

[SteveFoerster]

To respond to the second part of your post, no, it would not be inconvenient; it would be *ideal* to remove volume control from each application and have it controlled by the OS.

You talk of inconvenience and what would be ideal as though these are absolutes. But while what you describe might be your preference, it wouldn't be mine. If an app makes noise I want it to have its own volume control. If the "real" volume control is somewhere at the OS level then fine, whatever, but from my perspective as a user it's the app that's making noise so that's where I want to look for a way to shut it up.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the operating system be concerned with managing sound volume coming from an application?

This is just idiocy, and I'm sick of it. If your application makes sounds, *it is that application's responsibility to provide its own control for that sound.* It's just laziness and stupidity from the app developer, and possibly some arrogance, oh, my app is so fucking important that everyone needs to hear it regardless.

If an app has no mechanism to manage its own sound, don't use it.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding sound control, there's quite a difference beetween an audio player and just about any other application.

Not really. DVD players, movie players, browsers used to play video and audio, video games that make noise, pretty much anything that makes sound, including the browser should have volume controls.

Also, if Apple wanted to add per-application sound control to their software, they could just as well put it directly into the OS.

They could, but they haven't. I've actually requested that as a feature as well. But since they haven't done that, they should bloody well add a mute button and volume control to the browser.

Re:Still no volume control

[drinkypoo]

Why should the operating system be concerned with managing sound volume coming from an application?

This is just idiocy, and I'm sick of it. If your application makes sounds, *it is that application's responsibility to provide its own control for that sound.*

That's a stupid thing to say. It's the kind of thing that a sound card might handle, so the API should handle it so that if the card handles it, it can be abstracted to the hardware via the driver instead of the application via needless duplication of work. The OS already provides sound services, and you don't have to talk to the sound card directly, but that's how it used to work back in the DOS days. Back then, however, you could only run one OS at a time, so sound cards didn't even have hardware mixing. You had one, two, four, or maybe eight channels on a relatively fancy early sound card. Naturally you didn't need per-application volume controls, so there was no support for it anywhere.

Re:Still no volume control

[slaingod]

(I assume you are trolling, but I will play).

No, not really. An app that makes sounds is by definition an audio player. The question isn't or shouldn't be 'if Apple wanted', but what the user wants.

I think the whole attitude that somehow the desire for volume control in a particular application is somehow wrong or inelegant is the real problem. I got the same attitude when I asked for uTorrent to make the font it uses for the grid configurable (to make it larger). 'Just use the OS font setting.' Except that doesn't work. I am using RDP to see my machine that runs uTorrent, and adjusting DPI is not one of the options when you are RDPing. Perhaps RDP should allow for the DPI setting (maybe it does in some non-obvious place), but my point is there may be very valid reasons why you would want to adjust something without having to use some global setting. They got all pissy when I listed the 15 apps I was running on my machine at the time and all but one of them allowed separate configuration of the font.

I would bet though, that in this case what the user really wants is the ability to control Flash volume from within Safari, primarily, since this is presumably where most of the audio comes from (or QuickTime possibly). It may not technically be possible because of that, but it probably is.

I also think that holding up 'Windows' (not Shoe Puppet, but other posters in this thread) as that model is a real problem, since they actively defeat their own technology when it comes to HDCP and Windows Media Center. Specifically, you can't do things like adjust the volume using the system volume in Windows Media Center if you are using SPDIF outputs. You are required to use you amp's volume control, because adjusting the volume in the OS would require decrypting the audio stream or some horseshit. You also aren't allowed to do things like have volume come out of SPDIF and analog jacks at the same time. All of which was previously possible in XP before HDCP.

Re:Still no volume control

[slaingod]

Sorry to double post just remembered the other reason why Windows Media Center volume issues are such a pain:

When you have WMC in the foreground playing audio, no other audio on the system works...You can't hear email dings, IM's or Skype ringing.

Re:Still no volume control

[macroexp]

Yeah, you can use JackOSX - but that doesn't give you per-app volume out of the box. You'd have to have another tool also communicating with jack to do the amplification/attenuation. (I use Ardour but that's a little heady for a typical user - and no, I don't just use it as a fancy volume control)

The real deal-killer is that audio in Flash videos doesn't work properly through Jack. (On Snow Leopard at least) It's a known problem with no fix in sight. Oddly enough, HTML5 videos work flawlessly...

Re:Still no volume control

[Zoinky]

Okay, I can see why you might want volume control in a media player (I'd still prefer a central volume control for everything, but I understand where you're coming from), but how far do you go with adding sound control options to every application? Do you add it to your RSS reader, to your email client and anything else that might display HTML content? Honestly, when Thunderbird gets a volume control dialog...

I really see my web browser and email client in the same light here. Neither one really produces sound themselves (with a few minor exceptions, really, and people aren't complaining about the new mail sound). It's usually a third-party plugin that makes the sound. I don't see a reason for either one to add additional support for audio, especially when it's so easy to control the sound coming from your computer right from the notification area.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Where?

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

They could, but they haven't. I've actually requested that as a feature as well. But since they haven't done that, they should bloody well add a mute button and volume control to the browser.

You want them to censor the Web?

Re:Still no volume control

[shutdown -p now]

Why should the operating system be concerned with managing sound volume coming from an application?

Because it can be done in exact same way for every application. Indeed, it has to, if you want any UI consistency.

Re:Still no volume control

[SteveFoerster]

I understand what you're saying, but remember that from the perspective of most users, it's the browser making the noise, not a plug in. They don't even understand the difference. I'd definitely like my browser to have its own volume control. Better yet, I'd prefer a setting wherein each time a freshly loaded page wants to make noise, it asks my permission first, while allowing me to whitelist sites like YouTube.

Re:Still no volume control

[prockcore]

OSX doesn't.. but Linux and Windows both have per-application volume management... and using chrome, that becomes per-tab volume management.

Re:Still no volume control

[BasilBrush]

Nice job raging against the GP because your OS doesn't have a feature that's standard among pretty much every other modern operating system.

Per-app volume control was implemented in Vista, and Gnome copied. It's not in KDE as far as I can see. One OS implements it, and one window manager copies it does not make a "standard".

Given that it isn't a "standard", but just a possible feature, the question is whether to implement it. What's the use case? Typically people will have:
1) Sound from standalone media players - audio & video. These all have their own volume controls displayed prominently.
2) Sound from media on web pages. These often, but not always have their own volume controls.
3) Games. They have their own volume controls.
4) Infrequent notification and error sounds from applications. Mostly system sounds. These tend to have a different "alert sound" setting in OS options.

People had trouble comprehending sound control on PCs even before VIsta. I've been asked to fix many people's PCs who have sound that isn't working. The problem is that every level of volume control is multiplied together. App level, system level, and hardware control on external speakers. If any one is set to zero, the user can't hear anything. And if they are looking at the wrong volume control, it seems like the sound is "already turned up".

Typically people don't want to mix sounds. They just listen to sound from one app at once. If they are going to watch a video, they stop their MP3 player first, etc. They aren't going to spend time customising the ideal sound level for every app. The ideal level varies anyway, depending on how loud the particular media is, what the location is (bedroom, lounge, coffee shop, office), how much noise others are making, and what your mood is. If the computer is too loud or too quiet at any particular moment, most people will reach for the most accessible volume control for an instantaneous result.

For sure, there may be situations where per app sound level is useful, and there are a tiny number of people that love customising that would actually
bother to set up varying volumes on a per app basis in a control panel. But the question is whether that is worth the complexity of an extra UI hidden away from the app's own UI, and an extra point of failure where users need support because "the sound doesn't work".

Adding a feature always requires consideration. It should't be added just because a competitor does it. High quality software is achieved as much by choosing what to leave out as to what to put in.

Re:Still no volume control

[Anonymous Coward]

Ardour & Jack FTW -- off topic, but this combination is amazing.
fuck pro tools and its shitty hw dongles,
fuck logic and its clusterfuck interface

Re:Still no volume control

[TheCycoONE]

I agree this is a weakness of OS X, but I didn't complain at all about the lack of feature, but about some idiot telling us he doesn't know what he's talking about but assumes it does have it without bothering to check. (And no I'm not being hyperbolic by calling someone an idiot when he claims "OSS" has UI feature.)

Except that per application volume is a sound system feature, the UI for it is in ossmix.

I can click through again!

[Jay Maynard]

I'd all but given up on going to articles from here because I hate those annoying multipage articles that have maybe one screenful of text and five screenfuls of ads. If Safari Reader works as advertised, I can go back to reading again.

Re:I can click through again!

[Myopic]

If you (or anybody who reads this) uses Firefox, please let me recommend FastestFox, which is an extension with several features. My favorite feature is that for many popular websites, FastestFox will pre-fetch the next-in-line page and append it to the current page as you scroll down. That means when I go to Google and do a search, I see the first page of results; as I then scroll toward the bottom of the page, the next page automagically appends to the bottom and I can scroll directly to that new page, no clicks requried. This also works on places like popular blogs and many news sites.

FastestFox also has a few other neat features. Check it out, if that's the kind of experience you might want.

Re:I can click through again!

[Jay Maynard]

I'll use Firefox when it quits being a half-assed OS X app.

Re:I can click through again!

[Myopic]

Huh, interesting. I have a fine experience using Firefox on my Mac, but everyone wants something different and each computer is a little different, so my experience doesn't necessarily apply to your situation.

Anyway I hope my tip is useful to somebody.

Re:I can click through again!

[Jay Maynard]

Lots of folks use Firefox on OS X and are happy with it, so your tip will indeed be useful.

I say Firefox is a half-assed OS X app because it doesn't use OS X visual elements and doesn't follow OS X conventions. I have it on my system and use it for the occasional site that chokes on Safari. I'd use it more if it simply looked and felt like every other OS X app on my system.

Re:I can click through again!

[Burz]

Some people say this but I don't see what the problem is with recent Firefox versions on OS X.

Re:I can click through again!

[pknoll]

Give Camino a try, if you haven't. It's Firefox under the hood, and looks and behaves far more like a native OSX application. (I agree on the half-assed, by the way).

Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi

[AdmiralXyz]

This is a joke, right? HTML5 is a W3C standard, and WebKit is an open-source rendering engine with Apple contributing the most development. Get a clue.

Crashes a lot ?

[BlackFingolfin]

I was quite excited when I saw this and went to get it. Now I have it for half an hour and already regret it -- it already crashes over a dozen times on me -- albeit always on the same page, just at different points (and with different crash stack backtraces, too). Specifically, http://terrytao.wordpress.com/ is where I see those. Anybody else having similar problems?

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[cbackas]

I skimmed the entire page with Safari 5 (cause the math content made no sense to me!) up and down several times, and reloaded a bunch of times without any issues. Obviously I haven't had it for long, but I've observed no stability problems at all. Is it possible that page is using a special font for the math symbols that may be corrupt on your system? (Wild guess) Did/do you have any Safari "enhancers" installed? Those probably aren't compatible between releases.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[gyrogeerloose]

No problem with it here either. It did take a fairly long time to load completely, although there may have been a bit of the Slashdot effect involved in that.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[soppsa]

Works fine for me in Safari 5...

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[Stupendoussteve]

The site killed Safari 5 (Mac) for me the first time I opened it, when I began scrolling before it was fully loaded. The second time I opened it I didn't touch it until the site loaded and it did not give me an issue. I do have Glims and Flashblock installed, don't know if that could be partially to blame.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[Brett Buck]

That page worked fine for me. I didn't check all the equations but it certainly didn't crash.

       

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[jeremyp]

It loaded fine for me but then crashed after I scrolled down a bit. However, I'm using the latest nightly build of Webkit. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to fix now that I've sent the crash report in.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[BlackFingolfin]

No extensions installed at all! Yes, I do have some math fonts (used by jsMath) installed. However, no such problems occur with Firefox and Chrome. So while I of course can't exclude the possibility that a font is corrupt, it seems strange that Chrome (which also uses Webkit) is not affected... Also weird is that I get quite some different stack traces. But several of them seem to be related to cookie storage (stack trace contains among other things MemoryCookies::~MemoryCookies and DiskCookieStorage::syncStorageLocked). I'll try deleting all cookies. Weird.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[BlackFingolfin]

Yes, scrolling seems to be involved for me, too. And I submitted a couple dozen crash reports already, hopefully they can figure it out :)

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[BlackFingolfin]

Deleted all cookies, it still crashes. Best way to trigger it is to go to that site, and then follow internal links, and scroll a lot, while they are loading. I.e. click on a link and start wildly to scroll up and down (works nicely using my MacBook Pro's touchpad). Last crash involved WebCore::BitmapImage::draw.

Re:Crashes a lot ?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is all pretty amazing stuff as far as this pc user is concerned. seriously.

i've never had ff crash or freeze on me and i've used every single version, portable and otherwise, without flashblock. also i had the latest chrome installed for six months and it never crashed either.

you have my sympathy - especially when you have to pay so much more for your macs.

Reader mode is great

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering if Apple are the only ones working at all in the tech and software industry. I personally don't own a single apple product (but my GF's ibook runs my webserver ;) but Apple is constantly improving stuff in a useful and well made way.

The lack of design skill and user experience checking from *all* other producers is appaling. I'll personally still be using my n900 and my Thinkpad running Debian though.

Reader mode is an excellent idea and the implementation is really good. Just installed it on my work computer.

Re:Reader mode is great

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I wouldnt say Safari is constantly improving. It has remained a useless browser up until version 4. Most if everyone simply ignored version 4 and still dont use Safari.

This is Apple's 5th attempt at getting you to use your their browser. Actually you could say its the 6th attempt if you count that lame html5 feature preview stunt they tried the other day.

If you're not on OSX

[AnonymousClown]

there's no need to run Safari. Even then, I'd replace it. On an iMac, I noticed a lot of funky rendering problems with it: MarketWatch, Slashdot, Yahoo!, WSJ - look at the financial sites. Pages don't look right, the formatting is off or overlapping and other things are just wrong. And with this release, I didn't see anything about fixes for those things.

I once had Safari on my Windows box and removed it - the Windows version was even worse than the OSX one.

I second Chrome.

Re:If you're not on OSX

[soppsa]

Safari 2 maybe. Safari has not had 'funky rendering problems' in a *long* time. Where do you think Chrome's rendering engine comes from?

Re:It also adds an "option" for searching using Bi

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is Apple promoting Microsoft's search engine?

how about long-term performance?

[_|()|\|]

Although Safari benchmarks well, it degrades severely over time. Memory usage climbs, even after closing tabs, and the beach ball becomes a constant companion. Firefox is a little better, but I've had the best luck with Chrome. I'll try Safari 5, but I'm not optimistic that it will be any better than previous versions.

Re:how about long-term performance?

[nyctopterus]

I don't know if you're using a Mac, but I think it's really strange how my experience of the various browsers differs from what I see here on Slashdot. In my experience, Firefox probably takes the longest to render a page (but we're still talking milliseconds here), but beats the shit out of Chrome and Safari for general responsiveness and reliability. Damn thing never crashes. Runs Flash much faster and more reliably too.

Chrome renders pages vary quickly, but can become unresponsive while chugging on graphical stuff. Safari crashes all the time (yes, mostly Flash).

pfft...newb!

[Anonymous Coward]

control+meta+hyper+super+front-shift+L (http://www.ist.rit.edu/~jxs/jargon/html/S/space-cadet-keyboard.html)

iPad update?

[dazedNconfuzed]

Any word on when it will come to the iPad? Sooner than iOS 4 I hope.
Current version on iPad is broken in a tiny but critical way (anyone know why it doesn't work with eCollege's discussion "post" button?)

The link downloads windows version on my mac!

[GarryFre]

I am not impressed! In fact, I'm a bit afraid. Sure, the normal way I might download it was using the software update, but usually web pages are a bit smarter about determining what sort of OS I'm running or gives me a choice. Being that it was under the MAC tab for software it should have been smarter or more clear that it was a windows only DL which it does not.

Re:The link downloads windows version on my mac!

[Shoe Puppet]

That's odd. I'm on Windows, and I got a selection of Leopard, Snow Leopard, Windows with and without Quicktime. With Leopard being pre-selected.

Re:The link downloads windows version on my mac!

[hawaiian717]

I had that happen this morning to me. It appears to be fixed now, but when I went to download it earlier, the solution was to click "Get Safari for Windows", where I had the choice of Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Windows versions.

Just Downloaded 5...

[dancingmad]

I'm skeptical of a lot of promises Apple makes, but I download Safari 5 now and after playing with it, I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm on Snow Leopard and moved from Safari 4 to the Chrome betas and to the release version of Chrome when it came out. I prefer Safari's integration into the system, but Chrome's extensions and speed make it my primary browser (but when downloading PDFs, visiting Hulu, I'd have to go back to Safari). Safari 5 may make be switch back again, depending on the extension support.

Reader works pretty well; makes reading multiple part articles far more pleasant. Even on sites that don't break articles into multipage monsters (Ars Technica) the reader version was much better. Even better than that printing from the reader version prints the reader version (I'm doing a research project involving online newspaper articles and now I can simply print PDFs of the Reader version to Yojimbo!).

It seems a fair bit faster than Safari 4 or Chrome for OS X. There's been a few UI changes, especially in Top Sites/History, but overall it's the same beast.

The deciding factor is going to be extensions. I depend on Rikai-kun, Gmail Notifier, and Adblock for Chrome (plus I use flashblock, but there's already a good version for Safari, Click to Flash). If I can get those (and I wonder if/how Apple will deal with Adblock) I'll certainly move back to Safari; the fit and finish on it is much better than even the release version of Chrome; Chrome often doesn't shut down correctly, has crashed occasionally (and while page crashes aren't supposed to bring down the whole browser, they've make the browser unusable enough to warrant a restart), text input glitches, and webpages with semi-dynamic content (like a message window and then the subsequent message sent page) not visually updating for several seconds.

There's a second tier of extensions I'd like to see; Google Calendar, Amazon wishlist, etc.; hopefully Safari's extension community will be large enough that those also see the light of day.

Re:Just Downloaded 5...

[hawaiian717]

The old Safari AdBlock still works with Safari 5.

Re:Just Downloaded 5...

[ekhben]

The extensions documentation has an entire section on blocking unwanted content.

The biggest problem is that extensions can't have any sort of significant UI - no pull-downs, no sub-menus in the context menu, just a button on the toolbar, a new toolbar, or injected HTML. Despite that, and the examples in the documentation being subtly wrong, I was able to throw together a proof-of-concept NoScript in a few hours.

It'll work very well for social networking type stuff, blogger bars, yahoo adware bars, that sort of thing.

What's interesting is that extensions are signed with a free to obtain certificate. That implies Apple will be able to revoke certificates for misbehaving extensions, disabling them. But since it is free to obtain a certificate, that's not a useful way to control popular extensions that do something Apple would rather they didn't, only extensions that do things individuals would rather they didn't, ie, trojans.

Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi

[pizzach]

More or less yes. It was a joke. It was also a test to see how Slashdot group think works. People were saying things like this in the last Slashdot article about the Safari HTML 5 page and were getting modded +5 insightful saying things along the line of "Safari is proprietary"

The point of this post is, Slashdot group think has a different slant article by article. This changes what people can get away with saying.

Wow this the most vacuous discussion

[foniksonik]

No mention of Ruby scripting, Websocket support, Geolocation or hardware accelleration in the Windows version. Nobody's reaaly looked past the extensions feature have they?

Re:Wow this the most vacuous discussion

[inpher]

Oh yes they did: Geolocation, Websocket, HTML5 ruby and Windows hardware acceleration are all neatly summarized on this page: http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html

Re:Wow this the most vacuous discussion

[foniksonik]

Ugh I was lied to about Ruby scripting... it's really just the Ruby tag...

Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi

[NatasRevol]

Then it was well played. I thought you were a troll, because of your very argument.

Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi

[pizzach]

The stuffit comments were meant to lighten the atmosphere a bit. You look at my other Apple related posts though, I usually am defending them when blatantly wrong remarks are made. Bah.

flash

[Aeros]

Are they blocking the installation of the flash plug in?

Chrome still has no color management.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I'll take this moment to remind GOOGLE, that Chrome still has no color management or true ad blocking capability.

Safari does have color management,
Firefox has color management
IE has color management

Chrome... nothing.

I actually like chrome in general... but I find Firefox to be much better still. Firefox performs better older hardware, and scrolls better. Firefox has better bookmark management. I do like google's synced bookmarks but I just simply use Xmarks on firefox. I wish both xmarks and google didnt spy on my bookmarks and synced them... but thats probably way too much to ask for in todays world.

Re:Chrome still has no color management.

[jisatsusha]

What about Mozilla Weave? So far as I can tell, it encrypts the data before it uploads it, so Mozilla only get to see the encrypted data.

Re:Chrome still has no color management.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I installed Weave but i did not try it out of fear. many user comments havent been positive. People have been complaining about bugs that mess up the bookmarks etc.

Also I think Weave syncs account names and passwords without the option to disable that feature.

Re:Chrome still has no color management.

[m_gol]

It is now renamed to Firefox Sync and supported officially by Mozilla. AFAIK it will be integrated into Firefox 4. So I assume it's a good moment to switch from Xmarks. :) (of course if one doesn't need inter-browser syncing)

Re:Chrome still has no color management.

[jisatsusha]

You can choose what it syncs, from a list of bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history and tabs.

Re:safari is good for the what?

[JansenVT]

Safari's development pushes the development of WebKit forward, and as a result Google Chrome improves.

Apple's Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Realise they always use words shamelessly like "World Most Powerful", World Fastest", such arrogance and use of word in a fast changing environment such as computing tell me I should ignore them like the boastful people I know of.

Re:Apple's Marketing

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Safari 5, The "Worlds Most Ignored Browser!"

Re:Apple's Marketing

[WiiVault]

On Windows for sure, on Mac its's pretty decent. Pretty on par with Chrome (Mac) and way beyond Opera and Firefox. Of course that is on Mac. Opera and Firefox seem to work much better in Ballmer land than Steve-o-ville.

Re:Slashdots' Marketing

[inpher]

Realise they always use words shamelessly like "News for Nerds", "Stuff that matters", such arrogance and use of word in a fast changing environment such as computing tell me I should ignore them like the boastful people I know of.

Reader Mode Will Get Broken

[16K Ram Pack]

Not sure why Apple is doing this, but publishers aren't going to like it. They'll find ways to scuttle it or to embed ads.

Right now, ad-blocking is a fringe activity. Places like Ars Technica suffer quite badly, but most sites don't. But Apple are giving people a heads up that lots of Safari readers won't be looking at ads - they'll be just getting the content.

I know a lot of people don't like ads, but it's what keeps a lot of sites running and "free". Without the revenue from ads, a lot of them will disappear.

That's why Safari users use ClickToFlash

[SuperKendall]

Firefox still beats them all with Adblock.

Not when you are using ClickToFlash with Safari.

As a bonus, you are not being an asshole to the site owber and blocking ALL ads. Just the processor dragging annoying ones.

Re:That's why Safari users use ClickToFlash

[ninjakoala]

You could also use SafariBlock if that's what you wanted.

Glims also gives lots of extra functionality without bloating the browser.

Re:That's why Safari users use ClickToFlash

[GreyWolf3000]

If the ads are pay per click, you're not doing anything wrong by disabling them.

Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi

[makomk]

Funnily enough, the version of WebKit that Apple originally released couldn't be built or used without closed source libraries provided by Apple. You either needed to pay money to Apple for Mac OS X and hardware to run it on, or link against a bunch of static libraries for Windows that Apple forbade you from distributing and end up with a compiled version of WebKit that couldn't legally be distributed. Without these libraries it literally couldn't even render anything, and all the third-party developers have had to re-implement a whole bunch of the rendering code in order to get something that was at all useful on non-Mac systems.

Firefox seems a lot better now

[Burz]

Under Leopard FF always degraded a lot under intensive use of Flash video. It was as if creating and closing dozens of Flash video objects kept leaving something behind that the browser couldn't quite get rid of. Over a period of a couple days intensive use, simple actions like tab creation and menu display (and everything else) would become CPU intensive and very slow. Restarting the browser would become necessary.

Maybe this is why Mozilla switched to handling Flash objects in a separate process.

Since the upgrade to 3.6.4 this 'buildup' problem doesn't seem to be occurring at all: FF is staying zippy. I am very pleased!

Developer - Safari (Web Insp) vs Firefox (Firebug)

[rsborg]

So I currently use Firefox over Safari on my OSX box for several reasons: 1) Awesomebar is very useful for developers - remembering similarly named but completely different sites (ie, site-dev01.domain.name vs. site-dev02.domain.name, I just type "02" and it chooses the 2nd one). 2) Firebug + Firebug extensions > Safari/Chrome Web Inspector... though Inspector still has some better features that have me opening up Safari to diagnose specific issues. 3) Adblock On the other hand, Safari does have a more stable implementation on OSX and clicktoflash/glims makes it quite easy to browse with.

And yet the leave out some really BASIC features

[Theovon]

Hey, Apple, how about adding proper crash recovery and session management to Safari? I hate to inform you, but Safari DOES crash now and then, and we shouldn't have to install Saft to get something as elementary as the ability to return to the state we were in before your browser decided to take a core dump, despite the fact that I've disabled Flash. And how about session management? I'd like to be able to quit the browser and restore the state properly when I reopen. Yes, I am aware of "History > Reopen All Windows From Last Session". But it's unreliable, because if something doesn't reload properly, and I quit, the only thing saved in the session is the "couldn't connect" page. The history for that tab is GONE. What you really need to do is load from cache like Firefox does.

And how about your memory management? If I open the same set of documents in Firefox and Safari, Firefox uses a fraction the memory of Safari.

(It's too bad Firefox isn't usable on a Mac because it completely prevents a Mac from sleeping after idle. The bugzilla entry on that has been open for a really long time and gets no attention. Meanwhile, they're all over Private Browsing.)

I'm going to try out Chrome, but reportedly, its memory management is much worse than either. (http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory)

They broke their website

[Clayperion]

As of this posting, Firefox 3.6.3 no longer works going to www.apple.com (but the store still does). Safari 5 allows you to see the home page, but none of the links (iPhone, iPad, etc.) show properly. Nice QC Apple!

You kids and your fancy software

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day I had to have a person dictate the HTML to me and I had to draw the web page with a rusty piece of iron (that I had sharpened by grinding it on a rock) on a rock!

Safari 5 fixes 48 security holes!

[200_success]

Users should also be aware that Safari 5 fixes 48 security holes in Safari 4.0. Therefore, if you are using Safari 4.0, you should upgrade as soon as possible. For Mac OS 10.4, there is Safari 4.1 available instead of Safari 5.0.

First official ad-blocking and auto-paging browser

[Mandrel]

Yes, this seems to be the first time ad-blocking and auto-paging have been built into the standard release of a browser.

Perhaps it's an Apple ploy to push publishers to iPad and iPhone apps, where their content cannot be altered.

This is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Safari 5 since this morning, and I can tell you, this is a magical and revolutionary browser. Unlike anything ever made before. It's absolutely magical. This will change everything.

From the first moment you touch the browser you will know it's special.

Welcome to the jungle

[cereda]

World Cup in South Africa in few days, new Safari released on time. That's no coincidence. lions and leopards and rhinos and apple juice.

Re:It also adds an "option" for searching using Bi

[mattack2]

That only refers to the search field next to the URL field. You can obviously go to any search page directly and use it. It's not like all pages use the same method of performing a search.

mod this up

[mzs]

mod this up, insightful.

Re:First official ad-blocking and auto-paging brow

[16K Ram Pack]

Which of course makes it pretty easy to check the user agent string and act accordingly. You don't have to code for dozens of ad blockers. You'll see Wordpress extensions for dealing with Reader quite soon.

Re:And yet the leave out some really BASIC feature

[Anonymous Coward]

State is held in ~/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist

You can use the plutil command-line utility to make it XML1 text, which is easy to process with (for example) sed, grep, awk, and so forth.

Safari will read the file in either form (binary or xml1) when you tell it to Reopen All Windows from Last Session.

You can store backups wherever you like (or let Time Machine do this for you) and you simply have to move the backup into ~/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist for it to restore from that.

Safari 5 has squashed some annoyances wherein pages become "empty" in the LastSession.plist when Reopen All Windows fails at bad times, but you are right, the in-Safari system of crash recovery is generally weak.