Safari, New PowerBooks

So how well does it support CSS?

In IE Mac, border: 1px dotted #000; shows a fine dotted line (the same as dashed). This was always a dash on Windows IE. Now it is that way in Safari. Is IE Mac the only one to get it wrong or the only one to get it right?

I already want to change the brushed metal skin of Safari - along with the other iApps. I also want to the option to get rid of the Quartz font smoothing. But so far, speed seems okay...not that much faster.

My safari is easily faster, and it's even beating my IE/PC box loading CNN in informal tests. I'm a big fan.

However, I'll need tabs to use it as my default browser.

Tabs are hard to live without, that's for sure. And as for CSS, I expected it to render this site exactly the same as Chimera (and Mozilla / NS for that matter) but doesn't - the point size is smaller, positioning of elements is different, dotted-borders look a little thicker, and my blasted text-sizing widgets are totally off. Time to experiment.

I never really got on the tabs bandwagon. I think Safari is great, but then again, it rendered Hivelogic on the first try, so it's cigar time.

i'm getting the 17" pb. damn this thing is too sweet to miss it. :)

I'm beginning to cring at the thought of what Apple has done. The reason the site is not rendering exactly how Chimera renders it is because Safari is based on KHTML (the Unix standard, used in broswers like Konqueror), NOT Mozilla (Chimera and Netscape). This is EXTREMELY unfortunate, especially considering that Apple hired the creator of Chimera, but apparentely had been working on Safari long before, so none of the advantages of having a Mozilla based browser will appear.

And the tabs are a deal clincher for me, for the same reason I'm not using iChat; I just can't live without the organzation of tabs. It's like they took NONE of the good ideas from Chimera.

And Todd, I was JUST about to buy a 12" iBook, now I'm most definitely going for the PowerBook, but I was curious, do you use a desktop machine for work production work? Or do you connect the iBook to a monitor?

Re: Pete Baker

My ibook is strictly for portable purposes and can't effectively handle the graphics app I use. I have a PowerMac for that.

That's what I had figured. Thanks. It's just going to be hard to keep this little PowerBook from becoming my primary machine when it's specs are better than my PowerMac, so I was just curious what your workflow was like regarding that.

Tabs! Tabs! Tabs! Please! Please! Please!

Seriously, I was hoping Chimera to be a part of the so-called iBrowser project... it feels like back to start from scratch again. Suddenly you feel the urge to hit someone...

No tabs. No Keychain Access. No per-site cookie management. No access to Hotmail.

Good start, but far from being my default browser.

I'm interested in hearing how this new apple browser stands up to Chimera. Mark Pilgrim is already complaining about Safari's shortcomings on his journal, and it looks like he is in the right from the screenshots he linked to. What's your guys' experience with it so far?

Re: dotted vs. dashed CSS borders

The CSS spec specifies that dotted means "the border is a series of dots" and dashed means "the border is a series of short line segments."

That seems to indicate that browsers that display dotted as short lines are wrong. But it's better than the alternative.

Browsers could choose to display most border styles as solid lines if they wanted. The spec says "conforming HTML user agents may interpret 'dotted', 'dashed', 'double', 'groove', 'ridge', 'inset', and 'outset' to be 'solid'."

My knowledge of the inner workings of browsers is nil ... but why would the frame rate be so abysmally slow in Flash for one and not another? What is it that IE has (or doesn't have) that allows it to work so effortlessly through the same plug-in?

I like the clean style of Safari but with Flash (not) working like this? No way.

Wow. I just bought my 1ghz tibook 15". The announcement of a 17" redesigned model isn't the greatest news for me today! :-) Oh well, as long as the classic TiBook gets an airport extreme card that I can pop in, I'll be ok. For a while.

Safari isn't what I was hoping for. Myself, like the others, were kinda hoping for Chimera to be the Apple browser. Tabs are great for keeping projects organized. I don't care for the brushed aluminum thing anyway, and it really doesn't seeem much faster. And todd's site is messed up with it! ;-) I'll stick with Chimera for now. Curious to see how the 17" Powerbook turns out. Kudos to Apple for keeping the rumor sites in the dark.

I am also all for the new, small PowerBook. I own a first generation Ti, and have ben itching to replace it. I too, wanted something more compact and durable like an iBook, but didn't want to sacrifice the processor.

Apple has done it again :)

I'm using Safari right now. It's easily the fastest browser I've ever used, hands down. I do miss the tabs, and I can't stand the brushed metal look, though.

I used Konqueror, the origin of kHTML, for a long time before I "switched", it was a nice browser. I'll have to check exactly what's going on with CSS though.

Remeber to those using it, if you see something odd, click that bug button!

Last July I paid $1799 for a 14" iBook 700. Now, six months later, I can get a 12" Powerbook G4/867 for the same price, but with Firewire800, 802.11g, and bluetooth. Oh well.

Am I right that it is not possible to connect the 12" PowerBook to an Apple Display? Why do they do this?

Everybody who (like me) can't stand the brushed metal look check out Metalifizer from unsanity I've been using it since I installed 10.2 with no side effects. I didn't even realize Safari was a brushed metal app until i installed it on a second machine at work today.

My biggest missing feature is Autofill. I use this _All_ the time. Hopefully it'll make it in 1.0

Hey! I just dragged a link in Safari, it's does something cool.

Keep in mind that Safari is still in Beta... if enough people write in, I can't imagine that Apple would ignore the request for tabs. I would like to think that the initial release of Safari is to get feedback on the rendering engine, etc.

OK, first I must say that I love Brushed metal. A lot. I'd have it on everything I owned, if possible. Two: I was impressed with the speed and definitely interface of Safari. There are very many things right with Safari. Bug button on right on the UI? That's committment. I put the praise first, because in these forums everyone's so quick to point out the wrongs, even if it's like only 3% wrong. What I would change: I'd prefer the Gecko engine, definitely. This engine has layout/render issues, and of course, now developers have to deal with a third engine. Second, tabs, tabs, tabs. Third, more prefs.

i am happy with the speed but not looking forward to having to deal with another browser. And no tabs is a deal breaker. Also, for you brushed metal lovers and haters check this out:

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/metallifizer/

also have you noticed that it reports itself as mozilla?

--mike

Everyone keeps mentioning "tabs". Call me clueless, but one thing I don't know is what this is. I guess this is one feature I'm not having a hard time living without.

As far a Safari one other problem I've run into other than those already mentioned is that some sites that require me to accept cookies seem to think I'm not, even though I've checked "always accept cookies" in the prefs.

I love the speed increase.

I wonder how many bug reports they've received today? I've sent 3.

i feel the same re: code inconsistences too tho, for the time being. i'm upset with that too, but (and i love this feature..), that's what the "report this bug to apple" thing is about. even though millions will report bugs, the fact that they have this feedback feature on their beta is a great idea, one that should become part of all beta-software packages. being able to send error reports (including screenshots!!) directy from it really makes for some great feedback-gathering mechanisms. i think that's a great idea.

-mathew

a mammoth 17” model (which would be perfect for those who use laptops as their primary machine)

Yeah... if they could afford it! ;-)

I'm seriously looking at that 12" model... I've been wanting an iBook for a while, but also had concerns about the "pokier" G3 versions as compared to the higher-speed G4 PBs... looks like my wish was their command!

Oh, and Thomas - I'm not sure what this means, but the 12" PB comes with an Apple Video Adapter and Apple VGA Display Adapter ... which is apparently different than the DVI to ADC adapter... so I'm guessing... no?

Paul: go to Mozilla.org and download Chimera. There's documentation on using "tabs" and trust me, once you use them you'll grow to love them. I have no doubt that Apple will add tabs into the final release but I want to make sure that they follow all of the W3C recommendations so that it makes it easier on the already overburdened web designers.

I've found that Safari has the Konqueror engine so i know what problems i will have in my website... some margins problems and things succeptibles to CSS hacks...

Anyways... this is a Public beta, and Konqueror Guys didn't have too much time to put all this fixes up, i guess Apple guys will correct them and make them even better that Konqueror, this will benefit Konqueror guys and Apple Guys.

Actually i was really depressed when i've opened IE on my mac, you can't imagine how happy i was with my Chimera...

Safari.

The good: really very, very fast; incredible text rendering; a commitment to standards; clean interface; nice bookmark handling, excellent handling of downloads.

The bad: no bookmark import; buggy CSS; brushed metal interface; no tabs; slow Flash; another reason for MS to stop developing for Apple.

The 12" PB has been ordered. I have a couple of weeks to decide how much the max of 640 meg of RAM and the lack of a PC Card slot bothers me.

All in all, a surprisingly good showing from Apple.

It would be nice if you could change the google search feature to a different search engine. Google's great, but may not be everyone's favorite.

I never got into the Chimera tab thing. I find using mulitple windows just as easy and the keyboard shortcut from one window to the other is easy with my left hand, keeping my right hand free for scrolling. S'pose it's all a matter of what one is in the habit of using.

For those who don't like the brushed meta look, http://www.unsanity.com/ has a free de-metallizer tool which can be used to selectively apply or remove the metal look to Cocoa apps. I used this to make Safari look like a regular Aqua app, and like it much better this way.

I'd sure live to see ANYONE other than M$ produce a browser that would actually work with all streaming video formats. Chimera is my favorite browser on any platform but only really supports Quicktime well. Realplayer sometimes works, usually doesn't, and Windows media does not even attempt to start. Safari handles Quicktime and Real beautifully but chokes a little on Windows media (at least it offers to launch it in a separate window in most cases). Bottom line is I STILL have to keep IE around so that I know I have a browser that can handle pages with video. Every time I encounter a page with this problem in Safari, I hit the bug button and enter "Videos don't play". Maybe they'll get the message and get it fixed.
Otherwise, I'm extremely impressed by Safari and may very well switch if it matures as I think it will. Right now it's Chimera first and Safari a close second. The lead could change...

Sorry, first line in previous comment should say "love to see", but I guess it's true the way I typo'd it also.