{ January 8, 2003 }

More MacWorld, Safari Thoughts

After having almost a full twenty-four hours since watching the live MacWorld feed in MPEG-4 yesterday (which was one of the best streaming experiences I've ever watched - hardly a blip), a few more thoughts and web sightings before the book is once again closed.

Mark Pilgrim jumped on Safari like a frog on a hot sidewalk - check out his Safari information for web designers page where he runs down all the CSS rendering bugs he's found thus far (my own site has miraculously been saved from any major problems), plus test pages. It is also a good sign that he's heard back from Safari developers at Apple, and are hopefully working to iron out the nasty things.
Also on the web: Ben and Mena of MovableType give their thoughts and reactions to what they like / dislike about Safari.
My favorite things about Safari? The bookmark menu is very slick, a history list that remembers site icons, the cute yet very functional bug button in the UI, an "Empty Cache" command from the File menu (as a web developer, why more browser makers - especially Mozilla/Chimera - don't offer a similar button for the menu bar is beyond me), the ability to include your Address Book in the menu bar (which loads web pages assigned to your contacts - turn it on in Preferences), the fact that the browser wasn't snotty enough to automatically change my Default Web Browser preference (it didn't even ask), SnapBack, Opera-like Google searching from the menu bar, automatic spell checking in form fields (if you turn it on), vertical scrolling speed, the slick radius-corner / semi-transparent overlay containing the link copy and URL that appears when you click on and drag a hyperlink, and the fact that once Safari penetrates more Mac user's desktops (likely when they buy new machines) Internet Explorer will have yet another browser chipping away at its dominance and potential to control the direction of web development. The one thing I'm missing? Say it with me now - tabs, tabs, tabs.
The new PowerBook videos are fun to watch, with the obvious "Best of Show" award going to Big and Small. I won't ruin the fun by describing it, you should just watch it. Only problem is, I'm a tall guy, and I realized after watching the video that I'll probably look a lot like the guy on the right once my new 12" PowerBook arrives (and yes, I did order one).
In other PowerBook news, Apple quietly dropped $200 off the price tag of the 15" Superdrive PowerBook, bringing it to $2799. Interestingly, you can add a Superdrive to the 12" model for $1999 - a whopping $800 cheaper.
Although I'd be hard pressed to find a use for it, Keynote looks like a stellar presentation app, especially since Apple was smart enough to include support for the ubiquitous PowerPoint. Not only can you open PowerPoint documents, but you can export them as well. Of course there are all kinds of drag-and-drop goodies from QuickTime to Flash to PDF, and lots of very slick transitions (some of which, I can honestly say as a Flash developer, would be quite hard and time consuming to duplicate). A transition I'd like to see would be 3D page turn, and have the graphics shift perspective to create the illusion.
All the pieces from Apple's various iApps are brilliantly beginning to snap together as well all knew, and hoped, they would with iLife. Never before have consumers had such an integrated, thoughtful, understandable suite of software for them to create and be inspired by. I know I sound like a press release by writing that, but when you watch how easy it is to drag and drop photos, mp3s and video, edit them to you heart's content, and then burn a DVD for friends and family to enjoy, it makes the silent Super 8 videos of my youth seem ridiculously antiquated to what new parents (or anyone else for that matter) will be able to create and enjoy today.
A glaring omission from Jobs' keynote yesterday were hard facts - numbers, damn't - on how successful the Switch campaign has been thus far. It may simply be immeasurable, but I wanted to hear more than just how many millions of people walked in and out of their retail stores. Nearly half of all computers sold in their stores are reportedly sold to Windows users, so I guess that's a positive.
All told, Apple is truly starting to fire on all cylinders right now. Amazing to think how different a Mac was just 4 years ago. Now if only they'd put a little elbow grease into the OS X Finder, and revamp those PowerMacs.

Comments

Of everything mentioned yesterday, I was most intrigued by Keynote. Like most designers I find myself having to generate PowerPoint crapola at some point, usually in accordance with a larger print product. Two elements I haven't seen any information about yet will make this the PowerPoint killer for me:

The ability to create self-contained presentations that play cross-platform.

The ability to embed fonts. Please please please let it be so. To know that I can send someone a presentation that is transition-based, as opposed to page-based (PDF) that will look exactly like I intend across platforms will be fantastic.

Posted by: Corey at January 8, 2003 9:49 AM

the 12" pbook looks like one of those platinum gameBoys, only with the iBook. nice choice, todd! the only problem is, I got a 14" iBook about a month before the new powerbooks came out! oh well.

Posted by: robert at January 8, 2003 10:11 AM

Todd,

Can you reach the overhead bin without getting out fo your seat? Wow. ;-)

One other thing missing from Safari, speaking of tabs, is a way to tab-through links on a page -- on safari (i.e. surfgin) sans mouse.

Posted by: Richard at January 8, 2003 10:29 AM

Anyone else notice the fun little accessiblity features built into Safari. How you can add the text sizer to the tool bar, it seems most users have trouble with that, and the text reading feature is loads of fun.
I miss the tabs too - but there is great upside here.

Posted by: Keith at January 8, 2003 3:35 PM

Nice wrapup Todd... Here's my "missing from safari" list:

Missing from Safari - Surfer Hat
I gave safari a good day of work & the feature I noticed missing even more then tabs was the lack of bookmark keywords which I ralized I have *really* come to rely upon for my daily browsing.

Missing from Safari - Developer Hat
My testing of client sites was rendered useless by the lack of a JavaScript Console / Error Msg communication whatsoever. Even exposing the secret debug menu didn't help. What gives Apple? Does this mean every javascript error is the browsers fault and not mine as the developer?

Posted by: Chris at January 8, 2003 11:56 PM

I've always assumed scrollbars on a DIV are pretty standard CSS markup, but Safari doesn't display them. Am I using non-standard markup or is this a bug?

Posted by: Geoffrey Smith at January 9, 2003 12:13 AM

Looks like Apple is listening to the bug reports. This is from one of the programers, David Hyatt:

Various members of the Flash community have been reporting low frame rates when using Flash in Safari. I'm pleased to report that we have corrected the problem. The issue was not in WebCore, so I can't post a patch, but the issue has been addressed.

Even more:
http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/2003_01_05_mozillian_archive.html#90160340

Posted by: Jason Broccardo at January 9, 2003 12:38 AM

By the end of Jobs' keynote, I got the feeling Apple has already begun moving away from desktop machines altogether and will soon offer only portables -- just like they did away with floppy drives, and more recently, CRT monitors.

Posted by: Erich at January 9, 2003 7:47 AM

My primary disappointment is the fact that the 12-inch powerbook CANNOT be hooked up to a Studio Display without a third party $400 VGA-to-DVI adapter. Why Apple chose to have only a VGA out when all the other PBs have a DVI out is beyond me. The closest I can reckon is that the VGA port hardware is more compact than the DVI, but I still think it was an odd choice.

Posted by: Dave at January 9, 2003 10:38 AM

If past experience is to be my guide, I would guess Apple left out the DVI capability to keep something in the higher models to encourage consumers to buy the more expensive ones. Or, maybe it was cheaper to put the VGA in the 12", which would be important if they were trying to get the retail price as low as possible.

Posted by: Todd Dominey at January 9, 2003 11:25 AM

thought i would share my new favorite safari bug.

if you are running your machine as a server. and http://localhost/ works. Well if you type in http://safari.com you get the same thing as http://localhost/ even if you add files lilke:

http://safari.com/mrt/index.php etc.

pretty funny.

Posted by: Mike Essl at January 9, 2003 2:01 PM

I work for an Apple dealer here in Canada, and I am under the strong suspicion that the desktop PowerMacs will be updated soon after January 17. They'll need to add Bluetooth and Airport Extreme to the existing 15'2" PowerBooks pretty fast, too. If you don't need these, there could be some pretty good deals coming on existing models.

Posted by: James at January 9, 2003 10:39 PM

Four years ago you ask? How about eight.

"Apple accounts for 3.62 percent of personal computers shipped in 2001, according to IDC Research. The company shipped 11.5 percent of personal computers in 1994."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24678-2003Jan7.html

Posted by: Woody at January 10, 2003 3:10 AM

Mike Essl:

Are you sure?

I don't get that. I go to http://safaritelex.com when I type in http://safari.com.

Safari also doesn't support:

body {
background-image: url(image.gif);
}

Posted by: Hartmurmur at January 10, 2003 12:37 PM

All browsers have bugs. But perhaps the biggest annoyance of Safari (aside from the lack of ability to turn off font smoothing) is that *Lucida Grande 16pt* is the default font!

Perhaps Apple is making a conscious effort to design software products that look particularly good with the wee pixels on a Cinema Di$play. For us mere mortals, it looks like C-R-A-P.

Posted by: Bklyn John at January 10, 2003 3:55 PM