Safari on PC anyone ?

[Why Syzygy]

My current browser.

Evidently there isn't a >right click< >select all< ? Do you know of any way to 'select all' in text boxes?

[charlie]

1. Make sure the text box has focus

then -- CTRL-A. CTRL-C to copy. CTRL-V to paste. CTRL-Z to undo the last action.

Safari automatically highlights all when I right-click. It's not doing that for you?

[Why Syzygy]

2. Okay.

Yes. CTRL-A selects the entire text. That's what I needed. It's just odd not to see it in the right click menu.

Thanks! :hi:

[Why Syzygy]

3. Is Safari your primary browser?

And do you use Windopes or Linux?

There are a few tweaks I don't like. Overall it's pretty good. I ditched IE for now because it kept crashing while loading a page of youtube playlists. Since then, I've decommissioned the dumprep process, and that might make a difference.

Safari has little tracers on some of the DU .gifs.
AFAICD there is no way to get ALL links to open in a new tab rather than new window. Have to use Rclick "open in new tab". :grr:

Edit: Oh! Ctrl click . soz

[charlie]

4. Uh-uh

And I'm a Windows user, Linux dabbler.

I install new versions of Safari, Chrome, and Opera occasionally to see how they're doing. It wasn't too long ago I would've never considered Safari ready for daily use, because it used its own font rendering instead of Window's native engine. The effect was like looking at text inside a fogged shower stall, thick and diffuse, really wearing on the eyes. Happily, it works fine in newer releases.

Use CTRL-click to avoid the menu.

[Why Syzygy]

5. I'm back ..

:blush: So, right click on an image, no "properties"? huh? Safari doesn't like Windows I'm guessing.
Is there another way besides "copy image address"? And that won't give the file size.

[charlie]

6. Both Safari and Chrome use Webkit

as their browser framework and that feature appears in neither, so I'm guessing it's something Apple developers don't deem important. I don't know of a way to get an image's filesize w/o downloading it either. It's an odd omission.

Opera, of course, has it. Be aware though, that Opera's newest release (Opera 10) includes a P2P web server, something you ought to know if you're just looking for a straight-ahead browser. Opera 9.64 is still available as the featured release on Opera's homepage.

[charlie]

7. Firefox 3.5 just landed

Downloading it now. You might want to check this one out, it's a big upgrade.

[struggle4progress]

8. I haven't seen 3.5 but Firefox is my choice when working under Windows

[charlie]

9. I'm keen on seeing what the new javascript engine can do

Although I surf with javascript blocked for most sites, some of the ones I allow are so javascript intensive they can bog and chew up a lot of CPU cycles. The new engine is supposed to be a magnitude faster.

I just looked at DailyMotion's HTML 5 embedded video demo. It wouldn't stream, only played after fully downloaded, and playback was choppy. Their implementation could stand a little optimizing. Otherwise, it was nifty seeing a video run natively without plugins.

[Why Syzygy]

10. Well, I'm boycotting Firefox.

I just don't remember why. Other than I didn't like updating it every few days.
The last update really messed up; and when I tried to remove it, I had to reformat my HD.
It was an EU error, I'm sure.

I was unhappy it with it before the reformat.
But reading the reviews today make it very tempting:
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ncl=dTod98iGaqVG7PM3wEaDVyK-0piTM&topic=t

[Why Syzygy]

11. Give a report. Please. nt

[charlie]

12. Rendering is much snappier

Sites with a lot of graphics, like YouTube or Google image search, used to paint progressively where you could see the images appear serially in markup order. Now, it's close to instantaneous, a full page of images are rendered at once.

Over at Digg, where the comments are laid out using javascript, there used to be minor lags as elements were positioned. The process is much more brisk now. Fetching additional comments through their AJAX system happens a lot more quickly too.

So far, I'm liking what I've seen.

[charlie]

13. Side by side with Opera

Firefox is the faster page renderer. Way faster.

It keeps up with Chrome, with one advantage. Chrome tends to seize if you scroll into the not-fully-rendered-yet sections of a page, not so with Firefox.

The "busy" cursor seems to have disappeared. Don't know if it's intentional or not, but it's giving me a lot of moments where I think clicking a link didn't work. I don't like it.

[Why Syzygy]

14. Are you referring to FF

blinking cursor? You don't like that 'feature' or in general?

[charlie]

16. No, I mean the hourglass "busy" cursor

The one you'd get when clicking a link until the page began streaming. It's gone! Click a link now and you get no feedback on whether it worked or not. I don't like that.

[charlie]

15. The History menu

has Recently Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows selections, in case you forget the key combo.

There's also a Restore From Last Session menu item. The cool part is it allows you to select/unselect windows/tabs from the last session before spawning them. So, if a page crashes the browser, you're no longer locked into a crash-restore-crash loop.

[charlie]

17. The CTRL+ text zoom

now triggers a full page zoom, including images. Text-only zoom is now a menu item, with no key combo. I don't much like that. Give text zoom a key combo!

[charlie]

18. View-source

now turns stylesheet and script URLs into links. Even relative URLs are expanded into functional links. So, now you can view them with just a click. Very nice.

[Why Syzygy]

19. lol ..

You're really giving us a look all the way to the guts! Sweet.

I don't like key combos. I never even memorized "copy/cut/paste" with key combos. I'm a right clicker.
The more I can do with one hand, the better.

[charlie]

20. I don't mind right-clicking

What I do mind though, is having to select View from the top menu bar, scrolling to Zoom, waiting for the submenu to appear, then selecting Zoom Text Only. For a single iteration. Repeat 5 times to zoom 5 times. Forgetting to set a combo for that was a mistake.

[Why Syzygy]

22. I like the zoom text buttons on Safari.

As you know, the default text size can be set also. And text density. Very nice.

I'm just unhappy with the sparse right click options.

[charlie]

25. I never noticed that before

I just looked at Safari's toolbar customization menu and there they are, lol. Odd that Firefox doesn't offer the same, it's a pretty common feature.

[Why Syzygy]

27. I can't get the auto fill to work.

It is trying to use the address book in Outlook Express it looks like. 'Send mail' is also defaulting to OE. Maybe if I uninstall the component...

[charlie]

29. As long as Safari and Chrome

are in beta, they're going to be somewhat half-baked. Especially Safari, carrying over Mac conventions into the Windows world.

I don't know if it's definitive or even correct, but the second guy in this thread explains why you can't choose a default email client for Safari:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7673428

[charlie]

21. If you have MS .NET

the add-on it helpfully installs without advance warning is now incompatible and is therefore set to 'disabled.' So there, MicroChumps.

[charlie]

23. There's a new option

in Privacy options to start every instance as a private browsing session.

[charlie]

24. I don't know if this is new or not

It's new to me.

For a while, you've been able to block images from a site by right-clicking on an image and selecting 'Block images from SITE_NAME'. Unblocking a blocked site was a hassle: Tools --> Options --> Content --> Load images automatically --> Exceptions --> scroll through the list and remove.

Now, if you right-click and choose Page Info, under the Media tab is a checkbox for blocking/unblocking. Much easier.

[Duer 157099]

43. Nope, not new

although now that you've pointed it out, it's new to me, too

I'm still using 3.0.11 because apparently one of my few plug ins is not supported on 3.5 (DeskCut)

[charlie]

26. The tearable, rearrangible tabs work as advertised

About time, too. It's simple -- drag to reorder tabs, or drag them outside the browser window for a new window (or onto another window to add to its tab collection).

[charlie]

28. Wow

The rendering on this Canvas demo just got smo-o-o-o-th and slick, even better than Opera and Chrome. That's definitely an improvement.

http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/

[charlie]

30. Google docs is way faster

Scroll quickly through the pages on a book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=lhnf6yFPimEC&printsec=frontcover&num=20

If you get significant delays when hitting pages that haven't been fetched yet, they'll be gone in FF3.5. The fetch-to-render time is now almost nil.

[RoyGBiv]

36. Yup ...

Google Docs are almost usable now.

Even the spreadsheet app, which has royally sucked the few times I've tried to use it, actually seems like it might allow me to test it again. With some of the stuff I do, it sure would be a lot easier to do a simple spreadsheet as a Google Doc than shuttle different versions back and forth through e-mail.

[charlie]

31. Nice HTML5 video demo here

It allows you to apply CSS filters and transforms to the video in real time:

http://www.mozbox.org/jdll/video.xhtml

[charlie]

32. This is even more impressive

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml

[RoyGBiv]

33. Slate Review

The best thing about the new Firefox is that it gives us a peek at the Internet of tomorrow. Since 2007, the World Wide Web Consortium, the international standards body that sets common technical definitions for the Web, has been working on HTML 5, an update to the coding language that defines every page you visit online. Although the consortium has yet to publish its final specifications for the new standard, many browser companies have been incorporating features of the language in their latest releases. Firefox 3.5 offers the best implementation of the standard—and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language. In other words, Firefox isn't just an upgrade for your computer; it could well prompt a re-engineering of the Web itself.

More ...

FWIW, performance on Linux is vastly improved.

I compiled it from source is started a new profile for it and so can compare them side-by-side. This is a major improvement with regard to speed.

[charlie]

34. A-ha!

Thanks for that, Roy. I had the niggling feeling I was getting carried away by confirmation bias, since I got the happy itches after the first 10 minutes. It's good to know that it IS as zippy as it feels.

BTW, that missing Wait cursor I was complaining about above -- it was intentional. They need to put it back:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482985

[RoyGBiv]

35. It's more noticeable on Linux, I think ...

I've got three separate tests going.

First is just FF 3.5 on Linux.

Second is FF 3.5 in a virtual Windows machine on my Linux bos.

Third is FF 3.5 on Windows proper.

It's faster in all three, but in Linux, it's dramatic. I've had some intermittently serious issues with Firefox under Linux, mostly massive slowdowns, freezes, and a general feeling of sluggishness. Some of this has been caused by database files getting dirty and huge, but not all of it. It's never seemed as fast or responsive even with things like menu bloom, button clicks, and the like. This version still doesn't seem as zippy as it does under Windows, but the difference is far less noticeable to my eye so far.

Crazily enough, running Windows in a virtual machine, opening FF there then also opening it in the Linux host and doing a comparison of those side by side previously is how I confirmed that it was just all-around slower in Linux. Imagine: FF in a *virtual machine* ran faster than on the host OS. Odd, that.

To check myself, I reconfigured so 3.5 was using my old profile, the reason being that I'd had slow-downs on the previous versions simply because certain support files in the profile directory got so big. That didn't seem to do anything negative, so at this point I'm taking it as a confirmation that the performance increase is real and not just perception.

[charlie]

37. Now, that's a sad state

Faster in the virtual machine? It sounds like a prank you'd pull on somebody in a test lab. Any clues from from Slashdot? I'm sure they're squalling about it. Maybe some sub-optimal middle-way configuration to fit all distros?

I'll install it in Linux later and see what it's like. FF3 had become so lumpy in Windows the Linux experience was only marginally worse.

I'll tell you what, though. This horserace between browsers has gotten manic and it's the BEST TIME EVER time for users. I remember when the Linux crowd was nervous as hell about the fate of Netscape, because Navigator and wobbly Konqueror were the only choices they had.

[RoyGBiv]

38. I should clarify ...

KDE 4.x is the problem, not running it on Linux itself.

And, yeah, there's been complaints, but given the level of howling about various performance issues with KDE 4.x, this one comes across as minor.

I'm a glutton for punishment I guess. I've apparently taken a job filing and commenting on bug reports with KDE. I don't know when that happened. :)

You're right about the horse race. This is precisely what proponents have always said about the influence of open source. This is *real* competition we're experiencing, and there's enough quality now with several browsers that it's become a real debate.

[charlie]

39. Oh, KDE

I'll see what it's like in Gnome, then. It's funny, there was a time I didn't want to know from Gnome, it was too opaque, too austere... too much like Windows. Strap in, we'll do the driving. Now, I like it.

I haven't seen KDE 4, I've been worried my plonky box won't be able to handle it. But the last few times I put in KDE distros... whoo. They were a melange of triplicated utilities, between KDE and the distro it seemed like there was always a dozen ways to do the same thing. Are you still using Suse? It's not like that, is it? Suse is one of the major distros I've never tried.

You said it, about open source. It's become dangerously disruptive on a lot of fronts... and it's a bee-yoo-ti-ful thing to see.

[RoyGBiv]

40. SuSE sucks ...

Still, I am using it, sorta.

And it is like that. It has everything and four kitchen sinks.

To make it tolerable, I compiled my own custom kernel and stripped the system itself of two thirds (at least) of the crap the installer puts in there by default, that monstrosity desktop search indexer Beagle getting the axe immediately. It runs pretty clean now.

I've stayed with it for the past few months because, oddly enough, it has one of the better KDE 4 implementations I've found, and I have become somewhat obsessed with it. Kubuntu is horrid, or I'd use that because I prefer the Debian way of doing things internally.

Actually, Mandriva was good, but in the end I opted for the distro I knew well while dealing with the KDE issues. Knowing precisely where to get help and understanding the structure of the whole thing intimately lessens the frustrations. I've pretty much got KDE running without much of a hiccup these days.

One of KDE's problems is simply that it has not yet reached "milestone" status, despite being on version 4.2.x at the moment. It's BETA with some major bugs still floating around. Plus, some near-core apps have *still* not been updated for KDE 4, so you've got all this legacy crap in there just so some of these apps can work properly.

It's pretty though. Reminds me of Vista a lil' bit, only without the price tag and the freak of a CEO. :)

[charlie]

41. Well then

I'll give Mandriva a shot. I haven't seen it since it was Mandrake, the first distro I installed. Back when they had the first whiz-bang graphic installer... from HELL :D The app selection screen was the largest page of radio buttons and collapsible nodes in the history of the world, any choice you made would set off an earthquake of changes as dependencies were picked up and dropped. It turned out to be a preview of what the installed OS was like, ornate and baroque, with servers and daemons running amok under the floorboards.

Kubuntu is nasty, I agree. Surprisingly, I found Xubuntu lousy too. I had hopes it would be spritelier than Ubuntu, but it wasn't. Just uglier.

With all the facility you've picked up from working the guts of your distro, it sounds like you're ready to roll your own. Have you considered it?

[RoyGBiv]

42. Considered it ...

There's two things that stop me. The first is time. I'm a lil' bit obsessive about such things, and when I get involved in something like that, I'll forget food (and work that pays me) while trying to work out a puzzle. The second thing is that I know what I know but have some significant gaps in my knowledge that would make it a true learning experience, thus invoking reason #1.

When/if I get back this spare system I loaned someone (6 months ago) I had intended either to do a Linux from Scratch project on it or put Slackware on it and modify the hell out of it.