Saftari / journal / hicksdesign

27/04/04

Saftari

Saft has been updated yet again. It was only a week or so ago when Hao Li added the ability to save and restore windows and tabs on quit. Now, check out these new additions:

New feature: Customizable HTTP timeout
New feature: Separator in bookmark menu
New feature: Control-1 to 9 to popup bookmark menu or open bookmark
Improvement: Saft contextual menu items for shortcuts grouped in sub-menus
Improvement: Open new tab for shortcut searching from contextual menu when holding down the option key

Look at that second one. Separators! I wrote to Hao Li asking for this feature, but never thought he would actually do it. How good is that?! The guy is putting Apple to shame with his development speed.

So Hao, if you’re listening. Here’s my next request to keep you busy.

Technorati Tags Tags: osx, plugins, safari, saft

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Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Dysfnuksional.Monkey said 1716 days ago:

Just wondering, after seeing all these updates and such, along with the reviews, whether anyone knows of a port (or suchlike) of Safari to Linux? I understand that Safari is based on the default browser under KDE, but I don't use that window manager in preference of xFce (on slackware).

It would be nice to see how it runs.

Jon Hicks said 1716 days ago:

I think its very unlikely. So much of Safari is tied up with the OS.

Byron McCollum said 1716 days ago:

The rendering engine is open source. The browser (Safari) isn't. Never gonna happen.

hangon said 1716 days ago:

try out konqueror

Dysfnuksional.Monkey said 1716 days ago:

Thats the name of it! Couldn't remember for the life of me. I'll give it a try.

Seem a shame really. I'm sure if apple released Safari with for other platforms with a small cost, say <$50, lots of people would buy it. I'm sure I would, after hearing all the reviews.

GM said 1715 days ago:

Apple doesn't tend to release software for other platforms, at least not often. Afterall, they are a hardware company.

Releasing a browser like Safari for other platforms not only costs them a lot of money to develop and support, but it takes value away from the Mac platform.

Paul said 1715 days ago:

I'm probably staring right at it but.....where is the bookmark separator? I don't see anything about it in the preferences pane or in the bookmark menu. Anybody?

Jon HIcks said 1715 days ago:

It says in the read me file.

You have to put in new bookmark folder and label it - (Just -, nothing else_)

Then when you view your menus, you get a proper separator. It doesn't look so nice in the bookmark manager, but great elsewhere.

Dysfnuksional.Monkey said 1715 days ago:

"Releasing a browser like Safari for other platforms [...] takes value away from the Mac platform."

I'm not too sure about that.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who wonders what using apple would be like, but doesn't have the cash handy to go out and purchase one. I'd also hate to find that I've forked out a wad of money for a system that I couldn't use, get used to, or even liked.

I've been essentially "brought up" on windows - its been the environment of choice for my school and for all of my previous employers. I'm slowly switching my home network over to linux at the moment, mainly because I find more and more companies are using it, but also because I think XP is extortionate for what you're getting, which in my view is Win2K with bells and whistles.

Knoppix helped to change my mind about linux. Maybe a few "taster" products for other platforms would just be what apple needs to make those dubious users take that extra step?

#10

Jon HIcks said 1715 days ago:

The thing is, what makes Safari so special is that its been developed especially for the Mac. With the exception of maybe Omniweb, its the first time a Mac browser hasn't been ported from a PC. Mac users have got fed up with being a developers second thought.

In terms of features, Safari is quite lacking, which is why the Saft plug-in is so good. Apart from its speed (Camino and Firefox are a match these days), and its good looks, what is it that PC users want to get from a PC port of Safari?

#11

julik said 1713 days ago:

If you are running other window manager you can easily start up konqueror by just typing the name in the terminal (assuming you have KDE installed, of course - but I think you can install konqueror without KDE as well)

#12

shmuel said 1710 days ago:

The only reason I could see Safari being ported to Linux/Windows would be to increase it's dominance in the market place and thus increase the number of developers that take it into account when developing.

This argument is countered however by Safari's high value on standards compliance. It doesn't seem they are trying to create a browser for developers to code for but instead a browser that renders "well-written code" correctly.

I agree with you Jon, I too wish for more features, but I guess in the end it's a good problem to have. I'd rather Apple focus on making sure that their browser renders the web "correctly" than spend all their time adding new wiz-bang features (not that I assume that's what you're asking for). It seems the other big corporate browser maker has all but given up on improving their standards compliance because they're focused on building bad HTML into the core of their OS.

#13

Jon Hicks said 1710 days ago:

True, although as far as I know, different developers work on the rendering engine and the actual browser bit. Its almost a year since 1.0 came out, and although we've seen improvements in rendering, the features have been barely touched. It may that they never will, if like Camino, they intend it to be a lightweight fast browser.

But, yeah, you're right, getting thee display right is the most important issue!

#14

Jon Hicks said 1710 days ago:

Shmuel - very nice site by the way!!