by steelie -

Apple Releases Safari 3.1…

Picture 5
Picture 5

Apple released Safari 3.1 today. While it’s not completely VOX compatible, it appears to be 95% there. As far as I can tell, the only things that don’t seem to work are the “Decrease & Increase Text Size” buttons in the compose window. Otherwise, at first glance, it appears to be mightly VOX-o-riffic.

If you plan on downloading it, the install will require a restart so, plan accordingly. ;^)
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steelie

[UPDATE]
Well, in an older “Ask Team Vox” post, I was part of the ongoing threaded conversation trying to figure out some of Safari’s incompatibility issues and exploring alternatives.

An ongoing issue with VOX’s QotD formatting (that I wasn’t previously aware of… clearly I don’t use it enough) was brought up by Rube Burrow:

Still not able to answer the QotD in Safari – the text stays in the “quoted" style of the initial question. No idea why this is the case – even with Safari 3.1 on Mac or Windows. Any movement on this?


Now, see… I have this problem where I can’t help trying to trouble-shoot things that, more often than not, are way over my head. Luckily, every once in a while, things fall into place…

I figured out a little work-around for the QotD issue… on the Mac version of Safari at least anyway — unable to test it on a PC. Right after you click on the Qotd “Post your Answer” button, in the “Compose” window, give yourself a Return then click the “Begin Blockquote” button then the “End Blockquote” button. This will remove the “quoted” formatting and restore the indent to what it would have originally been before the “quoted style was added.

Additionally, as mentioned above, the other big (only?) shortfall I can find, so far, is in VOX’s “Compose” window where the “Decrease Text Size” and “Increase Text Size” buttons don’t work properly. My pseudo little work-around for this one is to select the text you wish to format and Control+Click (or Right-Click) to bring up the system’s Contextual Menu and select “Font > Show Fonts”. You can change the text’s size as well as most other formatting options.

Hope this helps.
—
steelie

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by steelie -

Apple’s Safari 3.0 Beta for the Mac… and the PC. Oh, and Camino 1.5 for the Mac… sorry PC.

So, today was the ever popular (for all the Mac-addicts out there) World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) where Apple (and other companies of course) usually announce a whole new slew of products or upgrades or technologies or… well you get my drift.

I just want to keep this post brief, as I have work to do today, so I’ll get right to the point… Today Apple released a huge update to their web browser Safari to version 3.0 Beta AND ported the application to run on Windows XP and Vista. I know that the previous version of Safari didn’t really play nice with Vox… and there wasn’t anything that the lovely folks here at Vox could do; it was a Safari problem.

WELL…

When I found out that that Apple had just released a new version of their browser — which, incidentally, I had abandoned because it didn’t really play well with Vox or other “Web 2.0” sites — naturally, I had to download it immediately and try it right away. So far, it LOOOVES Vox… uh… but not so much Inbox.com (my webmail)… oops nor LiveJournal…

Hmmmm… This post is turning out to be more of an “Oh, never mind” entry than I had originally intended. I guess that’s what I guess for reviewing the update as I test it.

Well, the upgrade does indeed bring some good enhancements. Safari finally allows you to use all of the rich-text formatting features Vox and LiveJournal offer without having to use HTML code. Safari also does spell-check on the fly for any site you are using… including your status on Facebook.com. For those of you who are Tab fanatics like myself… Safari has drag and drop tabs so you can shuffle the order as desired — cool but the more I play with it, the less I realise it’s all that necessary.

Okay… I’m stopping now… I really wanted this entry to be short and precise. Looks like I blog like I talk… no exit strategy. ;^)

Summary: Safari 3.0 Beta is waaaaaay better for Vox now. But. It’s apparently still missing features I need.
Remedy to  Safari’s problems: Camino 1.5. Works with any “Web 2.0” site I’ve tried. Spell-checks on the fly just like Safari. Ad-blocker (that’s right I have an add-free Vox… seriously!). Pop-up window blocker / pop-up window warning bar. And more…

UPDATE: WTF! SAFARI DOES NOT HAVE A LINK BUTTON!!!

Okay… to be authentic to my test I composed this post using Safari but when I went back to add hot-links for Safari and Camino, I realised that Safari doesn’t have a “Link” button. I actually had to finish the post In Camino.

F*cking nice. Skip Safari fellow MacVoxers and MacLJers. Download Camino and save yourselves a headache.
*curses under breath*
—
steelie

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by steelie -

Well, the Camino web browser it is then…

Thanks to Mena for the Camino reminder!!

Fellow Mac users… I do believe this is the one…

I used to use it years ago when I had gone on an anti-MS spree, before I was able to upgrade to OS X to get Safari.  I’ve just downloaded it again…  I had fogotten how nice it is. For anyone who’s looking for that Safari alternative but doesn’t was to go to Firefox, Camino is that great little middle ground between the two. Now, it doesn’t have the same level of customizability as Firefox but it was built specifically for OS X so it behaves in a much more Mac-like way.

Also, if any of you are interested in customizing things like I am you should go to pimpmycamino.com to see what’s available. I highly recommend the Camitools and Caminicons to tweak the look and feel.

One of my favourite interface features about Safari is the Address/Progress bar combo which, unfortunately, Camino does not have. However, in a very Mac-like way, Camino lets you shuffle around the Icons so you can at least place the spinning progress wheel next to the Address bar for some immediate visual feedback (see image below).

Thanks again for the Camino reminder, Mena.
Camino. Yeah. I’m all over it…

Oh, right. Camino also allows you to sync your bookmarks with an FTP server of your own choice and sync those bookmarks with other computers as well. NEAT!
—
steelie

Custom Camino
Custom Camino

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by steelie -

“Compose” test using Apple’s Safari 2.0.4 + latest Webkit build…

Okay, I have to admit… I’ve been known to be one of those pain in the ass people who occasionally feels it necessary to inform VOX of my thoughtful suggestions to make the site better (even though the more I use it, the more I realise how much it just kicks ass). Well, I think I may have posted ± three separate ”feedbacks” complaining about how Apple’s Safari’s incompatibility with VOX has been a source of frustration for me.


As per VOX’s suggestion (every time I try to compose a post in Safari) I finally decided to try Firefox. While it does allow most/all of the composing features one would need to successfully compose a post in VOX, it is thoroughly less pleasant to deal with on a regular basis… it's clunky… it doesn't do really some really simple things that you get spoiled by over in Safari.


For example…


When you go to type in the address in the URL bar it will auto-complete the entry with your most visited site with the same spelling AND provide a pull-down list of all other options — in order of most visited by ME. With Firefox you are presented with a pull-down list of the most recent places you’ve been which rarely includes my most visited places.


In Safari, I can choose to block or un-block pop-up windows from the FILE Menu or by simply pressing a keyboard shortcut… same for emptying the cache… and deleting history can be done from the HISTORY menu. There is no need  to open the preference panel  every time you've visited your online bank and you need to empty the cache of your personal information or delete history… novel ideas, I know.


The tabbed-browsing feature has the “close tab” button on the tab itself as oppose to the other side of the screen so you can close a tab in the background by means of this little button. Plus you can toggle from tab to tab using key-commands. With Firefox, you either have to highlight the tab then go click the button to close, or you have to right-click the tab and choose close from the pop-up menu… both ways take three to four times longer — I know, I know, we're only talking seconds here but they add up to frustration and interface friction.


Of course, you can install various extension to Firefox to increase its functionality including ones for closing the tabs and adding key-commands to allow for tab-toggling but the interface is still clunky.


In Safari, one of my favourite interface features is the Address Bar which is also the Progress Bar. So, as soon as you’ve entered your destination URL and pressed enter, the blue progress bar travels along the back of the Address Bar giving immediate feedback that things are working to get you where you need to go. In Firefox the progress bar is a bout an inch wide and tucked down in the bottom corner where you have to go searching for it every time…


ANYWAY…


Following another “suggestion” from the VOX team (more like a “swim at your own risk” statement than a suggestion really) I installed the latest nightly build of Webkit which promptly crashed Safari… brilliant. After restarting, however, I was pleased to find that I can now at least use some of the basic formatting tools. Specifically, the following: bold, italics, underline, left-align, centre-align and right-align. Colour me excited…


Oh well, it is getting there, slowly but surely… just too slowly for my liking.


BTW, for any one who cares, this entry was composed entirely using Safari with the latest nightly build of Webkit, except for the hyper-links and spell-checking, which were done in TextEdit.


Goodnight all.

—

steelie

[UPDATE]

I did a bit of searching and it turns out that you can also download an extention that will allow Firefox to combine the Address and Progress bars and it can be found here. It is way more intuitive than Firefox’s default Progress Bar so I (personally) highly recommend it.

I guess the personal goal for this will now be to try and make Firefox as Safari-like as possible.
I’ll start a running list of all the extensions I find to make life more Safarifox and bearable.

—
steelie

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by steelie -

Feedback sent 2006-08-17…

Oh, how I wish I could use HTML to code my posts…

I understand that the point of the interface is so that people who don’t know coding, don’t have to learn it… but for myself and other hardcore Safari junkies it would be great to be able to code. I use to be able to at least code for comments but now I can’t even do that.

Is it not possible? LJ has both. Even if the default option was the rich-text editor and people were given the chance to code if they wished.

I tried Firefox and I’m not a huge fan… and it’s a pain to switch browsers just to generate a blog entry.

If it weren’t possible, I’d understand but other blog platforms all seem to be able to offer the choice and I find it frustrating that VOX doesn’t.
—
steelie

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