Porn Vote of Confidence

HTML5 has long been promoted by Apple, Google, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, etc. as the future for the web. Apple even went as far as not supporting Flash on its mobile platforms (iOS) to further promotes the use of HTML5 in web site development.

Apple’s decision caused a major war of words between Adobe and Apple, plus all sort of underhanded tactics from both companies in an attempt to cripple the other’s technology/platform. Adobe recently released a new version of its mobile Flash, but it done so for almost all mobile platforms except for iOS. This is often seen as a retaliation of Apple’s modifications to its iOS Developers’ Terms of Use, to exclude tools like the one found in the latest Adobe’s Flash development environment.

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Do Not Install Safari 4 [Updated]

Safari LogoIf you rely on 1Password daily and does not want to use beta class software, I would NOT recommend installing the final release of Safari that Apple released last night (HKT).

The Safari 4.0 final version broke the 1Password plugin for Safari and the previous hack does not work.

The 1Password veresion that works with this version of Safari is the latest 2.9.19 beta 2 (build 7499), which according to the developers is a “final candidate”. So if you’re not the type who is comfortable using beta software, then you should not have too long to wait before 1Password 2.9.19 final is released.

[Update: June 9, 11:27 HKT]
Just received an update from Agile Web Solutions, they had finalized 2.9.19 and brought it out of Beta status. So it is now safe to upgrade to Safari 4.0 even if you use 1Password.

Microsoft’s Ballmer considers using WebKit within IE

Recently during a developer conference in Sydney Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the idea of using WebKit as the rendering engine within its web browser was “interesting” and added “we may look at that.”

I hope this is true, but one must always take anything Ballmer says with a grain of salt. He often speaks without thinking and without any background knowledge of what Microsoft is actually doing with regards to the subject in question.

Of course, if this is really true, it will not be the first time Microsoft admit defeat with regards to their bloated browser, Internet Explorer. When Microsoft released 7.0 version and announced 8.0 version of it Internet Explorer, they admitted that their approach in the past had been wrong and they promise to do a better job to comply with Standards; established by W3C. With IE 8.0 that compliancy is starting to take shape, but it is still far from the compliant status of its competitors: Apple Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera’s Opera, etc. Therefore, the adoption of WebKit as its engine for future version of IE will accelerate its compliance to Standards and gaining the capabilities of the current fastest Javascript engine in the Internet world.

Most of all it will cause all those lazy web developers who only code their web site to work on IE’s quirky mode to finally wake up and start to follow the W3C standards.

I call upon all web developers to not wait for Microsoft and start coding to the W3C standards and then make exceptions for IE, and not the other way around. This is because even if Microsoft does not adopt WedKit its IE 8.0 will be more compliant to W3C and will be must less lenient to web sites that are not compliant, causing these web sites to just FAIL.

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My Impressions of Safari 3

On Monday Apple Inc. released the Beta version of the next major version of Safari at the opening keynote of WWDC ’07 (2007 Worldwide Developers Conference). Apple released versions for Mac OS 10.4.x, Mac OS 10.5, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Since my primary system is Mac OS 10.4.9, I only downloaded this version for review and my impressions below are only based on this version.

Before I start I want to give everyone a little background. Last week when a vulnerability was found in both Internet Explorer and Firefox I switch back to Safari 2. It had been almost 4 years since I use Safari as my primary browser, and I was surprised to find that Safari felt faster than FireFox 2 (my previous primary browser). Now with Safari 3, it is even faster. Of course this is non-scientific and it is based on real life usage of it for a week.

I operate an online retail business, Vinko’s Treasures, and the backend system for my operation is completely web based. So I noticed the speed improvements right away only after a few days.

In Safari 3 I did not find too many new features or features that are better than FireFox. Most of the new features in Safari 3 are just catch up features to the default (without any 3rd party Extensions) FireFox 2. These being:

  • Inline search: rather than having a dialog that pops up for the user to enter the search term. Safari 3 now displays a thin bar (“Search Bar”) at top of the browser just below the Tab Bar or Bookmark Bar; depending on what you have visible. After the results are found, Safari will dim the entire page and highlights the found terms on the page. 

    Safari 3 Search



  • Movable Tabs: you can now drag the Tabs back and forth. Rearranging them in any order you like.

    Movable Tabs



The new feature I found so far, is what the user can do with Tabs. They can take a tab like the one above on the right and open it in a new window. This can be accomplished by performing a Control + Click (or right click) on the Tab Label, which brings up a contextual menu. From here you then choose the menu item “Move Tab to New Window”.

The “Mac” way of doing the same thing is just to drag the Tab out of the Tab Bar and let go, like you would with icons on the Dock or Finder Sidebar. Unlike these other User Interface elements, doing so here will cause a miniature version of the Tab window content to show for a second, then a new browser window with the Tab window content will open.

As with Expose activation, holding down the Shift key will cause the animation of this behaviour to be in slow motion.

Tab in New Window



All in all I am fairy happy with Safari 3. It did install a new WebKit so some of the Widget I use in Dashboard no longer works, but that is expected for a “Beta” classification application.

Due to my work, I do use Mail, Dashboard and Safari 18 hours a day. So far I have encountered no crashes; knock on wood.

Safari on Windows

Finally our Windows user friends can have yet another full (W3C) Standards compliant browser to choose from: among the likes of Firefox and Opera.

With Microsoft admitting their mistakes in Internet Explorer over the years and finally began their own compliance to the W3C Standards with the release of IE 7. May be the lazy web developers (specifically ones in the Financial and Real Estate industries), who still code their web sites only for Windows version of Internet Explorer will finally start to recode their web sites with W3C Standards compliance.

One can only hope that this is an indication of a bright new beginning.

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