How about a Safari thread?  Seems to have heightened importance after Monday’s announcements.

We could include opinions on Safari vs. Firefox.  And we could discuss Safari strengths and weaknesses, as well as features we’d like to see.

And of course news.  I’ll kick it off with this criticism of Safari security when running under Windows.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Day_One_for_Safari_for_Windows_Becomes_ZeroDay_Nightmare/1181661606

Re: Safari

[quote author=“capablanca”]How about a Safari thread?  Seems to have heightened importance after Monday’s announcements.

We could include opinions on Safari vs. Firefox.  And we could discuss Safari strengths and weaknesses, as well as features we’d like to see.

And of course news.  I’ll kick it off with this criticism of Safari security when running under Windows.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Day_One_for_Safari_for_Windows_Becomes_ZeroDay_Nightmare/1181661606

Complaining Safari isn’t secure on Windows is like claiming a house isn’t secure with all of the doors and windows left open because someone didn’t put a screen on the dryer vent.

Re: Safari

[quote author=“capablanca”]We could include opinions on Safari vs. Firefox.  And we could discuss Safari strengths and weaknesses, as well as features we’d like to see.

Safari’s primary strength over Firefox is it has the backing of Apple. It’s an established and generally respected company that has widespread recognition in a way that Mozilla.org does not. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Likewise, it can benefit from word of mouth promotion from all the Mac users who already like it. It’s also good that Safari for Windows removes any excuse web developers might have had to not test their sites with it.

That said, Safari has its weaknesses. While it is technically superior to Internet Explorer, it doesn’t necessarily have a leg up on Firefox for people considering an alternate browser. One of the major draws for Firefox is its add-ons (extensions and themes.) Safari has neither, and it does not look or feel like a native Windows app so users had better be OK with that because they can’t easily change it. It also lacks any distinctive features that set it apart from either IE or Firefox, and is arguably limited in the type and scope of preferences one can set. The only unique features I can think of are SnapBack (which I have never used) and resizable form fields. Resizable form fields are nice but they won’t be a clincher for most people—especially since extensions allow Firefox to have them, too .

In short, Safari’s strength lies in its brand and its weakness is its lack of anything that truly sets the product apart from the competition. I guess we’ll see soon enough which has greater power—the extensibility of Firefox or Apple Inc.‘s backing of Safari.

Extensions and themes are for geeks. Most people take what they are given. Safari obviously won’t put IE or Firefox out of the market.

Safari’s big advantages are: it’s the only browser on iPhone (or any future iPod with WiFi), it runs on XP, Vista and Mac (unlike IE), it has the backing of a large corporation, and Microsoft heavyweight opponent Google has its CEO on Apple’s board.

As regards the security vulnerabilities, this is a beta release. In fact, if Apple wanted to use some form of the proof reader’s formula, they might leave some vulnerabilities in deliberately, in order to obtain an estimate of how many vulnerabilities there are altogether. Equally, you could say that the only vulnerabilities that count are the ones other people find, so there’s no point to trying to find them all yourself.

Safari for Windows 3.01 is available—with security fixes.

Betas are for finding the flaws and correcting them, right?

I wish Safari had one Firefox feature I like: the ability to restore sessions after a crash. I wish Firefox had one Safari feature I like: not crashing.

[quote author=“willrob”]I wish Safari had one Firefox feature I like: the ability to restore sessions after a crash. I wish Firefox had one Safari feature I like: not crashing.

Well said!

[quote author=“willrob”]I wish Safari had one Firefox feature I like: the ability to restore sessions after a crash. I wish Firefox had one Safari feature I like: not crashing.

You obviously haven’t been using the new Safari 3 beta, which has exactly this feature

i wish safari had the omniweb feature I like the most “workspaces” which is one huge step beyond restoring sessions but saving sets of windows (each holding different web address) , which can be changed from one set to another with the clik of a button .
you can also restore the set to a default set or leave to load as you left the set when you changed to another set or as they were when you last closed the browser down .

if effect this means that you can save different sets for different browsing purposes change from one set to another and have the browser load all the pages of the new set for you with out having to load a book mark or type an address into the address bar .
this makes browsing much more efficient . I have multiple sets for different purposes . banking . aapl research , music reviews , tv guides reviews etc etc and can change from one to another as I have said with the clik of a button or via a drop down menu .

this is a killer feature and easily makes up for some of the lag that omniweb has in bringing up the minute features of bleeding edge web2 .
this is a very sophisticated and powerful feature takes a little while to set up initially but once you get used to it you never want to go back to a standard browser .
it is possible to have just one set and either restore the workspac to its default set of web pages or retain the last pages you had left open when you shut the application down . 

anybody who is interested should try it . I don’t think there is another browser that has this feature .It is the main reason why i use omniweb over any other browser .

another very worthwhile feature which omniweb has is it is searchable for text inside the pages text you have loaded for a (changeable) nominated period . I am not talking about searching the history of the page addresses you have loaded but the actual text loaded on those pages . so if you can correctly spell a word that was on any of the pages that you have loaded for your nominated history cache period omniweb can find the particular page(S) that this text was on without you having to remember the actual page title name or the web address of the page . Omni will display them for you .
According to the size or your history cache this is a quite an processor or memory intense feature and omni would crawl doing this on my old g4 1.25 ghz powerbook but it is not to cumbersome on my macbook with a three month size cache .

I like how safari has incorporated and improved upon firefoxes search page text feature which was firefoxes killer feature if you ask me . I regularly used this feature when book keeping to search online bank statements for past transactions by far the easiest browser to do this with . Now I will use safari instead for this purpose as omni doesn’t perform as well with this .

I think what apple needs to do with safari in order to gain a good traction with windows users (apart from making it secure stable and run the web2 features require for the iphone) is cannibalize and incorporate all the best features from various browsers as they have done with many other features of their operating system like how they did with the predecessor of widgets was it confabulator . and browser tabs from firefox etc

my two bobs worth

[quote author=“sunfish”]i wish safari had the omniweb feature I like the most “workspaces” which is one huge step beyond restoring sessions but saving sets of windows (each holding different web address) , which can be changed from one set to another with the clik of a button .
you can also restore the set to a default set or leave to load as you left the set when you changed to another set or as they were when you last closed the browser down .

If you add the “Saft” extension by Helios to Safari, you get precisely this feature (and many many others).

Sunfish, I totally agree regarding OmniWeb and workspaces. I wasn’t aware of the history text search feature. That sounds really handy. I fell out of love with OmniWeb when it was suffering a lot of speed issues, but most, if not all, of those have now been resolved. I guess I’m just used to using Safari now. Perhaps I should take another look at OW.

I wish every page I visited were included in spotlight searches for the next 3 years.

Re: Safari

[quote author=“capablanca”]How about a Safari thread?  Seems to have heightened importance after Monday’s announcements.

We could include opinions on Safari vs. Firefox.  And we could discuss Safari strengths and weaknesses, as well as features we’d like to see.

And of course news.  I’ll kick it off with this criticism of Safari security when running under Windows.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Day_One_for_Safari_for_Windows_Becomes_ZeroDay_Nightmare/1181661606

Well Apple already released 3.01 update for Windows to improve security already, so I think they will fix any of the problems very quickly if it is brought to there attention. Oh the release is for Windows only as none of the issues effects the Mac.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“willrob”]I wish Safari had one Firefox feature I like: the ability to restore sessions after a crash. I wish Firefox had one Safari feature I like: not crashing.

You obviously haven’t been using the new Safari 3 beta, which has exactly this feature

I am using the beta but it hasn’t crashed, so I was unaware.

[quote author=“willrob”][quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“willrob”]I wish Safari had one Firefox feature I like: the ability to restore sessions after a crash. I wish Firefox had one Safari feature I like: not crashing.

You obviously haven’t been using the new Safari 3 beta, which has exactly this feature

I am using the beta but it hasn’t crashed, so I was unaware.

Works if you’ve quit too, not just crashed. Go to the HISTORY menu, and you’ll see “Reopen All Windows From Last Session.”

There’s also a handy “Reopen Last Closed Window” too.

[quote author=“Tommo_UK”][quote author=“sunfish”]i wish safari had the omniweb feature I like the most “workspaces” which is one huge step beyond restoring sessions but saving sets of windows (each holding different web address) , which can be changed from one set to another with the clik of a button .
you can also restore the set to a default set or leave to load as you left the set when you changed to another set or as they were when you last closed the browser down .

If you add the “Saft” extension by Helios to Safari, you get precisely this feature (and many many others).

Saft for Safari 3

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32651