Safari’s New Interface: A Shiny Mess
Though the Web browser has grown in importance and changed drastically in function since the first version of Netscape Navigator ruled a fledgling Web, its interface has not changed that drastically.
Though tabbed browsing introduced an important new element, most browsers sport forward and back buttons along with stop/reload buttons, an address bar and, more recently, a search box. Most browsers today look enough like Netscape Navigator 0.91 that few would be lost if they traveled back in time.
But lately there has been an attempt to shake that up some. First came Google Chrome, introducing the idea of tabs on top, and now comes the new beta of Safari 4, which adds even more new interface changes.
Though I’m always a fan of innovation, there’s a lot about these interface changes that bug me and not just the new “bug report” button. I’m admittedly no interface designer, but there are a lot of things that I would definitely do differently… Read more
Camino Beta 2: First Thoughts
About a year ago, I was prepared to write off Camino. With Firefox updating its interface to make it more Mac-friendly and improving its performance across all OSes every day, I was wondering aloud why there was a market for another Mac Firefox, specifically one without plugins or themes.
Sure, being built on Cocoa gives Camino a natural speed and memory advantage over its brother, but the difference, over all, has been barely noticeable and certainly not enough to propose switching to a browser with fewer features.
Personally, I was thinking that it was time to take the project behind the shed and put it out of its misery. It filled a nice niche when Firefox was being a jerk to Mac users but now that we’ve kissed and made up Camino seemed to be a third wheel in a very sordid love triangle.
So imagine my surprise when I found out not only that Camino had released a new version, but that it was a beta of 2.0. I was skeptical, to put it modestly, but decided to give it a try. I felt that I owed it to the old girl since she had comforted me when Firefox had me wanting to hang myself.
I have to say though that the surprise is indeed a pleasant one and this version of Camino just might become a real challenger for Firefox, at least until Chrome is release for the Mac in a meaningful way. Read more
Opera Pulls Out the Stops
Well, it appears that Opera has been listening, much to my surprise. It was just a week ago that published my article about five steps to fix Opera, the culmination of many years of my frustration with the browser, and yesterday they release a new alpha of their 10.0 browser, which addressed many of my issues.
Apparently, they had been listening and working on many of the problems for quite some time, just very quietly (perhaps they were also hunting rabbits).
But is it everything that I had hoped for? Well, not quite. However, it shows a great deal of promise and has a lot to offer for us Opera outcasts that have been pushed to using Firefox, Safari or Chrome because of how incomplete the Opera offering has been.
So what’s new and how well does it work? Here’s my breakdown of the latest features and how well they perform. Read more
5 Steps to Fixing Opera
Somewhere between the sleek look and simple stylings of Safari and the open source can-do-anything-but-make-you-breakfast feel of Firefox, there exists another browser. Opera.
Opera is the almost forgotten brother of the browser war. Though Internet Explorer seems to be the “successful for no good reason” sibling that the others despise and direct their anger toward, Opera is the one sitting in the corner, reading a book and struggling to make friends.
But Opera’s lack of social skills is to be expected. Though the browser has done reasonably well in both the embeddable and the mobile market its desktop application has faltered, unable to gain any real momentum.
The reason is that, much like myself in high school, the browser has spent too much time hitting the books and not enough time learning how to deal with people. The Internet has moved forward and left Opera behind and, if it is going to catch up, it needs to start studying a very different book, the book of real life.
In the meantime, here are five things that, if Opera were to fix, I would seriously consider using their browser full-time. Read more
