- I like the new tab management, i.e. tabs on top, drag and drop and no more title bar. It’s more intuitive and reminds me of another Webkit browser — Google Chrome.
- The address bar (or address field) is smarter now, reminiscent of Firefox’s awesome bar.
- Top Sites which displays screenshots of your frequently used shots when opening a new tab is nifty and reminds again of Chrome. Safari4 just makes it prettier with the perspective and shadows and black background. Although I think Opera was the first to have that thumbnail grid interface.
- Just like Firefox, it now has full-page zoom, but it seems to be slow when rendering a zoom in. I tested it on Safari’s feature page and there’s some kind of lag when zooming in.
- On OS X, it now natively supports Ctrl+Tab when switching tabs.
- There’s cover flow for bookmarks and history, which I think is a nice way of trying to find something you’ve visited specially if all you have is a visual memory of how the site looked like rather than keywords.
- It’s supposed to have better developer tools although I have yet to explore them, although looking from the feature list it’s almost everything Firefox+Firebug can do .
- I still need to run the sites I usually more to see if it can actually be my main browser on OS X as Google Chrome is still nowhere near available. But, overall it’s a refreshing experience.
Tag Archive for 'OS X'
Page 2 of 2
I’ve decided to make my year ender post two parts. Part one would focus more on my brushes with technology for the year that passed. Second part would focus more on personal events and realizations. So here goes..
Hello Apple
2008 is the year I became part of the cult of Mac. I was always intrigued by the Apple experience. I’ve been hearing a lot how intuitive and easy to use Apple’s products are especially when my girlfriend got a MacBook a couple of years back.
Come April 2008, I got a taste of the Apple experience when my colleagues got me an iPod Touch as a farewell gift. The user experience was just beautiful and refined. Having gotten a taste of Apple’s definition of intuitive and easy to use; and knowing how easy it is to run Windows through BootCamp or virtualization, I was totally convinced that my next portable would be a Mac. And a MacBook Pro it was specifically.
Google Chrome has recently taken off the “beta” label. After installing it and using it for quite some time, I’ve began to really like it so much that it has replaced Firefox as the browser I use for web surfing (I still use Firefox + Firebug when doing web development). It’s fast, responsive and doesn’t show any signs of sluggishness even if there’s more than 20 tabs open. Tab management is also intuitive, it’s easy to merge tabs or separate them into different windows. It also supports native drag and drop for file upload fields, something I’d like to be native in Firefox since the dragdropupload plugin can be wonky at times.
I wonder when will the OS X version come out.
While I was away, I needed to do some work since my leave was abrupt and in the middle of a crucial stage of a project. I was in the hospital for most of the middle of the week and it’s a good thing I’ve set up tethering on my MacbookPro via bluetooth using my N81 before. I was also fortunate that Globe has finally decided to have an option for time-based charging when using mobile broadband which is more cost effective if you’re consuming a lot of data.
I think I’m pretty much bent on getting Apple’s MobileMe once I do get an iPhone. Hopefully all the launch glitches would be ironed out once the iPhone is available here in Singapore.
I’ve tried out the Push technology for mail, calendar and contacts with an iPod Touch and I’m satisfied with how it works seamlessly across platforms (deskop app, mobile app, web app). I won’t have to worry of syncing between devices since it’s synced at one central location. And it’s an added appeal that I’ll be using very similar interfaces across all three platforms.
For the moment, I’ll try testing this setup at least for my calendar and contacts until my MobileMe trial expires.
About a month ago, I’ve decided to make the switch from Windows to OS X. So far, I’m a happy camper. I’ve been enjoying a lot of the features on OS X that I don’t find in Windows XP. Every week, I hope I can post one thing I like about OS X.
One of those features is Exposé. I usually prefer using two monitors when doing web work since I need to have several open programs. For example, I would have three browser windows, a coding window, a terminal window and an SQL window. In Windows XP, unless you have a very very big monitor, transferring information from one window to another can be quite cumbersome. Somehow, when working on my Mac, I don’t feel a deep need to have 2 monitors since I can easily sift through open windows using Exposé. It just makes the simple task of copying info from one window to another easy and fast to do.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been using keystroke launchers a lot. Somehow I find it more convenient in launching applications or opening folders as compared to using the Start menu on Windows or the Dock on OS X.
You simply activate it using a hotkey (I use Ctrl-Space), then type what you want to launch or run and the launcher will search all available apps or folders that match the letters you just type. For eg. I type PS for Photoshop or DW for Dreamweaver. It saves me a lot of time specially when I need to do certain things in the littlest amount of time possible.
For Windows I use Launchy, for OS X I use Quicksilver.
