Safari 4 Sneak Peak

So the word is out that Safari 4 Developer Preview is in fact lurking around the hand of developers. Turns out that my free ADC membership has it up for download too. So I played with it a while and I will talk about one feature that sets it apart from other browsers.

Safari 4 File menu

Fluid

Safari web app of Facebook(left), Fluid version(right). Notice that fluid has proper icon.

Safari 4 now allows you to save your favourite web apps as…. none other than APPS themselves. So what the heck does that mean? It means that you can have a Facebook app, Gmail app, WordPress app – you name it!

While some may argue the need for such a feature, I believe there are some people out there that relies heavily on web apps for their work. Thus, having a separate app for the site alone might help to:

- Prevent crashes when too many tabs are open in one browser
- Probably minimise memory leaks for leaving your browser on too long (???)

Some of you might be familiar with Fluid, an app that allows you to do just what I mentioned above. It has some rather cool features as well. But let’s see some main differences between the two.

These are screenshots of a web app saved using Safari 4 on the left and Fluid on the right. Notice something? That’s right, Fluid version of Facebook seems to be almost 28 times larger. But then again, Safari doesn’t have as much features compared to Fluid. So it’ll all up to user preference, personally I don’t really need Coverflow view of all links on a certain page because even though that’s cool, it’ll just mean that my quota will drain faster.

What are your thoughts? Do we really need such feature? So far I think it’s kinda redundant, but then again I’m not really a web app maniac yet! ;)

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Has Been Released

First impression? Address bar is hell lot faster now digging through the history and favourites. It’s instant compared to the slight delays you would normally get in the beta’s.

Get yours here or just hit up Check for Updates in the Help menu if you’ve got one of the beta’s.

Adblock Plus for Firefox 3 Beta 5

Looking for a working version of Adblock Plus for your Firefox 3 Beta 5? Then head on to the Development Builds page and download the latest dev build (The dates may differ from the one you see on this screenshot). Enjoy!

A Better Safari With A Couple of Addons

Safari, Mac OS X’s default web browser. While Firefox is awesome in its own ways, Safari is not that bad at all. Safari is in fact the fastest browser when it comes to Javascript load times (As of 28 March 2008). It even scored 100/100 in Acid3 test, even Firefox didn’t come close to that.

Ok, I’m not here to explain how good Safari is. I am here to introduce you two addons that can make your Safari more enjoyable.

First off, I’m pretty sure most people hate ads. In fact, I’m pretty annoyed when it comes to ads. Most ads are bogus, just like the ads on The Pirate Bay where random hot girl pictures are shown and the ads tell you that they actually live in your neighborhood.

BEFORE:

AFTER (Notice the Subway ad just disappeared!):

Introducing SafariBlock, say goodbye to ads forever. You won’t miss a single ad when every website that you visit look clean and tidy, free of ads. SafariBlock works on both normal ads and Flash ads.

Download SafariBlock here

 

 

The next addon is actually a pretty cool one, and a time saver. This addon will change your perspective on search engines forever.

Introducing Inquisitor, this addon allows you to type your search queries in your usual search box, and BAM! Search results come out just right after, in a cool black dialog on the bottom of the search box. You can navigate to the search results with the arrow keys, or with your mouse.

This addon is one of the main reasons why I made Safari my main browser on my Mac. It’s plain awesome. I can do multiple searches and find what I want quickly. Heck, it even suggests different search queries, on the bottom of your search results. On the other hand, you can customize it to show a list of other search engines so you can quickly make searches of the same query on other search engines (On the screenshot it’s only showing Flickr and Amazon, but the list can be customized for more than that).

This addon is a definite must-have for keyboard warriors. By far the best addon made for Safari. Highly customizable and useful.

Download Inquisitor here

With these addons, Safari will be a better browser ;)

Hope you enjoyed this tech tip, any questions or comments are welcome.