Inside OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion GM: Safari 6 adds iPad-style iCloud-shared tabs

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Safari turns 6 in this summer's release of OS X Mountain Lion, offering a new view of open tabs similar to iPad and a new iCloud tab-sharing feature, along with an offline Reading List, new website passwords browser, new privacy settings, and a feature that allows websites to send alerts to the new Notification Center.

Apple's latest build of Safari 6.0 builds upon features previously outlined for what was originally called Safari 5.2, which brought a unified new user interface with one field for both Web, bookmark and history search as well as for directly entering a URL. That change also removes the SnapBack button and creates room for an always-visible Reader button.

Safari's new unified user interface, anti-phishing URL highlighting, emphasized Reader feature and prominent Share Sheet features (all depicted below) were detailed earlier in the year, but Apple has continued to work on its browser in the months since.

unified browser interface


Anti-phishing URL highlight


Always visible Reader button


Twitter via Sharing Sheet


New iPad-style tabs

Safari 6 introduces a new Expos?-like tab view similar to that already available on iPad. Click the "Show all tabs" button in the Tab Bar, and you can visually review what's going on in each open tab, flicking between the scaled-down open tabs within the browser window, and clicking on any one of them to make it the current tab.

show all tabs button


show all tabs active


show all tabs swipe


iCloud sharing of open tabs

Apple has also introduced a new iCloud sharing feature that enables Mountain Lion Safari 6 users to share open tabs between systems that use iCloud. Clicking on the new iCloud icon in the Toolbar presents a popup that states "iCloud automatically shows all the open tabs on your other devices."

iCloud tabs


Once you have multiple iCloud-connected Macs using Safari 6, however, you'll get a popup that includes all the active tabs you have open on your other computers. Apple hasn't yet made any announcements about bringing this feature to iOS but it seems very likely that it will eventually appear there, too.

iCloud tab listings




New notification settings

Apple previously added a variety of new options related to passwords, privacy settings, and Notification Center support for websites. In Safari 6, Notifications gets its own pane in Safari Preferences, which lists the websites that "have asked permission to show alerts in Notification Center."

The new feature will allow web developers to post updates (if the user gives permissions) just like a local app, putting web apps and other cloud based services in this regard on the same footing as native local apps. Safari preferences still uses the same older-style notifications icon that currently appears in System Preferences; it may be that this will be replaced with the new icon now being used in Notification Center.

As Safari previously noted in earlier builds, "a website that is allowed in Notification Center can only send you alerts when it is open in Safari."

Safari notifications preferences


New preferences pane for passwords, privacy

Mountain Lion's Safari 6 preferences provide a new Passwords browser for finding and recovering (or removing) saved passwords you've entered on websites. This works similar to Keychain on a system level. From Safari's Preferences, the Password pane presents a list of the sites you've saved a password, the user names you've entered, and the passwords (revealing them requires entering your system password).

Safari 6 also makes some subtle changes in how it presents privacy options. Safari is still set by default to "block cookies from third parties and advertisers," (the feature Google got in trouble for bypassing) although the preferences Privacy pane (shown below) now offers to "ask websites not to track me" rather than wording the "Do Not Track" option as "tell websites not track me."

Safari Privacy preferences


Do Not Track is a feature that has been added to all browsers apart from Google's Chrome, and currently only "requests" that web servers not track the user returning it. Wikipedia notes that "websites are not legally required to comply with do not track requests, neither by law nor by broad social consensus, and therefore very few websites recognize and respect this privacy signal."

Apple has also changed the setting for "allow search engine to provide suggestions" (set on by default) to the more active sounding "prevent search engine providing suggestions," and option that is turned off by default.

Removed RSS, Offline Reading List and other options

Safari (along with the new Mail) erases RSS as a tacked on feature. The RSS reader features in both Mail and Safari were rather bare bones, making a standalone RSS client more attractive for most users. With RSS removed from Safari, it's not clear whether Apple is just backing out of RSS reader support or if (perhaps more likely) it is gearing up to release a standalone new RSS reader of its own, perhaps tied into Podcasting and other applications of RSS.

Safari 6 has also added an offline reading list feature, enabling users to read sites added to the Reading List even when not connected to the Internet. Safari automatically presents Reading List as an option when it can't connect to the network.

Offline Reading List


Other features missing or changed in Safari include the Standard and fixed-width font selections under Appearance (the entire pane is simply no longer there in preferences) as well as the Security pane option to "ask before sending a non-secure form from a secure website," which appears to have been made the default behavior.

Safari Security preferences


The Advanced pane removed an option for database storage size selection (for HTML5's "super cookies"), but now ads a default encoding option for text. Additionally, in Safari 6 the option to "Block popup windows" has been restored after going missing in some developer builds.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    markbyrnmarkbyrn Posts: 661member
    [Quote]Once you have multiple iCloud-connected Macs using Safari 6, however, you'll get a popup that includes all the active tabs you have open on your other computers. Apple hasn't yet made any announcements about bringing this feature to iOS but it seems very likely that it will eventually appear there, too.[/quote]

    Actually they did announce the feature (iCloud Tabs) in iOS6 - see [URL=http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/]http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/[/URL]
  • Reply 2 of 35
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member


    A new standalone App for RSS or tying it into the Podcasts app or maybe even just tying your RSS feed into the Notification Center.  That would seem to make a lot of sense to me

  • Reply 3 of 35


    I like Safari - not many other people seem too. The new changes look good!

  • Reply 4 of 35


    Well new interface UI is always welcome.


     


    But where's Top Site?


     


    I'm so used to that feature, it's like my visual bookmark.


     


    It'll be a pain if they get rid of that feature.

  • Reply 5 of 35
    markbyrnmarkbyrn Posts: 661member
    georgetang wrote: »
    Well new interface UI is always welcome.

    But where's Top Site?

    I'm so used to that feature, it's like my visual bookmark.

    It'll be a pain if they get rid of that feature.

    It's still there.
  • Reply 6 of 35


    No RSS in Mail?


    Well... I'm pretty annoyed by that.


     


    Oh well, I'll just write my own when I get home and call it a day. Bit of AJAX and I'm sitting pretty.


     


     


     


    That aside, everything else looks spot on!

  • Reply 7 of 35
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    Removed RSS, Offline Reading List and other options

    Safari (along with the new Mail) erases RSS as a tacked on feature. The RSS reader features in both Mail and Safari were rather bare bones, making a standalone RSS client more attractive for most users. With RSS removed from Safari, it's not clear whether Apple is just backing out of RSS reader support or if (perhaps more likely) it is gearing up to release a standalone new RSS reader of its own, perhaps tied into Podcasting and other applications of RSS.


     


    Ha, figures, I have been using the Google RSS reader for years but recently started using the built in RSS reader as I slowly transition away from Google services.  (Personal choice)  I've been looking around for something to replace Google's reader but I'm going to put that search on hold until I see what pans out here.


     


    One question I do have is how is the performance of ML?  Can anyone say with breaking an NDA?  I'm hoping ML is also an internal clean-up, similar to what SL was to Leopard.  I haven't read anything yet on overall performance which is starting to make me nervous.  With the OS doing even more stuff in the background is my year and a half old MBP going to be up to the task?

  • Reply 8 of 35
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    razorpit wrote: »

    One question I do have is how is the performance of ML?  

    The GM runs nicely on the following:

    Early 2008 MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2.4 GHz
    6 GB RAM


    No real complaints so far, at least. I'm noticing, however, that performance
    is noticeably improved from Lion.
  • Reply 9 of 35
    moofpupmoofpup Posts: 2member
    Any body figure out how to change the default fonts yet?
  • Reply 10 of 35
    brutus009brutus009 Posts: 356member

    Quote:

    No real complaints so far, at least. I'm noticing, however, that performance

    is noticeably improved from Lion.


    That makes good hearing!

  • Reply 11 of 35
    quevarquevar Posts: 101member
    No RSS is annoying. A separate app for giving me updates about changes in websites does not make sense. I go to Safari to look at websites, but now I'll have to go to a different app to check them all. It used to be so simple and straightforward. Lame removal of a feature for some arbitrary reason. I hope there is a plugin that adds RSS back in.
  • Reply 12 of 35
    ghostface147ghostface147 Posts: 1,629member
    I wish there was a way to tell Safari to never ask me if I want to save passwords. Just set it to never remember every single site I visit and don't bug me again.
  • Reply 13 of 35
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post





    The GM runs nicely on the following:

    Early 2008 MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2.4 GHz

    6 GB RAM


    No real complaints so far, at least. I'm noticing, however, that performance

    is noticeably improved from Lion.


    Thanks Quadra for the fantastic news.  I wonder if they are waiting for ML to be released before any one starts talking about performance gains.  I bet no one at Apple wants to admit how slow/bad Lion is/was.


     


    I have a 6,2 MBP and amazed about how terrible Lion runs with 8GB of RAM.  Granted I have Fusion running, but still my 2006 MBP with 3GB and Fusion running screams in comparison running SL.  I had Lion on it for a while and had to go back because of how bad it was.  I'm not overly surprised the '06 wouldn't run Lion but the '10 shouldn't have performance issues as far as I'm concerned.

  • Reply 14 of 35
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by markbyrn View Post




    Quote:

    Once you have multiple iCloud-connected Macs using Safari 6, however, you'll get a popup that includes all the active tabs you have open on your other computers. Apple hasn't yet made any announcements about bringing this feature to iOS but it seems very likely that it will eventually appear there, too.


    Actually they did announce the feature (iCloud Tabs) in iOS6 - see http://www.apple.com/ios/ios6/


     


    What's not clear is whether you can still see the open tabs on another computer if that computer is turned off.  On the one hand such a thing is entirely possible with the cloud, on the other, I don't see that they mention it anywhere in the literature so I have to assume that you can't do this.  


     


    The only way this would be useful to me is if I could go home and then open up the tabs I last had open at work, and my work machine would be turned off, so if this isn't possible then the entire feature is pretty useless IMO.  

  • Reply 15 of 35
    gazoobeegazoobee Posts: 3,754member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ghostface147 View Post



    I wish there was a way to tell Safari to never ask me if I want to save passwords. Just set it to never remember every single site I visit and don't bug me again.


     


    You can turn on "private browsing" but that leaves a lot to be desired also.  


     


    Personally, I'm tired at all the work I have to do with Safari and assorted plug-ins to stay safe, anonymous, and advert free on the Internet.  If Apple really is interested in giving the end consumer what they want, they should really look into a unified security panel in the preferences for Safari 7.0 or 8.0.  


     


    To be able to go into the preferences the first time you upstart the browser and say "no to everything" and have it stay that way forever would be a big boon.  

  • Reply 16 of 35
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    That's nice and all but I really hope they use this cross-device syncing to further evolve iTunes/iPod. I hate that if I'm listening to something on one device that I have to find that device and then find my place on another. This isn't a huge issue with music — although being able to get back into a playlist or album without effort would be great — but it is with audiobooks and podcasts.


    PS: Since I'm already jacking the topic I'd also like to request audio-bookmarks for audiobooks and podcasts. Basically the same as a standard book mark except this will put a marker in your audio at a particular time. You can then add a quite note to it to remind yourself why wanted to mark that section of the audio.

    gazoobee wrote: »
    What's not clear is whether you can still see the open tabs on another computer if that computer is turned off.  On the one hand such a thing is entirely possible with the cloud, on the other, I don't see that they mention it anywhere in the literature so I have to assume that you can't do this.  

    The only way this would be useful to me is if I could go home and then open up the tabs I last had open at work, and my work machine would be turned off, so if this isn't possible then the entire feature is pretty useless IMO.  

    I just checked between my Mac and iPad. The tabs still remained. I'm guessing they are retained in iCloud until you link your Mac and it sends new Safari tab data.
  • Reply 17 of 35
    robogoborobogobo Posts: 378member


    Um, how do you do the exposé tab thing on the iPad?  Not sure what they're talking about here.

  • Reply 18 of 35
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post



    That's nice and all but I really hope they use this cross-device syncing to further evolve iTunes/iPod. I hate that if I'm listening to something on one device that I have to find that device and then find my place on another. This isn't a huge issue with music — although being able to get back into a playlist or album without effort would be great — but it is with audiobooks and podcasts.

     


     


    Agreed, I can't believe even the Audible app doesn't have this feature yet.  For as good as the Kindle app is why can't Audible have the same feature?

  • Reply 19 of 35
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gazoobee View Post


     


    What's not clear is whether you can still see the open tabs on another computer if that computer is turned off.  On the one hand such a thing is entirely possible with the cloud, on the other, I don't see that they mention it anywhere in the literature so I have to assume that you can't do this.  


     


    The only way this would be useful to me is if I could go home and then open up the tabs I last had open at work, and my work machine would be turned off, so if this isn't possible then the entire feature is pretty useless IMO.  



    That would be awesome! I can't see anything on my computer when it is turned off. :)


     


    Just kidding... I get your point and agree. Pointless if you have to have both computers running. This isa feature of iCloud, is it not?

  • Reply 20 of 35
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    razorpit wrote: »
    Agreed, I can't believe even the Audible app doesn't have this feature yet.  For as good as the Kindle app is why can't Audible have the same feature?

    Too bad I'm lazy because I have a patent in mind that would allow for this and for a method for reverse stepping. For instance, if you switch from one device to another within, say, 3 minute it would pick up the podcast, say, 2 seconds back from where you left off. This allows you to know you are listening to the right track at the right place and your short term memory should still be able to resolve those 2 seconds. The longer you wait the longer it goes back, based on current understanding of how long- and short-term memory works, For instance, if it takes you a full day to get back to the podcast it would reverse step, say, 10 seconds.
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