Apple's Safari 4 UI changes hint at plans for Snow Leopard - Page 4

I totally agree! This has nothing to do with wasted space. If Apple wanted to fight wasted space, I could give them tons of ways of how to do that, starting with the Finder sidebar which can't be resized down to just show the icons as was possible in earlier releases of the OS, continuing with useless section headings that prevent a user from grouping items in a way it would be semantically meaningful, etc. etc.

I'm a pretty heavy web user, often I have tens of windows with over a hundred tabs open, plus lots of other stuff going on. That happens if you do research on the web. This used to be no problem at all.

Now, I don't even know where to grab anymore, because the entity called "Window" dissolves visually through the tab on top thing. If you have a hundred, partially overlapping tabs instead of ten solid title bars, you have a major problem.

It's extremely distracting and annoying. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. I strongly hope this is just an option and can be turned off.

Also, besides kissing Apple butt and justifying every change (even if it's not useful), the writer of the article doesn't even understand how Mac programming works.

Of course Safari is going to have the blue scroll bar, as long as it's written in Cocoa with standard widgets, it will inherit whatever is currently standard, and that's the blue scroll bars! There's absolutely NOTHING surprising about this.

Apple only needs to change a few system resources, and all blue scroll bars will turn into whatever may or may not replace them.

The fact that iTunes has different looking scroll bars is due to the fact that it's not a "real" Mac application, but cross-platform code, that tries to run more or less unchanged on Mac and Windows, so it contains iTunes specific GUI code and controls, which resulted in all sorts of inconsisten GUI behavior in iTunes (e.g. text editing short cuts didn't work in iTunes for a long time, etc.)
In that sense iTunes is more like the crap Adobe perpetrates on Mac users, than a typical Apple app like say Mail.app

The fact that Safari under Windows now looks like a Windows app shows that Apple abstracted away these cross-platform items into libraries that use no longer custom code but each platform's native GUI. Thus things on Windows look like Windows, and things on the Mac look like on the Mac, and with Leopard, that includes blue scroll bars. So, no, there's absolutely nothing surprising about these scroll bars. It would be surprising and stupid if Apple would NOT use shared libraries and would write custom code for each single app, and such hypothetical stupidity would be surprising, were it to manifest itself.

Maybe AI should start hiring writers who actually understand technology?

Excuse me if someone, somewhere has already thought of this (I didn't read every last sentence in every post here), but I have some thoughts on how Tabs-On-Top could become even more useful.

Step one: Tabs-On-Top becomes a "built-in" service that any application can take advantage of, just as most applications use standard window functionality. At this point, almost any application is "tabbable". I don't think this would be extraordinarily difficult, technically, just a "shell" containing grouped/layered windows.

But that's just the first step.

Step two: within any "tab bundle", each tab content could be from different applications! This would allow a single window to contain tabs for all the things you are currently working on, like a super-project-window that would work with virtually any "regular" application!

For example, if I was editing a Word document (yeah, I know...), while looking at research on 2 or 3 web pages, a local PDF in Preview, and a couple Excel spreadsheets, I could easily lump this all together in a single window.

I know Spaces can kind of help with this general problem, but I just don't think like that. And some apps don't seem to play nicely when they have documents open in different Spaces.

Thoughts?

While viewing top sites, open a 2nd Safari window (not a tab) and go to a site that you'd like to be a top site. Then drag its favicon (just to the left of the URL) to the top sites window. The other pages will jump around to accommodate the one you're adding. Just drop it where you want it to go.

Voila. :-)

(Note: There are certain sites you can't drag -- such as the MobileMe login page, ironically.)

I had the same issue as well. I tried reset and relaunch, reboot, restart, reinstall. All had the same result - no e-mail. After running the uninstall my mail was back to normal.

Any news from Apple on the cause? I liked the new browser but cannot afford to do without my mail so it is out for now.

Really rcfa. You just can't comment without dissing Apple or anybody that says anything positive or sides with them, can you? Really doesn't support your credibility; if you have any.

I too conduct tons of searches daily and moving the tabs to the top has made it better, just like the pile of file folders on my desk.

I am a proponent of using keystrokes over the mouse and am happy to say that this Mac OSX Hint, "Open Safari bookmark group via keyboard shortcut," (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...query=quickeys) in particular, makes my efforts even better with Safari 4.

For those who still have an open mind, this review, "Chrome who? Safari 4 makes the browser hunt more interesting," is well worth reading. (http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/24/ch...e-interesting/)

Maybe rcfa, you should start looking at yourself and try to actually understand people, if you can.

That's fine if my left hand is free, but what if I'm holding a drink? Or, as is often the case, lying propped up on one elbow using only the mouse? Is OSX a mouse-driven environment or not? It's bad UI design to start replacing mouse controls with non-obvious, invisible equivalents or, worse still, keyboard shortcuts.

Removing the Stop and Reload buttons is a bad idea, IMO, and replacing them with some weird not-always-there, mouse-over what-not button is a worse one.



No. Microsoft tried something similar with it's OLE implementation, where you can end up editing an Excel spreadsheet inside the Word application window. It's the worse piece of interface design in the history of the world - confusing at best, damaging at worst. I can't count the number of times I've closed my IE window because I thought I was reading a PDF in Acrobat Reader when it was really embedded in the browser.

If the keyboard equivalents are accessible with one hand it's not so bad (Cmd-S, Cmd-W), but often with laptops yeah, you're propped up in some funny position and then forced to use two hands to do some basic operation.



I'm well familiar with the ugliness of OLE, but this is not embedding apps within apps, which, while powerful, can get quite confusing and messy. What I'm talking about is merely a uniform way to group disparate windows into a tabbed window. It wouldn't work perfectly in all cases, such as where windows need to be different physical sizes, but I think there are many times when this could be very useful.

Thinking about it more after reading your comment, there should be a way to identify the app the tab belongs to, but that could easily be done with a small app icon on the side of each tab.

Thanks for the comment - it helps to solidify the explanation.

Step two: within any "tab bundle", each tab content could be from different applications! This would allow a single window to contain tabs for all the things you are currently working on, like a super-project-window that would work with virtually any "regular" application!



YES, I totally agree. This would be sooooo much better than Spaces. Ubuntu has this function with Compiz...grouping windows from any app (quite slick I might say with compiz)....

This would bring functionality to the desktop.

I imagine it is not too much of a stretch to expect that if the new tab feature is a more central feature of Snow Leopard that it might actually involve a full window buffer for each tab thereby enabling exposé for tabs. It would be nice to be able to drag tabs around from window to window guided by content - a la Spaces.

Actually, this makes little sense. If you're working on a project that requires several apps, you wouldn't want to group them together because you gain much more being able to see the multiple windows you're using and being able to have some elements from some drag and dropped into another.

As slick as grouping different apps into a single window as tabs may sound, Spaces is still the best way to group different windows by projects or tasks.

I really don't understand this tab business. A lot of people are in love with a UI idea that makes little sense, that provides poor visual information, and that simply doesn't scale unless you make your window needlessly wide.

What is up with people accepting mediocrity. It would make infintely more sense to have a window stack instead of tabs. And Exposé could reveal the stack. The time it takes for the brain to look at tabs, read the title of the tab, and pick it would probably be the same or slower than a key combo that reveals the stack visually.

In essense, Exposé would gain just another option. It already has an "All windows" option, a "Application windows" option, the third one would be "Window stack".

If invoking "Application windows" reveals all windows for the application that has focus, invoking "Window stack" would reveal all windows in the window stack. And in this sense, you could also stack windows from different applications.

Apple has a real opportunity to provide a solution that scales much better than one that is tied to the width of the window.

Camino 2.0 has Tabspose, a kind of expose for tabs. The newest 2.0 version is 2.0b2RC, get it here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...0b2/Camino.dmg
It is activated via crtl-cmd-t

I think the lack of a titlebar is the most disturbing element, even a file cabinet still sits in a drawer that you can close. Have a look at tabs in Stainless (every tab is a thread as in Chrome) or tabs in Terminal, a titlebar to contain all your tabs really puts a frame around things which are inside one container, the window.

Whenever I have to use a mouse on a computer I feel somewhat disconnected from the computer, way to far away from the keyboard. I much prefer a keyboard with a trackpad, allows me to use my ten-finger multitouch interface. Don't understand me wrong, I use the trackpad extensively (eg, for Expose) but a lot of things just feel cumbersome with a mouse or trackpad (like cmd-S,W,P etc.).

Nope, it does not work. The portion of the bar not occupied by tabs is basically dead space.

Telling people that they are afraid of new stuff isn't a very convincing argument. If the new stuff is shit, then it's new shit. Just because something is new, doesn't mean it has to replace the old stuff that wasn't broken.

A file cabinet exists in physical space. It's something that is composed of matter and takes up physical space in our world. The Finder and Safari do *not* exist in physical space (ok, they do...on part of a HDD or SDD)...what makes the Finder and Safari so wonderful? They don't need to copy physical objects and their limitations.

While the tab metaphor is cute, it has severe drawbacks. It scales poorly. They work poorly well when windows aren't wide. They require the user to widen windows needlessly as the number of tabs grows. They provide poor visual feedback. They're clumsy...to maximize space, Safari hides the widgets for tabs to provide as much textual feedback as possible -- to provide even more text feedback on the tab that has focus, Safari grows the tab that has focus, shifting all the other tabs.

It's utter crap. I don't understand how people settle for mediocre designs. I wouldn't mind if people simply settled for it actually...I mind when people *defend* mediocre design.

Good point. When I'm working on a project, the last thing I want is window 1 obscured by window 2. More often than not, I'm using both screens, referring to each window as needed. Tabs work in a browser because most of the time you don't need to see two pages at once. For those times you do, you just open a new window.

The project tab group probably works well in a Windows world where most apps are MDI and you're locked into a big frame. But with floating palettes and the ability to move windows across screens, it becomes less useful. Spaces addresses all of those needs.

I installed S4 at work on Windows and have some first impressions there (waiting for an opportunity to reboot my Mac at home for the install to finish). Most importantly is the loss of the title bar as a move control. I was unable (on Windows) to move the window from the top. I had to use the status bar or free space in the toolbar.

I provide my Dad with a lot of technical support. I love the Mac because (apart from not spending hours removing malware) I can provide consistent instructions. The menu is always at the top, you resize windows only one way (though this is kind of lame), and you move windows from the title bar. Now do I have to tell him to use the status bar or grab some free space in the toolbar? Ugh. The loss of consistency is an issue. Maybe the issue isn't there on the Mac version, but based on the screenshots, it seems to be.

… why not getting rid of tabs alltogether?! You always have to guess read your tabs once you get a bunch of them!

All it takes is to add ONE tab button and you'll have a great view of all your tabbed windows in one window. Yes, something like Apple has done allready with Top Sites view!

I hope Apple does change their mind about this silly cluttered tabs on top idea. They should stay true to their design ethos which is about getting rid of complexity and leaving out things if it doesn't need to be there.

The safari team should have a cup of tea with Jonathan Ive

I hate this. In addition, one could command click on the title bar of any Safari 3 window to get a drop down list of recently visited websites. Safari 4's tab on top breaks this (correct me if I am wrong about this).

I have downgraded to Safari 3.

There is a plist setting that puts the tab bar back to where it was. You just have to run a command in the terminal. There are a list of them on this site:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41555/140/

I'm not sure if that will bring back the command-menu though. The history menu lists recent sites, I wouldn't have thought command-clicking the title would be much easier.

I thought I'd dislike the tabs at the top but I think they are ok. The big change that throws me off is moving the refresh button into the right hand side of the URL bar that used to be snap-back. The least they could do is make it bigger. I hit refresh quite a lot and the button is now much smaller than it used to be.

Top sites is neat and you can manually add your own sites. You just go into edit and drag the favicon from other windows (the icon to the left of the http) into the window and pin them.

I'm really impressed with the rendering speed and also having a javascript debugger instead of just a console output. The debugger gets cramped on the bottom though - don't they know we all have widescreen displays these days? You can pull it into a separate panel but it could go on the side.

Overall, I haven't found anything particularly wrong with it.

Apple announces a low level overhaul of its OS for Snow Leopard. Other luminaries such as Linus point out that the OS is supposed to be invisible for end-users anyway. And tin foil hat reseller Daniel Eran Dilger a.k.a. Prince McClean comes out with a bandwidth heavy pseudo-article showing the superficial changes in Safari 4. His articles have been ridiculous before with their infamous self-referencing truths. He never cites external sources, only his own articles, and insists you just believe him. Haha. But this piece here somehow raises the bar on what terminal dementia can do to the published word. AI should be more cautious of its otherwise excellent reputation and protect it better. The obvious risk otherwise is that AI readers will lose trust in AI and stop coming back, revenues will fall, and AI - especially the AI we've grown to know and love - will be no more.

hahahahahahahahahahahah ha ha...ha...ha

Crap article. Far fetched to link some browser UI changes with Snow Leopard.

Yeah because iTunes '06 didn't hint at Leopard's consistent UI/use of similar elements in many applications.

... at how every new version of Windows looks more like a Mac, and now it appears the reverse is now coming true. Using a terminal/command prompt window for some tasks (an oldy by now, but I remember when Apple slammed everyone who dared use an OS text window), tabs on the caption bar, striking resemblances to Windows Media Center/XBox/Zune...

I also gotta laugh at the number of complaints about OS shortcomings. Seems pretty equal in both camps!