Jewish World Review Jan. 17, 2003 / 14 Shevat 5763
By Mark Kellner
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
In the space of three days last week, about 500,000 users
of Apple Computer's Macintosh, at least those running the
Jaguar version of OS X, downloaded a public Beta of the
firm's new Internet browser, Safari.
I was one of those people, and so far, Safari - free
during the Beta stage - is quite a trip. Apple says it's the
fastest Web browser for Mac users; it's also rather spiffy.
The new software is not - I repeat, not - quite ready for
prime time, or for primary use as a Web browser by serious
surfers or information workers. But it's a very good start.
The first thing any user will notice about Safari is that its
screen looks very clean. There's a small bar at the top
showing Web addresses and key commands, as well as a
permanent search window that links to the Google search
engine. Below the address bar is an area where some
predefined links are included. You can augment these with
your own bookmarks easily by dragging and dropping a Web
address onto an adjacent space, or, as I did with the Web
address for this newspaper, onto the "News" button, which
reveals a drop-down list of news sources.
Next on the must-notice list is that pages do load very,
very quickly. The firm says, "Safari's highly-tuned rendering
engine loads pages over three times faster than Microsoft's
Internet Explorer for the Mac and runs Javascript over twice
as fast." I have no reason to doubt this - at least for those of
us who have fast Internet connections. A dial-up user of my
acquaintance didn't notice a tremendous speed bump,
however, when he did an initial test.
But faster Internet connections are something many of us
have, and more of us will have eventually. Even those who
don't get the service at home will be able to log on to faster
connections via wireless stations at Starbucks coffee shops
and other outlets, making this less of an issue.
Typefaces in Safari are a bit cleaner than in some other
browsers, and the overall appearance for so-called "default"
typefaces is reminiscent of the OmniWeb
(www.omniweb.com) browser for the Mac, which, Apple
says, is not the basis for this product. Increasing or
decreasing type sizes on a page follows the usual Mac
convention of pressing either the Command-plus sign or
Command-minus sign key combinations.
One of the nicest features of Safari is that it really does
seem to block the pop-up and pop-under ads that
accompany many Web sites. With Safari, a check of the
activity window showed that ads tried to get in, but in vain.
What are the negatives of this new browser? A couple.
While it worked well logging into a Microsoft Outlook server
system, where I troll for e-mail, Safari only went so far into
my bank's system, and then things stopped. To check my
balance, I needed a more established browser.
Copying text from Web pages is not an uncommon
practice for writers, researchers and, of course, denizens of
Internet discussion groups. But unlike many browsers,
clicking on the right button of the mouse (or, if using Apple's
mouse, pressing the option key while clicking the single
mouse button) doesn't yield copy as a minimenu option. This
can be fixed, but the lack is annoying.
I like having the Google search feature built-in; click on a
snap-back button and you can return quickly to your last
search results. The same go-back feature is in the main Web
address bar.
Best of all, for now, the cost for a copy of Safari is, well,
zero. Apple, reportedly, doesn't plan to charge for the
browser, though that could change. What really would be
exciting, of course, would be to have this program available
not only for Mac users, but also in some version for the PC
folks. For now, check out the one-and-only Mac version at
www.apple.com/safari.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here.
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