Ace on Tech

How To: Always Open Links in New Tabs with Safari 4 [Mac]

Mar 16

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Safari 4 Beta for Mac annoyingly doesn’t always open links in tabs, and there’s no real preference control to set this like there is in other browsers like Firefox or Opera. Apparently, this characteristic has been floating around in prior versions of the browser, too. While I like Safari’s speediness and mildly dislike the new tab placement in the beta, what bugs me the most is the issue I indicated with the title of this post.

While it is possible to make Safari [always] open links in new tabs, there is no user-friendly way to do this. To accomplish this behavior you will have to enter a line in Terminal.app:

• Quit Safari (CMD+Q)
• Open Terminal (\Applications\Utitlities\Terminal.app)
• Enter:
  defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true
• Close Terminal and re-open Safari

Tada! That does it indeed. While this is easy enough, Apple should have included it here:

Note: A solution to this problem in the Windows-version of Safari 4 has not yet been found.

Safari 4 Beta for Windows: Google Chrome?

Feb 25

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Apple obviously used Chromium as a base for their Safari 4:

First Screenshots: Safari 4 Beta for Mac

Feb 25

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Apple recently released the public beta of Apple Safari 4. Some of the new features include:

• Top Sites: Tab homepage similar to Google Chrome’s, only fancier
• Cover Flow: Integration of iTunes-like Cover Flow for viewing history and bookmarks
• Tabs on Top: Also taken from Google Chrome (see screenshots)
• Nitro Javascript Engine: Once more, inspired by Chrome. Safari’s JS engine would render web apps up to 30 times faster than IE7 and 4 times faster than Firefox.

Not that I’m complaining, but did Apple just take the Chromium project and tack on its own additions? I haven’t looked into this yet, but Safari 4 certainly shows a lot of similarities with Google Chrome… On to some screenshots.

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Screenshots: Windows Live Wave 3.0 Beta Leaked

Sep 17

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The third wave of Microsoft’s online services called Windows Live has leaked to the internet today. Grab the combines installer at Softpedia. Some screenshots:

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IE8 Beta 1 Revealed

Mar 07

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A few ago, Microsoft released the first beta version of it’s forthcoming Internet Explorer 8. It carries the label ‘developer beta’, which implies it’s pretty rough around the edges and not really suitable for the masses. Nonetheless, every new addition to the IE line is a welcome one, since -historically-, every new version introduced new complications. So what’s in the mix for Microsoft’s latest critter in the browser-space?

Image courtesy: Paul Thurrott

If I’m honest, I’m not the most credible source to rely on, due to the simple fact that I haven’t yet taken the liberty of installing it onto my machine. I’m planning to, though. I’ll have some experiences to share some time soon.

  (IE8) versus (IE7)

It’s important to note that Microsoft overrode its initial plans for a ‘standards compliant mode‘ and, instead, makes IE default to standards mode altogether. The former would’ve required developers to insert specific code, which would’ve been particularly nasty.

Paul Thurrott made all the download links available on his blog, here.

For now, I’ll just look at what other [more reliable sources] are finding. ArsTechnica put their all-seeing loupe on IE8′s first [beta] iteration and stated that it does the following things right:

• first and foremost, it passes ACID2, finally some real standards compliance!
• relevant to the prior, there’s the new CSS 2.1 Testing Center where you can test specific portions of CSS while developing webpages [for IE]
• IE’s address bar introduces (minor) additional anti-phishing measures by highlighting the current site’s domain
• ‘Emulate IE7′-button to revert to what is referred to by MS as ‘quirks mode’

On the other hand, as with every bit of software, the following features aren’t up to snuff (yet?):

• the funky ‘favorites bar’ is weird
• IE8′s interface is still a greatly displaced and needs a redesign
• still no capabilities for handling the ‘application/xhtml+xml’ MIME
• still no SVG-support
• standards mode performs slower than IE7 mode

Aside from the usual quirks and hazards, it seems to me IE is finally nudging into the right path. If they could make sure they have inline search and sexy it up a little, I’d be a glad to welcome it to my toolkit.

Let’s see where this thing goes.