Safari 3 Pros and Cons

I'm continuing to dance with lots of web browsers and for the past couple weeks I've had Safari 3 set as my primary browser. Here's what I like about Safari 3.

Pros
  • stretchable form fields - this is great for editing the del.icio.us Notes field, the Blogger "Edit Html" field (but unfortunately not the Blogger WYSIWYG "Compose" field), and lots of other form fields
  • nice built-in PDF viewer (which I've now set as the default PDF viewer on my system) 
  • built-in RSS reader
  • cross platform -- iPhone, Mac OS X, and MS Windows (but not Linux)
  • can email a web page via File> Mail Contents of This Page
  • can turn off Flash by unchecking Safari> Preferences> Security> Web Content> Enable plug-ins
  • can activate the Debug menu
  • based on WebKit, which is FLOSS (LGPL and BSD licenses)
  • blog (for WebKit)
  • wiki (for WebKit)
  • discussion groups

And here's what I don't like.

Cons
  • can't change the built-in search engine from Google
  • can't remove the Google search field from the Toolbar because it is connected to the Address field, which I need
  • can't right-click on an image and choose "View Image" or "Block Images from This Server" or "Properties", all of which I use all the time in SeaMonkey
  • can't easily toggle Flash on and off
  • can't turn off animated gifs
  • can't tell if I've already subscribed to a feed by looking at the address field's blue RSS icon (because it looks the same whether I'm subscribed or unsubscribed)
  • can't initiate a page search with / (forward slash) but instead must use Cmd+F
  • the keyboard shortcuts for cycling through tabs suck because they are 3 keystrokes, Cmd+Shift+] and Cmd+Shift+[
  • no favicons in tabs
  • can't set it up to automatically delete cookies on exit
  • no blog or wiki specifically about Safari
  • can't participate in Safari discussion groups via email, NNTP, or other standard messaging protocol
For now the Cons outweigh the Pros and I'm no longer using Safari as my default browser. I am, however, going to continue to use it for writing blog posts because I love being able to stretch the Blogger "Edit HTML" field to the size of the browser window -- that was the main thing I liked about using Performancing (aka ScribeFire) for blogging.

If you have any thoughts or tips about Safari 3, please post a comment.

See Also: Wikipedia.org: Safari (web browser)

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It's not a perfect solution, but if you're using Firefox with the Firebug extension, you can edit the rendered HTML directly and increase the size of an edit box in this way.

I'm pretty sure that GreaseMonkey would automate the process for a specific website, too. It wouldn't be the most robust solution, but might be enough to save you the hassle of switching between two browsers...
 

 

I just looked at my browser and it is Safari 2.0. Guess I am behind...as usual.

But since my constant insight these days is that Nancy McGough was right before anyone else (about IMDB, about the glycemic index, about broccoli...and more), I should upgrade right away. And keep me posted on what you wind up using.

And here, my friend, is my blog:
sanfranciscomom.blogspot.com
 

 

"cross platform"

The rendering engine has an even wider reach than that, since Nokia also uses it and since the KDE people are going to "develop a Webkit KPart for embedding into Konqueror at the earliest opportunity and to take a more active role in the development of Webkit itself."

The unforking of KDE's KHTML and Webkit

The GNOME browser, Epiphany, is going to switch from Gecko to WebKit, so that GNOME users can get the benefit of a lighter and faster rendering engine and, they hope, better stability and easier handling of plug-ins.
 

 

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