Post Archive
› April 14, 2003
New Safari Adds Tabs, Other Goodies
Attention all users of OS X: Apple has released Safari Public Beta 2, adding arguably the most requested feature thus far in the development of this new browser: tabbed browsing. I've been using it all morning, and I'll never go back.
As always, special touches have been added that only Apple seems to think of. Each tab has its own close button, and you can open a folder of bookmarks with one click: Safari opens each site into its own tab, complete with progress indicator to let you know when each page has finished loading. Brilliant!
AutoFill forms are also on the list (something I use quite a bit in IE), as well as importing Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks, and (according to Apple) increased standards compatibility.
To keep up to date with the Safari development team, check out Dave Hyatt's weblog. Dave does a great job of reporting the progress of the team, and also encourages feedback on Safari and it's features/behavior.
Comments
1. April 14, 2003 02:39 PM
2. April 14, 2003 02:55 PM
paul Posted…
I'm also one of those anti-tab-ers and personally, I can't see Safari really addressing any of the issues that makes tabs bad. Nate, what has Safari done that Camino or Mozilla have missed that causes you to switch opinions?3. April 14, 2003 03:12 PM
Dan Rubin Posted…
Hi Paul, I'm sure Nate will agree that Safari's new implementation just seems to work the way tabs ought to. They are unobtrusive, and the little things like the progress indicator (which is the same as the OS startup and shutdown animation in Jaguar) just make it work without any extra thought from the user. What are some of the problems you have with tabs in general?4. April 14, 2003 03:21 PM
Nate Posted…
Yes! those are some of the reasons Dan. There are others too, I'm preparing a comprehensive response (with pictures), but it will have to wait till I have a free moment.5. April 14, 2003 03:51 PM
paul Posted…
Well, there has been talk about proprietary implementations in Camino that would probably draw it into line with Safari (image), but its not how they look that bothers me.
I don't like the way so many pages can be closed if the close button is hit and (I'm guessing to reduce the probability of this happening) the key combo, command-w, changes function if there are tabs open. Also, what happens if a site demands attention via a sheet? Sheets are designed to be tied to the document demanding the attention so you can freely use other documents. But with tabs the sheet is relavent to one out of a number of Web pages contained in the window, the sheet will demand attention, destroying the beauty of the implementation of sheets. Another problem is the ability to find a page in a group of windows containing a number of tabs each becomes very hard.
I was going to say: it becomes hard to see which sites are open where. For exmple, here at webgraphics every weblog page appears to have a title element which starts with "webgraphics : weblog", and that is not unique to this site, most sites seem to put their name first in the title element. This makes it extremely hard to see which tabs contain which pages, but I noticed Safari very elegantly fixes this.
That's just off the top of my head. I was curious which problems Safari solves to make the tabbed experience more acceptable than Camino, Mozilla or Opera's.
6. April 14, 2003 06:27 PM
Nate Posted…
Ok, so here are my thoughts on why Safari's tabs are a significant improvement over other tab systems that I've seen. I'll just concentrate on the differences between Camino tabs (image) and Safari tabs (image). One of my biggest pet peeves with Camino tabs is that they are center justified. This forces me to re-adjust my spacial co-ordination each time I add a tab since the horizontal list expands out from the center. Safari's tabs are left justified - problem fixed. Safari's tabs downplay their own tabiosity (new word), only the highlighted tab even has rounded corners, and the roundedness is tiny. The curvy hill and valley style tabs of Camino and others create unessesary visual clutter that makes them harder for me to read, and takes up more space. And speaking of space saving, Safari tabs are 22 pixels high, while Camino's are 29 pixels high. Ok, so 7 pixels is not a world of difference, but it's another small reason. Active and inactive tabs are treated differently too, Camino gives the active tab a bright blue color, while the inactive ones are white. Safari uses a light/shadow treatment that highlights the active tab, making it appear to be in-front of the other tabs in value rather than chroma. When Safari first released a beta, I was on the fence about the "brushed metal" look that Apple's applications take on. But now that I've been using it for a while, the grey color-less texture is much less intrusive to me than any other browser interface I've used - all the more so when Tabs are added in. As Dan mentioned, there are little close buttons and loading status animations for each tab (see my screenshot linked earlier in this comment), which makes them much more useful to me as a tab newbie. Safari's tabs are attached to the browser bar, Camino's are attached to the page window. I prefer the browser bar, downward facing tab; it makes more sense to me somehow, but I suppose that's completely a matter of subjective preference. Well, I think that's the sum of it, if I think of other reasons the Safari tabs have hit me the right way, I'll add more notes here.
7. April 14, 2003 07:48 PM
paul Posted…
That's fair enough, they're all good reasons, I was just curious as to why you were formally an "anti-tab-er". As I understand, Camino's was only a quick 'n' dirty implementation anyway.
I guess the reasons I don't like tabs is that they stick out from the general interface of the OS and make evrything less consistant rather than, from what I gather from you, the way they were implemented in Camino.
Nate Posted…
Oh wow, these tabs are great! I've been in the minority of anti-tab-ers till now, but Safari's take on them just makes too much sense.