Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 28th Feb 2009 11:47 UTC
A few days ago, Apple surprised everyone by releasing the first beta of Safari 4, the company's latest version of their WebKit browser. While I generally love Safari on the Mac (my browser of choice on that side of the fence), I've never felt as comfortable with it on the Windows side of things. In any case, this latest beta has made a very bold move in the interface department, and I'm sad to say that it's not for the better. Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
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defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO
The first command puts the tab bar in the right place, the other two enable the progress bar.
Safari 4 rocks. :-)
I love the new Safari for its speed and compliance but am not totally sold on the UI changes. Does this mean they are bad? No, it means that I'm not yet sure I like them - I haven't used them long enough to have made an informed decision about whether they are better and more productive for my application or not. I actually like the fact that with the new tab layout I can immediately see which window is Safari in that mountain of Windows I have open. But there are other things about the tabs on top I'm not so sure of.
So rather than make half-baked snobservations I have made these suggestions through the bug reporting mechanism in Safari...
In Safari's "Preferences... -> Tabs" pane add an element that allows the user to decide where they want the tabs - default it to the new way if they believe its the right path, but give the option.
In Safari's "Preferences... -> General" pane give the user the option of changing the progress indicator.
When clicking on a Safari window's titlebar do not change tabs unless it is the active front window - just make it the active window.
There is one more suggestion that goes with the ones above, and I know it will get lots of people screaming about privacy and the like - probably the same ones who want to have a whinge about the new UI design. As users make these changes report them back to an anonymous database to track what users are choosing so that Apple can continue with development in the direction chosen by the users. Of course we'll now get the usual posts about "if they track this what else are they going to track from my computer" and all that junk, like I said it generally comes from the same "tin hat with optional ergonomic propeller" brigade who will whinge when they make these types of UI changes. Give the users the choice, tell Apple what users are selecting and then Apple can decide which path they take in the long term.
So Thom, do tell us, other than having a big vomit on a once respected industry news site what did you do about your suggestions? A number of my colleagues and I have used the bug reporting mechanism to send suggestions on a number of other UI and functionality issues we have had, including the UI design of the Top Sites display - its a wonder you didn't have a huge whinge about that one Thom because there are some elements in there that in my personal opinion need some work, which is probably why it is a BETA.
Maybe some day Thom will realise that most people will only try a few times to fix a scratched CD, then they'll throw it out and buy a new one...