freeform goodness

Dave Hyatt asked for our Top 10 Non-UI Safari Issues as trackbacks. The good news is that I only came up with 7 things to whine about. I hope this is helpful.

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:: Dave Walker 23:34 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (2)

Aha! Dave Hyatt explained the Safari 1.0 font situation the other day. Basically, two major things changed between the betas and 1.0. First, the default font was set to be 16-point Times. This matches the default for Internet Explorer for Windows, which is presumably the browser most sites are tested against. Unfortunately, in my opinion (and I’m not alone), 16-point type looks freaking huge on a small monitor. After setting my default font setting to something sane (in my case, Lucida Grande at 14 points), I found that CSS specified xx-small type (found, for example, in my Shoutbox), became an unreadable pile of poo. The enforcement of a minimum font size (9 points) specified in the prerelease versions of Safari was removed in 1.0 final. The reason for this is revealed in the Dave Hyatt’s blog entry — that many sites use small font size spans as spacers. That sounds like a really unreliable way to position layout elements, but I’m no professional designer.

The Safari dev team threw us a bone, however. Mr. Hyatt mentioned that it was still possible to set a minimum font size via a hidden pref. Hidden pref, your ass is mine.

defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitMinimumFontSize 9
defaults write com.apple.safari WebKitMinimumFixedFontSize 9

(you need to enter those two lines in the Terminal.)

:: Dave Walker 22:17 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (0)

There’s a new legal Safari beta. I haven’t really banged on it yet, but there seem to be improvements (over the ancient v60) everywhere.

:: Dave Walker 09:44 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (3)

Dave Hyatt mentions that better support for the TITLE attribute (via tooltips) and for the <ABBR> and <ACRONYM> tags is on the way, which makes me very happy. That makes me happy? Wow, I need a life.

:: Dave Walker 17:27 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (1)

:: Dave Walker 17:20 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (0)

Okay, I went ahead and made Safari my default browser. I guess what’s cool is that every time I look up I’m finding another cool feature I hadn’t noticed, like how pretty links are when you drag them in the page. There’s YASR here that hits on some of the nicer stuff.

(addendum: Looks like (Saturday morning) they just posted a new build. I know there are lots of changes happening in their rendering engine, so I hope they continue with the quick updates. I’m not expecting nightlies, but weeklies would probably be A-OK, at least until it goes final)

:: Dave Walker 22:29 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (0)

• I’m starting to not miss tabs. Interesting observation about new window creation speed and and tabbed browsing. [Okay mpt, stop gloating ;) ]
• On the other hand, I really do miss the TITLE attribute in link tags opening a tooltip. I seriously hope that was a “we haven’t gotten to it yet” omission and not a design decision.
• The Activity window is the shizzle. (I hadn’t even noticed it until reading the fine Safari summary at Codepoetry.)
• The rendering quirks are being worked on, says Dave Hyatt, and he oughta know.

:: Dave Walker 12:30 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/tech/computers/os/osx/applications/safari]
:: tags: safari

:: Comments (0)