Safari 3.0

Created , updated 2 minute read

Normally I don’t install pre-release software on my production machine. I used to be a real dabbler, what I considered then to be a "Power User"; I had all the latest hacks and extensions, knew every trick and shortcut, and had my computer decked out like a custom dragster with flames painted down the sides of it.

But ever since becoming a developer I’ve had to keep things as stock as possible. My machine is as vanilla as they come; nothing pre-release installed and as little third-party software as possible. This sometimes means that I miss out on some great stuff, but it’s the price of having a stable, neutral platform on which to develop and test my software.

In the case of the Safari 3.0 beta I’ll be making an exception (typing this in the beta right now, actually) for a couple of reasons. The most important of these is that Apple provides an uninstaller package to back out if things don’t turn out. This software will have bugs. It’s just a matter of seeing if they’re show stoppers or not.

Of all the sexy new features in Safari 3.0, the one that makes me want to be able to run it is, believe it or not, the find-in-page functionality. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting old, but I find it increasingly frustrating to find tiny snippets of text in a sea of letters highlighted by a light blue box on a white background. The new find-in-page functionality addresses the issue perfectly.

The other stuff is really just icing on the cake:

  • Reorderable tabs: convenient for those occasional moments when you want to;
  • The ability to drag a tab out into a separate window: again, nice for the one or two times a day that you’ll want to do it;
  • Better performance and even better standards compliance: always welcome;
  • More intelligent autocomplete in the location bar (it’s not just a simple most-recent-match-wins any more).
  • An unsaved document indicator in the window close gadget for when you have unsaved form data.
  • Warning before closing a window with multiple tabs (how many times have you accidentally blown away a pile of in progress research by mistake); this stuff is really important as the browser becomes the new platform for real application use.

So I’ve already encountered a few bugs, but I at least intend to trial this for a day or two. I hope it works out.