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What's up with the transparent window in Safari?

by Laurie A. Duncan Apr 18th 2005 at 1:37PM

safari 1.3 debug menuIf you have the Mac OS X 10.3.9 update installed and have the debug menu enabled in Safari 1.3, take a look at the new menu option there: Use Transparent Window.

If you open a new, empty window or tab in Safari and then select that menu option, you get exactly what it sounds like.

My question is... WHY???? No seriously - what purpose does it serve? Here's what it looks like with just my dekstop image in the background:


transparent safari window

It doesn't work with a browser window that has a page loaded in it, though. I won't sleep tonight until and unless I know what this feature was intended for, in a debugging environment or otherwise.
 

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If you have the Mac OS X 10.3.9 update installed and have the debug menu enabled in Safari 1.3, take a look at the new menu option there:...
 

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16 Comments

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Daniel

Someone mentioned text can't be selected while in transparent window mode. This is also true in dashboard widgets. Is there a way to turn this off? I want to be able to select text in a widget to copy it. Thanks

November 02 2005 at 1:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tf

I could see it as useful to compare with how other browsers are rendering a site... Turn on transparency, and overlaw Safari on top of a FireFox or whatever browser window... Does Safari render tables the same way? padding? floats? fonts? Overflows? Etc...

April 19 2005 at 2:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Laurie

You guys rock. I'll sleep peacefully now. Zzzzzzzzzz

April 18 2005 at 9:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Ballard

The ability for WebKit to have a transparent background was added for Dashboard support, since Dashboard Widgets are rendered with WebKit. The fact that it was put into the Safari debug menu is so you can test your Dashboard widgets in Safari (assuming they don't rely on a widget plugin for added functionality). And yes, it gets rid of the shadow. Why? Because rendered content in the transparent area would be given a drop-shadow if the window still had a shadow itself, and that would not be good.

April 18 2005 at 8:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rohan

I think its to keep new tabs/windows white-free when a URL hasn't been entered. looks kinda nicer... I guess.ut when your moving from page to page, the white in between page loads is replaced by a void.

April 18 2005 at 6:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

it doesn't seem to work for me

April 18 2005 at 4:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SpacePirate

It seems when I enabled it that I could click/drag from the safari window from anywhere within its bounds... Interesting, but quite annoying when trying to select text.

April 18 2005 at 4:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MightyDave

Scott is correct. This is for dashboard widgets.

April 18 2005 at 4:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joseph Scott

The transparent window features seems to work in any page that doesn't have a color or image specified for the body tag.

April 18 2005 at 3:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nathan

If there is not background color then the page will appear transparent...

April 18 2005 at 2:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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