Safari 4.0 DP2 has a build number of 40A12. Just like the last build, this edition scored a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Developers with access to the Apple Connect website can download Safari 4.0 preview 2 for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger, and for Windows.
The new version gives users the option to save web pages as an application that can be launched independently of Safari (similar in concept to the SSBs Prism and Fluid). There is no word on when Safari 4.0 might be released to the public.
John Gruber's (and my) favorite Twitter web app for the iPhone is about to get better -- if you've been on the Hahlo for iPhone homepage lately, you'll have seen that Dean Robinson is working on version 3 of Hahlo (titled, hilariously for us gamers, the Legendary Edition).
TUAW got to take a look (along with all of the other beta users) at the new software, and here's a short preview running through what the new Hahlo will look like, as well as updates to the system, including a brand new Settings page, inline replies, hashtags and searching, and lots of other cool tweaks and updates.
It's a simple two-step process. First, install the Quick Look Droplet, a simple application that displays any file with Quick Look. Next, set your browser preference to automatically open certain file types (say, PDFs, Word documents and JPGs) with the droplet. It's much snappier than launching Preview or Word.
Over at MurphyMac, Murphy has posted a great tutorial about the new Leopard selection tools for Preview.app. As usual, there's an excellent screencast that walks you through the entire process. The new "Extract Shape" tool lets you draw a rough outline around an object and then use selection handles to fit the outline to the shape. The screen cast then goes on to describe how you can matte around the selection to control the edge texture. It's a tidy and easy-to-follow technique that seems to produce nicely trimmed results.
Scott Stevenson has taken another look at a program I am pretty much drooling over at this point-- Delicious Library 2. Earlier, he walked us through the overview of all the items in your library, and this time, he goes a little more in depth on what the app can tell you about each item that you own.
First off, everything is Quicklook-capable and can be viewed in CoverFlow, which is awesome. You can thumb through your books just with a few keystrokes. You can share your library via .Mac and Bonjour, which means while using Wi-Fi at Barnes and Noble, you can actually get book recommendations from anyone else on the network with you.
Finally, Scott reveals a strange but interesting new feature. Apparently, in its pre-release incarnation, you can also track tools. That's right-- the screenshot above is not Photoshopped (not by us, at least). Scott even suggests there might be other possessions to track, but we'll have to wait for the official release to see just what the Delicious team have cooked up.
DragThing, which could have my favorite Mac app name ever, is a launcher that will open up anything you (surprise!) drag to it, and can also work as a Dock alternative and a visual clipboard. The idea is that everything you need is just a click (or a hotkey press) away.
And now, this thing has hit version 5.9, with full support for Leopard (an entire week early!), and a host of other updates. Actually I'm not sure how much a "host" is, but there's a lot-- a new look, icon reflections (optional, in case you don't want things too shiny), new themes, live previews, and the ability to insert and rearrange items in the Dock using just the eponymous dragging action. Very slick.
DragThing is available over on the website-- a single license is $29, and you can get five and ten packs of licenses for $99 and $149. Trust me-- it's a real drag.
Gametap's got a quick look at the new Guitar Hero sequel, coming out for the Mac later this year, and the biggest news is that they've got a date: the PC and Mac versions are shipping simultaneously with the consoles on October 28. Rock on! Apparently you'll also be able to use the mouse and keyboard to play (although, come on, Guitar Hero is all about that guitar controller that ships with the game), and this part is pretty slick, too: PC and Mac users will be able to play against (or with) each other online. Very, very nice.
No system requirements yet, but I'm guessing that, like Tiger Woods and Madden, this is going to be for the non-integrated video cards only. Still, if you've got the kit to run it, it'll definitely be a good time. Our sister games blog Joystiq has rounded up the entire setlist for the game, with YouTube links to every song in it. In fact, if you've already got Frets on Fire working, you can start practicing now -- you'll need it if you want to shred against me.
A while ago, Derek Powazek proposed an idea for a mini Mail window based on the functionality of iTunes' mini option; hit the best fit button - the green one - in iTunes to get an idea, or simply check out Derek's post for an actual screenshot mockup of the concept. Fortunately, John Gruber just caught that OliveToast software literally ran with the concept, releasing - to my absolute delight - a MiniMail plug-in for Apple Mail.
As you can see, MiniMail allows users to simply hit Mail's best fit button (or choosing Window > Zoom) to condense it to a 'just what you need' view, offering a customizable preview area and three menu buttons for performing a healthy set of operations. Fortunately, keyboard shortcuts still work fine as well, so ⌘-n will create a new message. Even using the arrow keys works for moving back and forth in the message list, and thankfully, the list of mailboxes is customizable for this view as well so you can see just what you need.
After a few minutes of tinkering with the demo while writing this post, I'm happy to say that the receipt for my $9 license just arrived. MiniMail rocks, and I'm so glad someone brought Powazek's concept to life, as this is the perfect compromise that I've been looking for between constantly hiding and showing Mail while still making it easy to do basic things in it on the fly. Thanks, OliveToast software.
TUAW reader Dave Lettice found this shot one in one of Apple's new Preview. He grabbed a screen and uploaded it to Flickr. To make sure we were actually looking at Preview, he checked the menu bar and the dock--as you can see with the Flickr notations he added.
In this shot, you can see a teeny tiny version of the new Preview tools which from left to right appear to be Previous and Next arrows, Zoom out and in buttons, a trio of button that I can't read but which seem to be labeled "M-something", "Text" and "Select", a colorful drop-down menu labeled with a word starting with A, a "Mark Up" menu, an Inspector, a Search field (good for those PDFs!) and a button to reveal/hide the sidebar. Feel free to Zapruder further for those items that I couldn't read or just got wrong.
We sing the praises of plasq's fantastic private beta Skitch tool for making it dead simple to capture, edit and share screenshots with a good variety of online communities, but Mac OS X's own Preview app for viewing images and PDFs isn't without at least a couple of these basic tools. These definitely are not on par with Skitch's capabilities, but as you can see, Preview offers text and oval circling annotation tools, and that Select Tool can help you crop an image (or even multiple pages of a PDF). As far as getting your work out of Preview and off to wherever it's going, the best you can do is save a new copy of the image and manually move or upload it, but hey: if you don't need all the features Skitch has to offer at it's yet-to-be-set commercial price, Preview just might do the job for you.
Musings From Mars has posted some revealing videos of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's upcoming 'Quick Look' feature, which allows the OS to preview many different types of media, including audio and video, with unprecedented ease and power. MFM has created a YouTube playlist of three videos, all demonstrating different abilities of this new feature.
Note that in the first movie, the Finder has an unmistakably different look to it, and this blogger would go so far as to wonder if it could be an early sign of an update to everyone's favorite file manager to hate. The second video demonstrates something peculiar that isn't quite apparent from simply watching it: once one video was playing in the preview pane, MFM began clicking on different videos in the Finder, which caused the preview pane to instantly start playing each new video, but picking up at the same point in the timeline - not beginning each video from square one. The third video is a basic demonstration of the preview pane's ability to preview movies even at full screen - unshackling Mac OS X users from the cramped chains of the Finder's tiny preview when in Column view.
Now we don't have any way of verifying these videos, but if they are real, they're some appetizing examples of what is hopefully a shiny new Finder in Leopard.
Thanks Kurt
Update: Leland, the author of the movies from Musings From Mars, stopped by to let us know that the interesting look of the Finder in the first video is in fact the work of Uno, and not evidence of a fancy new Leopard Finder.
Mac Rumors is reporting that Apple has seeded a new build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (build 9A283, for those keeping track) to Select and Premiere ADC members, the first major seed since preview versions were given to the devs at WWDC 2006 in August. Interestingly, this build is meant to be a fresh install - not simply an upgrade over the previous version. Mac Rumors also has a roundup of at least some of the major changes from the WWDC build:
new Parental Controls preference pane for content filtering, apps, and curfews
Significant user interface changes to iCal
3D audio cues to indicate locations of items on the screen in the VoiceOver screen reader
Basic editing in Preview
I can't help but hope one of those 'significant' UI changes to iCal includes a new 'unified' look to bring it more in line with their move away from the ill-fated brushed metal.
Romain Guy at The Apple Blog has penned a nice walkthrough of an interesting new app called FileBrowse, which acts as more of a streamlined tool for media file browsing and manipulating tasks, as opposed to a full-fledged Finder replacement (cuz we all know how well that's going). FileBrowse makes use of subtle display and 3D elements to provide more information when rooting through folders of images, music and video. As you can see, it draws Windows XP-like thumbnails on folders of images, allowing one to peek at what's inside without actually having to crack it open. It also offers far more information (like metadata) when viewing items individually, and it even renders album artwork on music folders, along with video file previews, a unique visual grouping system, and more.
FileBrowse looks like an interesting app, so check out Romain's walkthrough if you've been feeling the Finder is a bit lacking in these departments lately. At $25 though, it probably won't be for everyone, but it's nice to see some new file browsing tools that focus on a few things, and doing them well.
Sure, we knew about the upcoming .Mac webmail refresh, but that's because we're nerds for Apple news (yes, you too - don't deny it. You're reading TUAW, after all). To my surprise this morning, I had an email from .Mac, advertising the new webmail and promoting all the new features. While there isn't anything new in the email, I think the significance here is that they're telling their .Mac customers - who aren't typically the cutting edge, AJAX-slinging type - about this fancy upcoming webmail UI change. This could likely mean that it truly is 'coming soon' (as in, not the Microsoft Vista 'coming soon' kind of way), as they would probably need to give their customers at least some kind of a heads up that their webmail is about to facelift its way into looking almost exactly like their desktop email.
Apple has released a v1 Software Update for all those torrenters developers who are working with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard right now. We received a screenshot of the update, and it doesn't offer much more info than: "This Software Update delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X Leopard Developer Preview and is (of course) recommended for all users." The update weighs in at a mere 46.4MB, and should be available from Leopard's Software Update. Enjoy.
Apple has started seeding developers with Safari 4.0 preview 2. You may recall that the last developer preview was issued in June after the WWDC.
Here's 
