Safari 3 allows styled form controls

Posted May 8th 2008 12:30PM by Robert Palmer
Filed under: Tips and tricks, Internet, Graphic Design

This was included in WebKit builds beginning several years ago, apparently, but is something I recently stumbled upon. Historically, Safari has been pretty insistent on making sure web page form fields (like drop-down menus and buttons) retain the Aqua look-and-feel. Web designers, on the other hand, have gotten used to choosing colors and font sizes for those controls, so they fit in with their site's design.

Hopefully everyone can now be happy: Safari 3 allows web designers to style form controls with CSS. The results are pictured: instead of a glossy, Aqua-like control, Safari displays a matte-finish control in the color and size of your choosing. You can even apply background images to form controls. If you don't apply styles to your controls, then Safari retains the Aqua look.

This shouldn't require any changes to code that's already written for other browsers: Safari 3 should pick right up on the formatting, and display it as the designer intended. It does, however, open up WebKit-specific CSS to your form controls.

Webkit gets a perfect 100 on Acid3

Posted Mar 27th 2008 12:05AM by Michael Rose
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Open Source

In the rather rarefied atmosphere of web standards compliance, the Acid3 suite of browser tests is like a pro wrestler's chair to the back of the head: if you can take it and keep standing, that's very impressive. The Acid3 suite, first released at the beginning of this month, pushes browsers to the very edges of their rendering, SVG, CSS and DOM scripting capabilities -- all necessary for a consistent and interoperable Web 2.0 experience.

As with the earlier Acid2 test, there's been a bit of a horserace among browser development teams to be the first to the finish line with Acid3, including the WebKit squad responsible for Safari's underlying engine; Acid3 dev Ian Hickson gives major props to Apple and the WebKit devs on his blog, including efforts to clear bugs in the test suite itself (he had to work quite hard to find standards compliance issues in WebKit). On Wednesday evening, both the Opera and WebKit teams declared a 100% score -- not a full pass, as there are minor issues to clean up, but nevertheless the test looks like it should. With the Mac nightly build of WebKit available for download, you too can feel the power of this fully operational web standards battle station.

[A quick clarification: While both Opera and WebKit have claimed 100% on Acid3, only one of the browsers -- WebKit -- has a publicly downloadable version right now that can make that score. Opera's build won't be released for another week or so.]

Thanks Adam

SunSpider 0.9

Posted Dec 19th 2007 9:00PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Internet Tools, Open Source

If there is one thing geeks like to do it is benchmark things. From how fast their code runs, to how quickly their Mac renders video, the geek has an insatiable need for metrics. The geeks behind the WebKit project (that's the open source HTML rendering engine that powers Safari) wanted to measure how fast Safari's JavaScript Engine really was. They looked at the existing JavaScript benchmarks and decided none of them did what they needed, so they built SunSpider. At the moment SunSpider is at 0.9 but it has been released so people can fiddle with it and give feedback. Test it out with your favorite browser and see how it stacks up.

iPhone Web Development book debuts

Posted Nov 2nd 2007 3:00PM by Erica Sadun
Filed under: Books and Blogs, iPhone

August Trometer's new PDF book, Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari" just debuted. I am not much of a web designer myself but I may cough up the ten bucks to pick up a copy of this ebook. Topics according to the web page include Mobile Safari detection, Webkit-specific CSS attributes, and how to use iPhone-specific features via web tweaks. iUI, Joe Hewitt's iPhone-specific webpage design kit, doesn't appear in the write-up, and I'm not sure if Trometer covers using it or not.

Full disclosure, I have worked with AW/Pearson and will be doing so again.

ecto3 alpha released

Posted Aug 13th 2007 10:46AM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Blogs

Adriaan Tijsseling has been tweeting about the development progress of ecto3, his powerful Mac blogging app, for some time now. After a sneak peek and more teaser screenshots, Adriaan has generously offered an alpha version for us to play with. In other words: it's pre-beta, which means stuff is very, very likely to go wrong; play with this at your own risk. Speaking of risk, however, there is certainly an upside to testing out this ecto3 alpha: it uses a completely different set of data and storage from the current ecto2, so you don't have to worry about blowing away your old settings or accounts.

That said, let's get on to the good stuff: what's new. First of all, ecto3 is apparently a complete rewrite from the bottom up. It has a new rich text editor based on Apple's own Editable WebKit, which offers a number of handy new writing abilities (such as the slick nested list in the ecto3 alpha announcement post). Another major new development which we had previously heard of is a new plug-in architecture for ecto3, allowing anyone to add support for more blogging systems, integrate media and even text formatting such as Markdown. It's a great step towards allowing ecto3 to become a blogging hub that can do just about anything for anyone.

Speaking of media, I also noticed that there is a new media browser that has access to all the typical stuff, such as iPhoto and Aperture photos, and even your movies. There are all sorts of new goodies in ecto3, so definitely poke around to see all the hard work Adriaan has put into this so far.

If you download the alpha, be sure to read through Adriaan's ecto3 alpha announcement post for a few tips and gotchas with getting the ball rolling. There are a few minor things he hasn't gotten to yet, such as adding all the sites to ping when you publish a post, but a simple 'add defaults' button will get you squared away easily. Once it's finished, ecto3 will surprisingly be a free upgrade for existing registered users (a single license is a mere $17.95). Until then, however, be sure to swing by the support forums to post bugs and discuss ecto3.

Surfin' Safari publishes WebKit Project Goals

Posted Jul 26th 2007 4:00PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Blogs

Surfin' Safari is the official blog of the team that works on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that powers Safari and just about any other app on Mac OS X that allows you to view web pages, such as NetNewsWire, iSale, RapidWeaver and many, many more. Heck, these days WebKit is going far beyond Mac OS X, as it's used by everything from MobileSafari in the iPhone to Safari on Windows and even some of Nokia's phones and other devices that can browse the web.

Unfortunately, as with any increasingly popular project, WebKit seems to be getting pressure from a lot of new angles to implement certain features and optimize for one use or another. Many people want WebKit to do things like support the same rich text editing widgets that Firefox does for sites like MySpace, forums and blogging systems, while others prefer to leave those features on the curb so Safari can remain the lean, mean browsin' machine it's known as.

In order to avoid getting drawn and quartered by the very constituencies they serve, the WebKit team has understandably announced a set of WebKit goals the team is aspiring towards. While some of these goals are pretty obvious, such as keeping things secure and easily hackable (after all, it's an open source engine), some of the goals are definitely written to help establish a few boundaries to help keep everyone on track and, ultimately, help people understand what WebKit is (and will be), as well as what it is not. For the sake of cutting down on sleepless nights and answering endless feature requests, I hope these goals make the proper rounds.

Shiira 2.2 updated for Safari 3 beta's WebKit

Posted Jul 23rd 2007 8:00AM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

When Apple makes changes to WebKit - the open source rendering engine that powers Safari - like they just did with the Safari 3 beta, many, many other Mac OS X apps that have anything to do with websites need to do a little catchup so things continue to run smoothly. Shiira, the feature-packed alternative browser, is just such an app that fortunately just made the leap to Safari 3 beta compatibility. Aside from the twelve new localizations introduced in this new v2.2 update, I can't tell what else has changed. Still, if you installed the Safari 3 beta and noticed that Shiira has been misbehaving one way or another, this new version should calm the waters.

Apple posts web developer guide for iPhone

Posted Jul 4th 2007 7:00PM by Dave Caolo
Filed under: Internet Tools, Developer, iPhone

If you're a web developer with a hankerin' to write for the iPhone, this is for you. Apple has posted an informative webpage that the outlines iPhone-specific guidelines you'll want to keep in mind, as we as some more general best practices. Topics include:

• Integrating Mail, Safari and Maps
• Understanding what Safari supports in iPhone
• Optimizing page readability

There's more, of course, and you can get the full run-down here. Now get to it!

[Via What Do I Know?]

Safari 3.0.2 beta released

Posted Jun 22nd 2007 7:30PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Beta Beat

The Surfin' Safari blog dedicated to the open source WebKit project (which powers Safari on Mac OS X, Windows and even the iPhone) has announced the availability of Safari 3.0.2 beta. This isn't a major release by any means, but it does contain a healthy list of squashed bugs, as well as fixes for mysteriously disappearing text in a variety of situations. The announcement post contains links to specific information for Mac and Windows users, as well as a link to more security issues fixed in this new beta.

To snag the new version for either platform you're using, simply head to Apple's Safari beta download page and pick your poison. Of course, we must remind you this is a beta, so it is still not all that uncommon for Safari 3 to crash, hiccup and potentially eat your cat. Besides, one could question whether your cat should be getting very close to your computer to begin with.

More ecto 3 details, a screenshot and roadmap revealed

Posted Jun 7th 2007 3:30PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Blogs

Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible.

Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail.

While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.

Mailplane update uses latest WebKit to enable rich text editing

Posted Apr 4th 2007 3:00PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools, Beta Beat

Since we last mentioned Mailplane, the Gmail client that integrates with Mac OS X, it's received a series of minor updates that have fixed bugs and added a few features. The most recent update, however, has added some significant new features such as a 'Mail PDF with Mailplane' print dialog plugin, customizable toolbar, clickable Growl notifications that take you to the specific message and - to my personal delight - simple instructions for enabling rich text editing when composing messages. This is big news because Mailplane uses WebKit - the same open source web rendering engine Safari is based on - to interact with Gmail, which means Mailplane is also limited by WebKit's inability to provide rich text editing features like bold, justification, colors, etc.

Fortunately, turning on rich text editing is as simple as downloading the latest nightly app build of WebKit and telling Mailplane where you put it. This won't overwrite Safari or interfere with it in any other way, so this process is pretty low-risk for gaining rich text editing, but seemingly only in Gmail (either in Mailplane or using WebKit itself as a browser). I tried surfing to a few other sites and couldn't get rich text widgets to appear in any of them.

Either way, this is great news for Mailplane users who want to join the rest of the internet in using some text formatting goodness when composing their messages. If you need a refresher on what Mailplane is all about, check our previous post and photo gallery for a brief tour, or head over to the Mailplane site to read more and sign up for the private beta.

SunriseBrowser for web designers

Posted Mar 24th 2007 9:00AM by Mat Lu
Filed under: Software, Freeware, Internet Tools, Open Source, Developer

The SunriseBroswer is neat little WebKit based "open-source browser for web developer[s]." Since it's based on WebKit it will render pages more or less as Safari does, but it has some features targeted at web designers. For instance, the window can be automatically resized to 640 x 480 (pictured above), 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768 with one button click (clicking through the options, you can see TUAW was clearly designed to be viewed in a window 1024 pixels wide). It also allows very easy access to the underlying HTML and CSS files, as well as a nice implementation of the download window which includes the URL (allowing easy downloading of a page element such as an embedded video). There are many other convenient and useful features like zoom levels, PDF export of the entire web page, etc. It even has one nice feature I'd like to see come to Safari: the combination of the address field and search field. If you type a URL in the field it goes to the referent, but if you type anything else it's sent to Google as a search.

SunriseBrowser is not, nor is it meant to be, a replacement general use web browser, but it has some neat specialized features and could be very useful for someone developing and testing a website. It is open source and a free download.

[Via MacMerc]

Adobe takes wraps off Apollo, uses WebKit

Posted Mar 19th 2007 8:30PM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Software, Open Source, Developer

Adobe today took the wraps off their cross platform desktop application runtime called Apollo. The alpha is now available for download on Adobe labs.

What the heck does this 'runtime' do? It allows web developers to create desktop applications that run on both the Mac and PC using HTML, AJAX, and Flash. This is all well and good, I imagine you saying, but why the heck is this on TUAW? It would seem that Apollo is using WebKit as its HTML rendering engine. You might recall that WebKit is Apple's variant of the Konqueror HTML engine, which powers Safari and is baked right into OS X.

Adobe is using the open source version of WebKit, which is slightly different than the one found in OS X, but they plan on contributing code back to the project. This can only be good for Mac users. The more people that are using WebKit the more pressure companies will feel to support it (I'm looking at you, banks!).

[via Daring Fireball]

Safari's market share rises to 4.03 percent

Posted Dec 3rd 2006 4:00PM by David Chartier
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple, .Mac

In a post cleverly titled The same thing we do every night, Pinky (an Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain reference), the WebKit blog Surfing Safari links a Switch to a Mac article which notes that Safari's market share has risen once again. Continuing its upward stride from October's 3.53 percent, Market Share now finds Safari at 4.03 percent, though data suggests that Safari's growth, while still on the up and up, has actually slowed in the past month.

Since the overall Mac OS market share is still progressing quite nicely - up to 5.39 percent now - this slow in Safari's growth could be attributed to any number of factors, one of which I'm willing to bet could be all those switchers coming over and bringing Firefox with them (note: that's just my theory; I can't find numbers right now to back it up). Still, this is good news for the spread of Apple either way, as it can probably be safe to bet that the company won't be stopping the development of Safari anytime soon.

ADC on using nightly WebKit builds

Posted Nov 6th 2006 9:00AM by Scott McNulty
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Open Source, Apple, Developer

Last year we blogged about the availability of nightly WebKit builds (WebKit being the HTML rendering engine that Apple uses in OS X and has made available to the Open Source community). The Apple Developer Connection has an article up explaining what nightly builds are and why you might want to use them. The long and the short of it being that if you are a developer using WebKit to power your app (or widget) nightly builds give you a chance to see the changes in WebKit before they become part of the OS.

[via Surfin' Safari]

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