Tag Archives: Safari

How to Turn Off Auto-Reloading Tabs in Safari 5.1

Oct 5, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts No Comments

When Apple released Safari 5.1 recently, it ignited a bit of outrage amongst its users. For whatever reason, Safari began refresh the page content of a tab whenever you switched to it. This kind of defeats the purpose of tabs, as you can’t leave Pandora running or flip between a form you’re filling out and something you’re referencing.

Oddly enough, there’s a quick and easy fix.

  1. Open the Preferences window (Command+,).
  2. Switch to the Security tab.
  3. In the “Web content” section, uncheck Java. (But leave JavaScript checked!)
  4. Close the Preferences dialog. Now tabs should no longer reload whenever you switch between them. You won’t be able to run Java applets embedded in web pages, though.

I’m guessing that the behavior is the result of a bug, and not some weird decision of Apple’s.

The Safari Challenge

Jul 2, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 2 Comments

I happened across an interesting post by Chris Coyier recently: The Safari Challenge. Besides being a creative example of the “blogazine” concept, it sums-up an issue that has been bothering me lately. Should I be using Firefox or Safari?

I’ve traditionally been a Firefox guy. I like Firefox. I like the peeps at Mozilla, and they do great things. I also like Apple, and when I can, I try to use Apple products. So for an entire week, I decided I was going to suck it up and just try and make the switch to using Safari as my main web browser. No going back and forth, no half-assing it. All-or-nothing. Some people claim to be able to use different web browsers for different things. Not me, I can’t do that. I can’t even have more than one pair of shoes without getting confused.

I, too, have long been a Firefox user. I’ve liked the browser ever since it was first released back in 2004. It’s still my primary browser, even since becoming a full-time Mac user. There are several extensions that I depend on, such as the veritable Firebug.

But it just seems so slow. All of its major competitors are now so much faster than the browser that single-handedly put an end to Microsoft’s decade of browser domination. What went wrong? Why isn’t it being rectified?

Safari is a great browser, but I can’t give up functionality for the speed, however tempting it may be.

Chris’s title, The Safari Challenge, is more apt than he probably thought. That is the very challenge Mozilla faces: to catch up to the speed of Safari and Chrome. Hopefully it will be soon.

Safari 4 Downloaded 11 Million Times in First Three Days

Jun 17, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 11 Comments

Apple announced last Friday that Safari 4 has been downloaded over 11 million times in the first three days since it left beta.

CUPERTINO, California—June 12, 2009—Apple® today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari® 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.

More than half of the downloads were from Windows users. Isn’t that interesting? And no, they were not pushed through some sort of automatic update. I had to manually download the new version of Safari for my MacBook, and it’s not yet on either of the Windows-based machines that I administrate.

In contrast, Google Chrome nearly had 2 million US downloads in it’s first week (no word of the full numbers), and Firefox 3 had over 18 million.

Browser Extensions: A Call For Standardization

Mar 18, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts No Comments

I use Firefox as my main browser, and have since it was released pretty much. Over that time I have become dependent on a variety of extensions. ColorZilla, Web Developer, Firebug, StumbleUpon, etc.. I use them daily, and a browser without them would feel…incomplete to me.

What if I wanted to switch to another browser, say Safari? The new Safari 4 Beta is pretty good. I couldn’t take those wonderful extensions with me. (Of course, I’m happy with Firefox…providing Mozilla can fix it’s slow launch time soon…)

Many browsers support extensions of some sort. Safari and Internet Explorer do now, following Firefox’s lead.

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What You Must Know About the New Safari 4 Beta

Mar 1, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Featured, Software & Scripts One Comment

Safari 4 Top SitesMy first post at NETTUTS was published a few days ago. What You Must Know About the New Safari 4 Beta is an overview of the beta of Apple’s latest browser release.

The updated browser is lean and lightning fast, and it passes both the ACID2 and the ACID3 test.

With Safari 4 and Google Chrome on the loose, Mozilla needs to get going and deflate Firefox’s bloat, ans fix the overly large startup time especially. The New Browser Wars are upon us, and this time it’s between Mozilla, Apple, and Google.

Read the full details on Apple’s new browser over at NETTUTS.

The iPhone and Web Design

Mar 27, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Design 3 Comments

Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch now account for over 70% of US mobile browser traffic. What does this mean for webmasters, and just as importantly, those who design as a business? With the increasing popularity of the iPhone, it’s becoming more important to make sure sites are compatible. Have you been wondering lately whether your site looks and functions fine on Apple’s mobile browser?

For those in the design business, this is a big issue. Do the designs you make work on the iPhone, and how long until your customers start asking if it will be iPhone-compatible?

I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks, as well as wondering how my own sites function on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

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