Just poking around the new Safari 5 today. Here’s what I’ve noticed so far.
Safari 5 still has no way to restore an accidentally closed tab. UPDATE: One of my fine readers points out in the comments that you can now hit command-z (or choose “Undo Close Tab” from the File menu) to restore an accidentally closed tab. This is great news. Unfortunately, it only works for the last closed tab, whereas Firefox allows you to restore multiple tabs in sequence. Still, this is a major improvement. I’ll take it.- Nor is there a built-in way to automatically restore a Safari session after quitting the app. You must still hit “Reopen All Windows from Last Session” from the History menu.
- Fortunately there is an extension for this already.
- Safari 5 sometimes gets a bit confused when directly saving items with the “safariextz” file extension despite the fact that said extension is the one used for Safari 5 extensions.
- The addition of extensions in Safari is wonderful, but the roll-out seems uncharacteristically rushed.
- There is no unified, Apple-sanctioned place to get extensions as yet.
- There are no demos of the technology featured on Apple’s site.
- Seems strange considering how prominently featured this key new technology is in the announcement literature.
Safari 5 blessedly restores the ability to always keep a tab open even where there is only one. UPDATE: Another reader points out that the ability to keep the tab visible at all times has always been around in version 4, but was in the View menu rather than the tab preferences where it had been housed in previous versions, causing numerous users (myself included) to miss it entirely. Thanks, kind reader!
- Safari 5 features a new, jumbo preferences window.
- I have no idea what the new tabs preference does. What is the difference between “Always” and “Automatically?”
- Actually, here it is in Help. The pref pane language is astoundingly unclear. Even the Help description is confusing.
- Crash city! That didn’t take long.
- And now, because the tabs are all restoring at relaunch, I can’t open Safari 5. Nice. Here’s how Firefox handles this.
- The Gmail Checker extension looks promising.
- OMG. Gmail is down?! WTF?
- I will say this: Safari 5 is FAST!
- Composing posts in the WordPress GUI is much improved; key commands now work as they do in Firefox.
- Autocomplete now works from the middle of a search term. Yay!
There are a lot of nice touches in this new version of Safari. But there are still a few features I rely on that it lacks: bookmark syncing and tab restore spring immediately to mind. Still, with the improvements to general surfing and web app functionality and the amazing speed, I’ll be taking a closer at Safari for more of my browsing needs.
10 Comments
You are wrong on your first bullet point. Try CMD-Z.
Oh and I think the tap preference description is perfectly clear.
Really? You think that tab description makes sense? You understand that when they say “pages” they mean “pages that are automatically opened in a new window?” And when they say “Automatically” you think it’s clear that some specially formatted pages will still open in new windows? Really?
I don’t find any of that clear at all. And I use the equivalent feature in Firefox. I don’t see most people who are unfamiliar with this sort of thing being at all able to make sense of this without referring to Help.
Thanks for the tip regarding tab reopening. I’ve updated the article.
-systemsboy
Showing the tab bar when only one tab is open was available in Safari 4: View -> Show/Hide Tab Bar. The setting did move from the Preferences window in Safari 3 to the View Menu in Safari 4 and I only discovered it still existed a few months into using Safari 4.
I think the distinction for opening pages in new tabs will become clearer if you enable it “always”. I’ve had it enabled for the last year or so and occasionally I’d hit a situation where a window would have popped up in response to clicking a link (the two I can think of are printing coupons and special login pages (Citibank Virtual Account Numbers, for example)) where the new window has an exact defined size and typically serves as a dialog box rather than a webpage. The explanation could be clearer, but I don’t know how I’d rewrite it.
Patrick,
The same preference in Firefox is simply labeled:
“Open new windows in new tab instead”
The second I read that I knew exactly what it meant. Granted the “Always” vs “Automatically” is not there and confuses the issue in Safari a bit, which would make it harder to write for. I’m not sure how you’d clarify it either, but I think they could do a better job.
Thanks for the Tab Bar tip! It’s starting to look like there are very few new features or behaviors in Safari 5. But, man, is it fast.
And extensions should someday prove a huge boon!
-systemsboy
Your post looks great in Safari’s new “Reader” option!
Hm. Maybe I should redesign the site to look exactly like Reader.
-systemsboy
Crash City: Did you hit the Report… button and look at what crashed? I’ve gotten one crash so far, but the report clearly showed an extension as the cause.
Alas, no. I should have. It was either an extension or a page I had just reloaded. Precipitating factor was the page reload, and the cure was closing tabs. And the extension’s still there. So I’m pretty sure it was the page.
Don’t know which page, though.
-systemsboy
Correction: it was not an extension caused crash, but it was 1Password, which has not yet been refactored into extension form. But still, apparently not Safari’s fault, though with memory smashing bugs, the apparent and actual precipitating factors may have little to do with each other.
I have just had another, repeatable crash trying to customize the toolbar. I’d guess this is extension related as I have the reload button installed. It might also be the Evernote plugin I have from the previous install.
No time to investigate now, though. I’m on vacation!
-systemsboy