[moonmonkey]

Safari 3.0 features and ideas

I have tried every browser under the sun and I still return to Safari.
I have used Firefox, Camino, Shiira and IE7 at work, all of these have some excellent features, but I would like to see Apple roll some more of these features into Safari, and also see them continue to develop some new ideas.

I see Safari and nimble and not bloated, all of the changes mentioned below would not have any impact on the speed or launch time of the application and would only serve to develop already present features or sand the rough corners off current features.

I have separated this post into 2 sections:

New Features

SAVE SESSION
1 Close a window with multiple tabs and you get the option to "Save Session" or "Don't Save" or "Cancel". There is a new sessions folder in the bookmarks folder and a new "Save Session..." option in the file menu. All a Session is an "Auto-Click" (multiple site) bookmark (the capability is already in Safari). See image.

2 As an addition to the save session feature, you can set Safari to automatically restore the last session on launch, the would be done in the General tab in the "Home Page" section.

3 The close button would have a dimple when more than one tab is open and the session is not saved.

RE-ORDER TABS
Be able to Re order tabs within windows and across windows, just like in Firefox except they slide smoothly into place and automatically change size (like when you play with the dock), you can also drag tabs out of Safari into the Dock or other apps to create links.

NEW TOOLBAR ITEMS
You would be able to add to the Toolbar (not present by default): "View Source", "Downloads", "Activity" and "Mail Contents of page" and "Mute". See image. A mute menu option would need to be added too.


BLOCK IMAGES
A new contextual menu to "Block images from www.???.com"
This feature is present in Firefox and is fantastic, I would want the page to instantly drop all images from the selected server after this option (from a contextual menu) is selected, with no reload. There should be an option to "Re-enable all images blocked from this page" in the view menu.

CUSTOMIZABLE SEARCH ENGINES
Options for changing the search engine should be available in the advanced section of the prefs, still keep google the default, but let us use Dogpile if we want.

PAGE TRANSITION EFFECTS
This title will be enough to make most people freak out in anger, I'm not talking serious distracting eye candy. All I want is an iPod style "Push"

Back Button = Screen pushes right
Forward Button = Screen pushes left
Snapback = Screen pushes down

This would only be enabled on fast machines and have to be very fast, for instance on an ipod you can triple click the button and it shoots back three layers, very responsive and gives excellent user feedback. The pages would all be cached anyway so there would be no load time.
See animation (running in very slow motion, and yes I know the title and address bar are not updating correctly)




Little Things

•"Search *insert search engine here* in New Tab" instead of "Search Google" in a contextual menu when a link is selected (this would obviously only change of tabs were enabled). See image.

•"Go to Address in New Tab" instead of "Go to Address" (this would obviously only change if tabs were enabled). See image.


•When you press the back button, Safari jumps directly back to the same position on the page you scrolled too (not load the page and then jump).

•Expose would treat all tabs as separate windows so you could F10 (or equivalent) and see all tabs on the screen.

•Safari windows (including the download manager) should update themselves when minimized to the dock.

Any other ideas?

[Scott Mackey]

I'm particularly on your side with the "save session" option and "mute safari" Very good stuff.

[RevEvs]

i assume you have sent this to Apple. Great Ideas!

[onlykaria]

you must send this to apple these are awesome ideas particularly re-ordering tabs

[Thinine]

Being able to control the volume of Safari would be awesome.

My main idea it to use Core Data for the history/bookmarks/cookies/autofill stuff, for greater speed and scalability.

Other than that, all of moon monkey's ideas are acceptable, except for the page transition idea. Completely useless.

[OAW]

Love your ideas. My only reservation is that Page Transitions s/b optional. If so, then I'm all for it. I've played with in in Shiira and it's cool for a minute but after the novelty wears off it can be a bit distracting.

Some other ideas I had ...

- Lose the blue progress indicator in the address bar. Or at least make it optional. A subtle spinning circle progress indicator like the ones used in Firefox or Camino would be better IMO. The blue in the address bar is too "in your face" and distracting. Often times, it gets hung up because some tangential image or ad server is slow as molasses in January ... but the main page is done loading. But this bright blue bar that stalls at times adds to the perception that Safari is slower loading pages than Camino or Firefox.

- Better cookie management - I've noticed that Safari slows down as the cookie list grows. Clearing this out results in noticeably improved performance. The overwhelming majority of cookies are for things that most user don't care about. So why have this list grow with every site you visit? You don't want to turn it off altogether because they are useful at sites like MacNN, and Netflix, and Amazon. Instead, I would like to be able to reject all cookies except for sites that I specify. This would allow me to keep the list down and improve performance w/o sacrificing usability on key sites.

- An option to change the UI to the Unified look without the ugly pinstripes in the Bookmarks and Tab bar. There are utilities to do this now but those bars retain the standard Aqua look because they technically aren't part of the toolbar. The overall look is worse than brushed metal because of this IMO. If Unified isn't offered as an option, then at least lose the brushed metal and implement the new iLife 06 type of look.

- User Agent - would like to be able to specify this in Preferences rather than displaying the Debug menu for this feature alone.

OAW

[sushiism]

Heckling the user about sessions when closing the browser windows sounds terrible, its a feature you might invoke twice a month so hassling them about 60 times a day is a bad idea.

"An option to change the UI to the Unified look"
Apple doesn't work that way really, they make a definitive choice and going with it, making this optional would be admitting you don't know how to make the interface. You can see this in iTunes vs WMP, media player needs skins because the team cant throw an interface together to save their lives so they need to just leave a window open for users to fix it.

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by sushiism

Heckling the user about sessions when closing the browser windows sounds terrible, its a feature you might invoke twice a month so hassling them about 60 times a day is a bad idea.

When you are about to loose unsaved work in any other app, its either asks you if you want to save or saves it automatically and restores it on next launch.

I think Safari should do the same, everybody knows how irritating it is to accidentally close a window full of tabs.

[sworthy]

These are really good ideas - I too have been experimenting with other browsers, but love safari's rss integration as well as its general useability.

[JKT]

Given that 95% of your suggested features (plus even more) are already in OmniWeb and have been for over a year, why don't you just use it instead and you can have all of that now?
OK, let me guess - speed. That will change relatively soon (OW 5.5 is in private beta testing right now).
OK, let me guess - price. You'll have to buy the next update to Safari too (as a part of the OS) and I have spent less than a quarter of the price of two versions of Safari+OS on two versions of OmniWeb.

Another alternative is Opera 9 which is shaping up to be a quite impressive browser, weird interface notwithstanding.

If page transitions are on your priority list, try Shiira.

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by JKT

Given that 95% of your suggested features (plus even more) are already in OmniWeb and have been for over a year, why don't you just use it instead and you can have all of that now?
OK, let me guess - speed. That will change relatively soon (OW 5.5 is in private beta testing right now).
OK, let me guess - price. You'll have to buy the next update to Safari too (as a part of the OS) and I have spent less than a quarter of the price of two versions of Safari+OS on two versions of OmniWeb.

Another alternative is Opera 9 which is shaping up to be a quite impressive browser, weird interface notwithstanding.

If page transitions are on your priority list, try Shiira.

I don't like Omniweb, its bloated and launches like word, I don't see how Opera is a valid alternative when its crap and everyone realized that ages ago.
Shiira's page curl transition has absolutely nothing to do with what I described.

This thread is about Safari, I want a better Safari.

[sushiism]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey

When you are about to loose unsaved work in any other app, its either asks you if you want to save or saves it automatically and restores it on next launch.

I think Safari should do the same, everybody knows how irritating it is to accidentally close a window full of tabs.

Its not a document your editing is it though, if this happens enough to you to justify something as irritating and bizarre as a web browser asking you if you want to save the set of web pages it currently has open then maybe you shouldn't use tab browsing as its clearly flawed.

Personally this has happened to me maybe 3 times, when I have accidentally pressed cmd+ Q instead of W, probably took me less than a minute to open safari again cmd+opt+b then drag the last few history items back to the tab bar. This whole idea seems like the sort of thing you would see in Linux to patch up a broken piece of UI design

You say you don't use Omniweb because its bloated when most of the features you are suggesting are exactly that, they're things that may help an annoyance a handful of people have when using the software and when you start pushing them all in you end up with a bloated application. Things like specific domain image blocking should be left up to plugins, I mean whats the use of that? Are you using it to block adverts or potentially offensive images? Its a nice idea for a few power users who may have some reason to stop images from a certain domain but can't be bothered blocking that domain entirely via their routers but what use has it got to the general mac population?

[mindwaves]

Wow, I love most of your ideas particularly the customizable toolbar with Mute on there and to save a tabbed session. The Keynote style push effects are a good idea also, but I also that Safari caches more efficiently also to do such a task. Great ideas once again!

[threestain]

but that's the point of the new Omniweb - its going to be very very quick. In theory anyway.

As to Safari, I would a): Like a more stable Safari. b): the features above.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by sushiism

Its not a document your editing is it though, if this happens enough to you to justify something as irritating and bizarre as a web browser asking you if you want to save the set of web pages it currently has open then maybe you shouldn't use tab browsing as its clearly flawed.

Personally this has happened to me maybe 3 times, when I have accidentally pressed cmd+ Q instead of W

So…how is this a flaw in tabbed browsing?

[David Thompson]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey

Safari 3.0 features and ideas

I'd like a spelling/grammar checker for textarea blocks (for example) so that I'd sound more erudite than would otherwise be apparent. :-) (Yes, I KNOW that I can look up individual words in the dictionary, but you can't easily lookup unknowingly misspelled words.) HA! It should also contextually discern the appropriate there/their/they're, to/too/two and your/you're or various other homonyms.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey

I don't like Omniweb, its bloated and launches like word, I don't see how Opera is a valid alternative when its crap and everyone realized that ages ago.
Shiira's page curl transition has absolutely nothing to do with what I described.

This thread is about Safari, I want a better Safari.

You want a better Safari? It is already here and has been for the past year and a bit. That was my point. Why wait when it is already here? If you think Apple is going to add even a third of your proposed features, then I feel you are going to be very disappointed.

While we're on the matter of OmniWeb style capabilities - have you installed SafariStand? You'll find that some of your ideas are available right now in Safari (e.g. restoring last open tabs, image blocking, etc).

Have you actually tried Opera 9? It is quite an improvement over 8. Not my cup of tea due to its weird interface, but why be so dismissive? It is a highly capable browser and has some nice features that are lacking in other browsers.

FWIW, I mentioned Shiira for the benefit of people interested in seeing a real world example of page transitions here and now, rather than just looking at your animated .gif (again, I personally don't like it as it makes the page load feel slower than it actually is).

[Bouba]

I'd like to see the reincarnation of Sherlock built into safari.. it would all make sens, some widget are not made to display listing of informations. This would allow a new kind of flexibility, they would load like standard webpages, be able to tab them.. I think it would be an amazing idea, and it's already there to implement.

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by Bouba

I'd like to see the reincarnation of Sherlock built into safari.. it would all make sens, some widget are not made to display listing of informations. This would allow a new kind of flexibility, they would load like standard webpages, be able to tab them.. I think it would be an amazing idea, and it's already there to implement.

I don't like that idea, widgets can replace everything Sherlock does.
With Leopard they will have totally covered the feature set of Sherlock.

[Adam Betts]

I'm assuming you have already seen this video of new tabs in Safari 3.0:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2WY3inouhw

[Adam Betts]

Originally Posted by David Thompson

I'd like a spelling/grammar checker for textarea blocks (for example) so that I'd sound more erudite than would otherwise be apparent. :-) (Yes, I KNOW that I can look up individual words in the dictionary, but you can't easily lookup unknowingly misspelled words.) HA! It should also contextually discern the appropriate there/their/they're, to/too/two and your/you're or various other homonyms.

Grammar Checker is coming in Leopard as global service, just like Spell Checker.

I'm pretty excited

[moonmonkey]

Originally Posted by Adam Betts

I'm assuming you have already seen this video of new tabs in Safari 3.0:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2WY3inouhw

Yeah, Apple stole that off my thread. B*srds

[wil]

Instead of a save session option, it would be nice if history was saved with a bit more context. Rather than a long list of sites visited in order, perhaps a series of tabs could be saved in a sub-menu of the history menu, selecting the sub-menu (or the first item in the sub-menu "open all in tabs" itself would open all in tabs.

There could even be a history thread option that remembers not just the parent site (kinda like SnapBack) but all of the descendants.