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Hello everyone! I go by the pen name TheLaw and I’d like to welcome you to my new blog L Tech Report! It is a spin-off of my political blog The L Comment. A quick bio, I am a musician and composer, and have been so for 18 years. I have a bachelors in music education, a masters in communication (TV/Radio/Film) and I have been a life long tech junkie. Yes… I do have spare motherboards in my closet for no good reason! This blog was made to share my passion for technology and innovation with the blogosphere, so please come often, leave comments, subscribe to the RSS feed, twitter me and all that good stuff!
Moving on to Episode 1, I wanted to talk about the Safari 4 beta, and Opera 10 alpha web browsers. I downloaded it and gave it a whirl a few days after it came out. I will say at the onset that I very much dislike most Apple products, but I also pride my self on my rationality, so I will always give the least biased account I can. That said, I didn’t like it very much. As of now, I very much prefer Safari 3.
One of the key issues is the placement of the tabs. I’m not sure if this is a failed Microsoft adaptation of the “ribbon” interface, or sloppy port to the Windows OS, but the tabs appear at the top of the window on the same plane as the minimize, restore, and close buttons appear. This is surprisingly horribly GUI design on Apple’s part because I believe most users block that section from their minds when browsing, much like we tend the focus reading at the center of a web page around advertisements.
The rest of the issues are tit-for tat issues that may not be a huge deal for some. I think the color scheme for safari was better in v.3 as a brushed steel silver. The interface is shinier now, and sort of resembles windows XP. Again, I haven’t tried this out on a Mac yet, so this could be a windows convention. I liked the way bookmarks appear on the personal bar in v.3 better as well. The font is now bigger, which is easier to read, but offers less viewing space, particularly noticeable on laptops.
Some really cool features include the innovative book marking system. It has a GUI facelift from version 3, adding a very awesome coverflow-like browsing system; book marked web pages can be view like albums in iTunes. It also starts up and loads pages way faster than v.3. The other sexy feature is the Top Sites window. In this view recently viewed websites are pinned on the screen for easy choosing when you create a new tab. The slick interface resembles the album view in iTunes, further accenting Apple’s commitment to a standardized Aqua interface.
Is it hot or not? It is a bit too early to tell, but it is definitely on the right track. It is faster, bolder and has nice new features, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that a lot of these “new” features have already existed in my FAVORITE web browser, Opera. In the next episode, we’ll dive into Opera 10 alpha and do a little compare and contrast!
Hello everyone! I go by the pen name TheLaw and I’d like to welcome you to my new blog L Tech Report! It is a spin-off of my political blog The L Comment. A quick bio, I am a musician and composer, and have been so for 18 years. I have a bachelors in music education, a masters in communication (TV/Radio/Film) and I have been a life long tech junkie. Yes… I do have spare motherboards in my closet for no good reason! This blog was made to share my passion for technology and innovation with the blogosphere, so please come often, leave comments, subscribe to the RSS feed, twitter me and all that good stuff!
Moving on to Episode 1, I wanted to talk about the Safari 4 beta, and Opera 10 alpha web browsers. I downloaded it and gave it a whirl a few days after it came out. I will say at the onset that I very much dislike most Apple products, but I also pride my self on my rationality, so I will always give the least biased account I can. That said, I didn’t like it very much. As of now, I very much prefer Safari 3.
One of the key issues is the placement of the tabs. I’m not sure if this is a failed Microsoft adaptation of the “ribbon” interface, or sloppy port to the Windows OS, but the tabs appear at the top of the window on the same plane as the minimize, restore, and close buttons appear. This is surprisingly horribly GUI design on Apple’s part because I believe most users block that section from their minds when browsing, much like we tend the focus reading at the center of a web page around advertisements.
The rest of the issues are tit-for tat issues that may not be a huge deal for some. I think the color scheme for safari was better in v.3 as a brushed steel silver. The interface is shinier now, and sort of resembles windows XP. Again, I haven’t tried this out on a Mac yet, so this could be a windows convention. I liked the way bookmarks appear on the personal bar in v.3 better as well. The font is now bigger, which is easier to read, but offers less viewing space, particularly noticeable on laptops.
Some really cool features include the innovative book marking system. It has a GUI facelift from version 3, adding a very awesome coverflow-like browsing system; book marked web pages can be view like albums in iTunes. It also starts up and loads pages way faster than v.3. The other sexy feature is the Top Sites window. In this view recently viewed websites are pinned on the screen for easy choosing when you create a new tab. The slick interface resembles the album view in iTunes, further accenting Apple’s commitment to a standardized Aqua interface.
Is it hot or not? It is a bit too early to tell, but it is definitely on the right track. It is faster, bolder and has nice new features, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that a lot of these “new” features have already existed in my FAVORITE web browser, Opera. In the next episode, we’ll dive into Opera 10 alpha and do a little compare and contrast!
