New Safari Features In Latest Leopard Preview?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

A recent posting on an Apple developer's blog Musings from Mars depicts new Safari features built into the latest developer preview of Leopard. As of this posting, MacRumors cannot independently verify the claims, however the blogger posts multiple video clips of the features. The blogger highlights the following features:

Tabbed Browsing Enhancements
Following the lead of other browsers, Apple has implemented a customizable tab-bar so that users can re-order tabs via drag-and-drop. Apple has also extended the concept to be able to make a window from a tab by dragging a tab off of the tab bar.

Search Improvements
The Safari search option is now integrated into the browser window much like Firefox's implementation. However search results are displayed all at once by default rather than Firefox's one-at-a-time approach.

Resizable TEXTAREAs
Safari will allow the user to resize a text area (via a drag corner) in an HTML form and dynamically redraw the web page to fit the new size.

Leopard was previewed at this year's Worldwide Developer Conference, and should ship next spring.

[twoodcc]

sounds like good news to me. not really big features, but features nonetheless.

looking forward to more new features from Leopard

[macdong]

Sounds like very awesome features.

[narco]

Sounds awesome, but I'll still stick with Camino until Safari speeds up a bit and is more stable. Those were my only two issues.

Fishes,
narco.

[fenixx]

mmm, leopard anticipation building!

[Tymmz]

I was waiting for these features for a long time.


Great stuff!

[reckless_0001]

Originally Posted by narco

Sounds awesome, but I'll still stick with Camino until Safari speeds up a bit and is more stable. Those were my only two issues.

Fishes,
narco.

Download the Safari Webkit Nightly, it's plenty fast. Today's build is pretty stable too (r16812)...

http://nightly.webkit.org/

[bdj21ya]

The new search feature actually looks pretty awesome. It works like spotlight in System Preferences (where it darkens everything except the items that match your search string).

[iProd]

Woo, Shiira

[reckless_0001]

Originally Posted by iProd

Woo, Shiira

Shiira's pretty good too...

[psychometry]

This is my first post. It takes a lot for me to stop being a lurker, but the idea that any user can resize a textarea on a site I design, dynamically redrawing the page, is among the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. This will break valid page layouts in new and unheard of ways. Designers make form elements a size and shape for a reason.

I look forward to finding a way using JavaScript to disable that feature the day that browser is released.

[AoWolf]

Excellent sounding. I must admit I like vistas tab system (clicking the box to make a new tab. Not that there is a problem with a ?T but I sometimes I want to click.

[Willis]

Hmm, the link doesnt seem to work with me. Says I dont have permission to access

[Buschmaster]

Originally Posted by psychometry

This is my first post. It takes a lot for me to stop being a lurker, but the idea that any user can resize a textarea on a site I design, dynamically redrawing the page, is among the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. This will break valid page layouts in new and unheard of ways. Designers make form elements a size and shape for a reason.

I look forward to finding a way using JavaScript to disable that feature the day that browser is released.

I think it's a nice feature, it's not like it's going to destory how the page looks initially.

[reckless_0001]

Originally Posted by Willis

Hmm, the link doesnt seem to work with me. Says I dont have permission to access

Slash Dot ---> Translation ---> It's not gonna work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

[EricNau]

Sounds good to me.

I've been waiting for drag-and-drop tabs for awhile now.

[squirrellydw]

I will use firefox till they allow extensions in safari

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by psychometry

This is my first post. It takes a lot for me to stop being a lurker, but the idea that any user can resize a textarea on a site I design, dynamically redrawing the page, is among the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. This will break valid page layouts in new and unheard of ways. Designers make form elements a size and shape for a reason.

I look forward to finding a way using JavaScript to disable that feature the day that browser is released.

Why do you need to disable something you don't want to use? Can't you just not use it?

Are you afraid you might accidentally change your mind someday and need to prevent yourself from doing this in the future?

Also, many BBS's that I use offer me the chance to change the text-reply field size in my personal preferences. The window can be any size and the page looks just fine. Pretty much ANY text entry field has to be built into a page in such a way that changing the size just pushes things below it lower, just in case a browser draws it larger than planned. I can't think of any sites that don't work that way. This box I'm using on Macrumors right now follows that rule. If I were to drag it large nothing would "break." The stuff below it would just move down.

Can you give any examples of a page that fails this test? I can't think of any offhand.

[Max on Macs]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

Why do you need to disable something you don't want to use? Can't you just not use it?

Are you afraid you might accidentally change your mind someday and need to prevent yourself from doing this in the future?

Also, many BBS's that I use offer me the chance to change the text-reply field size in my personal preferences. The window can be any size and the page looks just fine. Pretty much ANY text entry field has to be built into a page in such a way that changing the size just pushes things below it lower, just in case a browser draws it larger than planned. I can't think of any sites that don't work that way. This box I'm using on Macrumors right now follows that rule. If I were to drag it large nothing would "break." The stuff below it would just move down.

Can you give any examples of a page that fails this test? I can't think of any offhand.

I think he's talking about making it so people who use the web pages he designs can't resize the textareas (supposedly ruining his designs). IMHO this is a non-issue since when the user first sees the page they will se it as it should be, if they want to make a textarea bigger so they can type in it comfortably then it's their own choice.

[apfhex]

This is news? I heard about these things (and saw screenshots, and videos) back in August when people got ahold of the Leopard WWDC preview and broke their NDAs (or pirated it).

[diogowerner]

i'm a webdesigner and totally agree with psychometry.

the new textarea feature is the worst way to resolve one of safari worst layout problems. current textarea doesn't show the scrollbars everytime it's necessary and sometimes resizes horizontaly while you're typing, damaging some page layouts.

if the new feature allows users to resize both verticaly and horizontaly it's probably a bad sollution apple found to the scroll problem.

if you don't design pages you may not understand, but sometimes its necessary to fix a size to a textarea and other components (height and width), otherwise it will push other elements and images would look like a puzzle. fixing size is one of the solutions to make pages working in different browsers, once each one show form elements diffrently.

even if the resize feature doesn't push other elements, override them would be terrible as well. if you have links and other text fields for example, how would it behave if you use tab key to swich field in a form?

[bretm]

Originally Posted by psychometry

This is my first post. It takes a lot for me to stop being a lurker, but the idea that any user can resize a textarea on a site I design, dynamically redrawing the page, is among the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. This will break valid page layouts in new and unheard of ways. Designers make form elements a size and shape for a reason.

I look forward to finding a way using JavaScript to disable that feature the day that browser is released.

Well, ya. Dontca hate text zoom? Hey, I design too and as long as it looks right at default settins + a text size or two higher I'm fine. If people need to resize forms or make their text huge then they're probably used to every site looking like utter junk. These are not the power users I'm designing for.

[reckless_0001]

Originally Posted by diogowerner

i'm a webdesigner and totally agree with psychometry.

the new textarea feature is the worst way to resolve one of safari worst layout problems. current textarea doesn't show the scrollbars everytime it's necessary and sometimes resizes horizontaly while you're typing, damaging some page layouts.

if the new feature allows users to resize both verticaly and horizontaly it's probably a bad sollution apple found to the scroll problem.

if you don't design pages you may not understand, but sometimes its necessary to fix a size to a textarea and other components (height and width), otherwise it will push other elements and images would look like a puzzle. fixing size is one of the solutions to make pages working in different browsers, once each one show form elements diffrently.

even if the resize feature doesn't push other elements, override them would be terrible as well. if you have links and other text fields for example, how would it behave if you use tab key to swich field in a form?

Just tried the *similar* feature in OmniWeb's browser it's not even half as bad as you guys are making it out to be... don't be a whine-o

Oh yah and by the way, I design websites. From my experience with people, it's better for them to have a good user experience on a site and the text area thing WILL help out. I believe that the text area expansion will only be temporary, and when the page is refreshed the design will look as good as it always was.

[Crager724]

I am not a webdesigner so could someone explain the TEXTAREA upgrade? It sounded like a good idea when I read it, but it seems to have struck a nerve with a couple people, and I'm not sure why. I'm guessing it would be like if I went to an art auction and bought a painting by Monet, I bring the painting home and realize that the wallspace I have for it isn't wide enough, so I grab a corner of the painting a pull it down, hence making it skinnier and fitting my wall? Nobody would ever consider doing that to a Monet, yet isn't this what the new TEXTAREA feature does?

[psychometry]

I did, in fact, mean using JavaScript on page load to disable the user from changing the size of the textarea, not within my browser. It's like using CSS to disable the dotted border Firefox puts around links when they are active.

Form elements, and the divs that contain them, often need either fixed widths or have widths that are proportional to their containers.

Take Google. Depending on how the layout is set up (this is just hypothetical), resizing the search box would push those three links next to it off into oblivion if they were all in a div that was fixed or proportional to the page width. It doesn't matter if Safari "dynamically redraws the page" since the div would still be calculated to be the same. Worse yet, depending on its overflow attribute, they could be pushed onto a new line.

I'd really not like to see Safari become the next IE 5. It already has its share of JavaScript bugs. This would just mean us designers would have to spend that much more time envisioning what would happen if a user resized every form element on every page and incorporating it into our layouts. This is why I hope there's a way to disable it outright.