Tech Geek

Justin Snider, our Mac geek, writes this week about his experience with Apple Safari on both the Mac and the PC.

I had my first experience with Safari on a PC when Internet Explorer was struggling to surf the Web.  A friend of mine said "Internet Explorer is so 90's!"  He told me how Safari had been released for PC, I installed it, and I was blown away by the speed, clean looking design, and power to load the most flash heavy sites.  Now that I have been using a Mac as my fulltime work computer, Safari 3.1 is the default web browser, but I spent months using Firefox as my default web browser, trying out different add-ons, loved the easily customizable interface, and the great toolbar search engines.  

A couple of months ago Safari 4 Beta (http://www.apple.com/safari/) was released to the public, and seeing the new speed tests versus other browsers, I downloaded, and it is now my default web browser once again.  Safari 4 Beta uses a screaming fast java script engine called, Nitro Engine, which places it 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, and 3 times faster than Firefox 3 (but a new, faster version of Firefox is under beta testing currently).  Safari also handles new types of web design well, scoring 100% in the Acid 3 Web Browser Test (you can try your own web browser at http://acid3.acidtests.org /).  Safari 4 Beta also has Top Sites, an optional homepage that visually displays thumbnails of your most visited sites, where you can also pin your favorite sites too.  There is also a new history window where you can visually thumb through sites you have visited using Cover Flow, like you can in iTunes and newer iPods.  

Though you can't install supported add-ons like Firefox can, I have installed a free ad-blocking program, AdBlock (http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock ), that blocks most ads from loading on webpages, creating a clean, fast loading experience.  Like I said, Safari is very clean looking, short, text based menu bar, with tabs, address bar, predictive Google search bar, and a customizable bookmark bar.  Other options include instant "E-Mail Contents of This Page," private browsing (so if you are at someone else's computer, it won't remember your history or login items), built in RSS Reader, and a handy download menu to easily find and manage current and past downloads.  All these features look and work identical on both the Mac or Windows version.  

I recommend this browser, if you want a fast, clean looking, easy-to-use browser, that can handle any feature rich website.

Justin Snider is a full-time Director of Youth & Family Ministry at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Olympia, Washington.  He loves technology and had to choose between working in the tech industry or youth ministry, and certainly chose the right profession!  YouthDirector - at - GloriaDeiOlympia - dot - org

We're in the middle of exploring Internet browsers. The second most popular browser on the Internet, run by nearly one in four users, is Mozilla Firefox. It's the one that I run on a daily basis at work and at home and it's one I would encourage you to take a look at as an alternative to the base browser included with your system. One of the things I like aboutFirefox is that it is truly cross-platform, running on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or a wide variety of Linux distributions localized in over 60 different languages. You can also download a version from PortableApps.com which will run directly from a USB Flash Drive.

Firefox is almost five years old, with version 1.0 having been released in November of 2004. The current version is 3.0.10 and was released on April 27, 2009. It is completely Open Source and 100% Organic. Firefox checks regularly for updates to itself and applies those automatically when you start the browser. These new releases are designed to patch security holes, fix bugs, and improve the browsing experience. You can see exactly what's been changed or fixed at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.10/releasenotes/ .

The reason I run Firefox on a daily basis is that there are many ways I can customize the browser. I run a PC, but I think the Aqua user interface is really pretty. So I downloaded the iFox Smooth Theme and now it looks much like it's running on a Mac. Firefox lets you set your default search engine and then integrate that with the Google Toolbar so that I can search Google, Wikipedia, current news, or my Gmail account with one click. I also have a Facebook Toolbar for Firefox that keeps me notified of new messages, requests, and status updated in a compact interface. Then there is Download Statusbar, which replaces the download files interface in Firefox with one that lives just above the statusbar.

These add-ons are a wide variety of programs, available at http://addons.mozilla.org, that extend the functionality of the core browser and customize the browser experience. Firefox routinely checks for updates to add-ons and notifies you that they are available. On top of the toolbars that I mentioned above, I also run other add-ons that live in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. I use 4 site-watcher add-ons to monitor various deal-at-a-time websites, including Woot.com. I use one that links to Presdo.com for event scheduling. I have the Greasemonkey add-on installed, which enables all sorts of other scripts to work and I have IE Tab installed, which lets me render a page within Firefox using the Internet Explorer rendering engine. This is very helpful for those sites coded only to work on IE.

Finally, I have some add-ons that only help specific sites to work in an enhanced mode. These include Better GCal; Better Gmail 2; Better GReader; Remember the Milk for GMail, which lets me see my Remember the Milk tasks alongside my GMail messages; and DragDropUpload, which lets me drag and drop files onto GMail and other web pages.

There are literally thousands of other add-ons that can be used to customize Firefox. They'll do everything from control a media player to tell you the weather within the browser. If you've ever wondered if it were possible to do something, it is likely that someone else has wondered the same thing and wrote an add-on to make it possible. That's what I like about Firefox. It is community supported software that works well, runs fast, and has lots of features.