Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Extensions are a great way for you to add new features to Safari 5.0.1. Built by developers, Safari Extensions use the latest HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript web technologies. And they're digitally signed and sandboxed for improved security. You can install extensions with one click - no need to restart Safari."

It certainly couldn't be any easier to get to the extensions gallery. And to see what extensions you have installed just take a look under "View" and it will show you what is and isn't active. This is also where you turn them on and off once you have them installed. Pretty easy. PC World has a list of "8 Killer Extensions" for Safari that might interest you as well, since there are over 100 of them to choose from.

"Apple has moved with uncharacteristic speed to patch a security flaw that exposed certain personal information to attackers. 14 other flaws have been fixed as well."

So not only do you get extensions, but you get a security hole fixed, what a bargain! We reported on the auto-fill bug in Safari earlier, and now with this update that appears to be fixed. The update also fixed 14 other flaws.

"Apple has launched their official Safari Extensions Gallery, at this time it features 100 extensions out of the roughly 300 out in the wild. All of the extensions on Apple's gallery have been digitally signed and sandboxed so you don't have to worry about security problems like some of the Firefox extensions have had in the past. You will need to have Safari 5 to be able to use the extension feature."

I've been playing around with Safari Extensions since Apple added the feature in Safari 5. There have been some bugs, but all in all, it has been a good experience. With the new Safari update that is now being pushed, extensions are officially turned on by default. (Previously you had to activate the Developer's menu to turn the feature on). There are about 100 extension in the Safari Extensions Gallery now, and there should be plenty more to come.

"Websites can now steal your Safari browser autofill information including Name, Address, Email, Credit Card etc. without a mention using a very simple exploit detailed by Jeremiah Grossman."

Malicious web sites could get personal information from your Address Book if you leave AutoFill on, so this is a pretty simple fix until the situation is addressed by Apple. According to Jeremiah Grossman, Apple has been notified but no word yet on a fix, well other than turning it off.

"Demand for HTML5 skills among developers is soaring, according to a new report released today by DoNanza, a search engine that aggregates project postings from online freelance jobs markets like Elance and oDesk."

Just how big of a demand is there? Well, according to the report done by DoNanza.com, in Q2 2010 there was a 474% increase in the demand for HTML5 developers. How was Flash faring in the same report? Down 24%. But to put it in perspective, there were 11 times as many Flash projects posted as there were HTML5 projects. It's an interesting report nonetheless.

"Ostrich is a Twitter client made of Safari Extension stuff. You might find it useful if you like to keep an eye on your tweets while you browse the web, and especially if you like to share a lot of URLs via Twitter."

Basically Ostrich [link] works from your menu bar, so you can tweet at will, making it especially useful if you tweet links.

"Apple has opened up the Safari extensions gallery for third-party submissions in preparation of opening the gallery to the public. While you can install extensions now, you need to first know where to download them."

I love Safari, but have often wondered why there aren't more extensions (add-ins) to the basic browser. I use SafariCookies to manage "regular" and Flash cookies, but I haven't found much else. And, where are the extensions to sort bookmarks? I use SafariSort (Sortosaurus), but this function should be part of Safari, or at least an extension.

All this is about to change. Apple has announced that extensions to Safari will be officially permitted. Details are rather sparse right now, but it appears that developers will have their code reviewed by Apple, and the extension(s) will then be available to end users for download (we assume directly from Apple). I can't wait for FoxClocks for Safari!

"Developers, developers, developers: Now you can submit your Safari extensions to Apple's appropriately-named, Safari Extensions gallery."

All you have to do is log on at the developers website at Apple and fill in the form, as well as provide the necessary icon, category and product description. Of course, Apple reserves the right to decline to use your submission, but nothing ventured nothing gained as they say. Can't wait to see what they come up with!

"Apple has published an extensive showcase of HTML5-based websites designed to show how the Web standard works across its software offerings and devices. 'Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac - along with the latest version of Apple's Safari Web browser - supports Web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These Web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow Web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions.'"

What is funny is they talk about open standards yet to see what they have done here, you have to have a Safari browser?? Chrome and Firefox are both HTML5 compliant so they should work too don't you think? If the "standards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web" as Apple state, you should demonstrate it by making it visible on any browser that is capable! That aside, I do like what you can do with HTML5, and it is much faster and more responsive. If you want to use Chrome or Firefox and see the examples, you can go to this site and view them in your browser of choice. Also, if you want a crash course in HTML5, head on over to OSX Daily for a quick read on it.

"As Microsoft's Internet Explorer falls to just under 60 percent of the browser market, Google's Chrome has jumped ahead of Apple's Safari, indicates a new survey released Tuesday. Although Mozilla's Firefox took the largest percentage of the market lost by Microsoft, Google's Chrome took 6.7 percent, versus 2.5 percent for Apple's Safari."

In two years, dropping 20% is not a good sign. Now Chrome has pushed aside Safari and heading upwards towards Internet Explorer. They have a long way to go to catch up to the roughly 60% market share that IE has but they have fired a warning shot over the bow it appears based on the new data. Personally, I pretty much stick with Safari, mainly because of the MobileMe syncing of bookmarks over several machines.

"Virtually every major browser and operating system were targets at this week's "Pwn2Own" hacking contest, with Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer 8 vulnerabilities exploited, along with flaws in the iPhone OS."

Once again, first day of competition and Safari along with Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox all failed to foil the hackers. A pair from Germany was also able to get access to a non-jailbroken iPhone to run unauthorized code and unlock the iPhone for use on unapproved carriers. You can read more about it at the CanSecWest site. Luckily they only reveal how they do it to the software companies so they can put in a fix. 

"Opera Software has submitted the iPhone version of its Mini browser to Apple for App Store approval, Opera said on Tuesday. That browser version was first shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, and Opera has since worked hard at getting the product as much attention as possible."

In the past, apps have been rejected for duplicating functionality (which this would do) as well as for those not using webkit. But Tor Odland, Head of Communications at Opera thinks that it will be approved because "of the improved speed it offers compared to Safari and the fact that is already has 50 million users." I think he is kidding himself, why would Apple care if you had 50 million users? It certainly won't mean they will all become iPhone owners if they approve it. Matthew Miller over at ZDNet has some thoughts as to why Apple won't approve it, what are your thoughts?

"New browser time -- and unfortunately, time to restart your Mac. Safari has been updated (for 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 on the Mac side, and Windows XP/Vista/7 on the Win side); it includes the improvements noted: performance improvements for Top Sites, stability improvements for plug-ins, and for sites with SVG graphics and online forms and fixes issues affecting settings changes to some Linksys routers and iWork.com user comments"

Lots of security fixes with this update, all outlined here, and you can get the 31.8 MB download via Software Update or by going to the Safari download page here.

"Apple's Safari Web browser lost its third place market share slot to Google Chrome in December 2009, ending a multi-year run as the third most popular Web browser according to data from Net Applications. Chrome's lead over Safari isn't by much with 4.63 percent of the market compared to Safari's 4.46 percent. If, however, Chrome can continue to outpace Safari's growth, it won't take long for that gap to widen."

The info was from Net Applications, and December 2009 is also the first month that Google has been available for Mac OS X. According to the survey this is only a rough estimate of the actual number of surfers, but even so, Chrome is on the fast track to really give Explorer a run for their money. What browser do you use? I'm still using Safari and am happy with it once I fixed the annoying Adobe Flash problem that was causing me to lock up frequently.

"Web browser aficionados welcomed last week's release of Camino 2.0, a Mac-only browser based on the Firefox codebase. While missing the extensibility of Firefox, Camino is a much more Mac-like browser that some people prefer to Apple's own Safari."

They have Bookit to keep your bookmarks in sync between Safari and Camino (or just use Camino to import them), and now you can transfer those cookies using Cookie Thief. Camino 2.0 requires at least version 1.1 of Cookie Thief to work and it is a freeware program. If you are migrating from Safari, Camino has set up a web page to address just that task.I haven't tried it yet, I'm pretty happy with Safari and the iPhone integration so not sure I will but my curiosity may get the best of me.

"Though the recent iPhone 3.1 update added support for protecting against phishing sites, there were concerns that it didn't catch any."

The problem is they didn't make it clear on how to get this particular feature to work. Apple recommends that you start Safari on a Wi-Fi network with your iPhone/iPod Touch after updating, and then charge it while the screen is dark. The database then loads during this time period in order to "save the user data charges" since you are doing it all on Wi-Fi. One minor detail they forgot to include in any instructions.

"Google has launched a version of its Latitude-a sort of GPS-powered friend finder-for the iPhone. Unfortunately, it seems it was banished to web app-only ghetto by Apple."

This unfortunately is web-based so it won't take advantage of the "push notification", and initially it will only be available in the U.S., New Zealand, UK, Canada and Australia. It would have been really cool if this could have been part of the Maps app that comes on the iPhone. I tried something similar called Loopt, and really never got much out of it, so I don't think this will appeal to me. Anyone out there excited about this? Or do you use something else?

"Compared to other smartphone owners, iPhone users not only go on the Internet more often, but tend to browse for longer periods of time and download more mobile content in the process. According to Roger Entner, a telecom research analyst for Nielsen, AT&T's network still isn't prepared for an onslaught in data consumption. In an interview with the USA Today, Entner points out that the average iPhone user consumes upwards of 400 MB of data every month. In comparison, most smartphone users only consume around 40-80 MB of data every month."

Of course iPhone users use more data. The experience is infinitely better than anything else out there! This is no secret to anyone who's used another smart phone. Would you want to do more than extremely light browsing on a BlackBerry? Or how about using the Pocket IE from Windows Mobile 6? Both are unmitigated disasters for browsing anything but custom-designed web sites.

Is Safari on the iPhone perfect? Nope. I'd still like to see Flash in it just so that the only barricade to the "real web" can be removed, but Safari's speed, rendering accuracy, and overall ease of use put it at the top of the heap. Even derivatives of Webkit on other handhelds (think Palm Pre and Android) are exceptionally good and are likely to put similar strains on Sprint and T-Mobile's network as their marketshare continues to increase.

There's a reason the iPhone is a data consumption machine: it works.

"After being goaded by the online security community last month to respond faster to software vulnerabilities, Apple on Monday finally fixed a longstanding flaw in the Java code that the company ships with its Mac OS X operating system."

This has gone on for about 6 months or so, according to Intego, a company that makes security products for Macs. They say Apple knew about it about five months prior to the May announcement by Intego of it's existence. According to Intego, "the flaw could allow a Java applet to execute malicious code on affected Macs, potentially leading to information theft or a compromised system."

Well, it is fixed now according to a release by Apple. There are two separate updates, one for 10.5 and one for 10.4 so you are covered if you use either Tiger or Leopard. You can also get the patch via the Software Update feature on your Mac.

"The latest news in mobile browsers suggests that Opera has surpassed the iPhone as the current king in the mobile browser space. But sometimes there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics."

The problem with their news announcing Opera has bested Safari is that they aren't doing valid comparison. For the Opera figures, they include all devices running Opera, yet for Safari are only including the iPhone, not the iPod Touch. When they include the iPod Touch, Safari is clearly the frontrunner. The article said "all devices" and not specifically smartphones, so it seems fair that for comparison sake they should include iPod Touch in the stats.