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iPhone Web Development book debuts
August Trometer's new PDF book, Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari" just debuted. I am not much of a web designer myself but I may cough up the ten bucks to pick up a copy of this ebook. Topics according to the web page include Mobile Safari detection, Webkit-specific CSS attributes, and how to use iPhone-specific features via web tweaks. iUI, Joe Hewitt's iPhone-specific webpage design kit, doesn't appear in the write-up, and I'm not sure if Trometer covers using it or not. Full disclosure, I have worked with AW/Pearson and will be doing so again.
ecto3 alpha released
Adriaan Tijsseling has been tweeting about the development progress of ecto3, his powerful Mac blogging app, for some time now. After a sneak peek and more teaser screenshots, Adriaan has generously offered an alpha version for us to play with. In other words: it's pre-beta, which means stuff is very, very likely to go wrong; play with this at your own risk. Speaking of risk, however, there is certainly an upside to testing out this ecto3 alpha: it uses a completely different set of data and storage from the current ecto2, so you don't have to worry about blowing away your old settings or accounts.That said, let's get on to the good stuff: what's new. First of all, ecto3 is apparently a complete rewrite from the bottom up. It has a new rich text editor based on Apple's own Editable WebKit, which offers a number of handy new writing abilities (such as the slick nested list in the ecto3 alpha announcement post). Another major new development which we had previously heard of is a new plug-in architecture for ecto3, allowing anyone to add support for more blogging systems, integrate media and even text formatting such as Markdown. It's a great step towards allowing ecto3 to become a blogging hub that can do just about anything for anyone.Speaking of media, I also noticed that there is a new media browser that has access to all the typical stuff, such as iPhoto and Aperture photos, and even your movies. There are all sorts of new goodies in ecto3, so definitely poke around to see all the hard work Adriaan has put into this so far.If you download the alpha, be sure to read through Adriaan's ecto3 alpha announcement post for a few tips and gotchas with getting the ball rolling. There are a few minor things he hasn't gotten to yet, such as adding all the sites to ping when you publish a post, but a simple 'add defaults' button will get you squared away easily. Once it's finished, ecto3 will surprisingly be a free upgrade for existing registered users (a single license is a mere $17.95). Until then, however, be sure to swing by the support forums to post bugs and discuss ecto3.
Surfin' Safari publishes WebKit Project Goals
Surfin' Safari is the official blog of the team that works on WebKit, the open source rendering engine that powers Safari and just about any other app on Mac OS X that allows you to view web pages, such as NetNewsWire, iSale, RapidWeaver and many, many more. Heck, these days WebKit is going far beyond Mac OS X, as it's used by everything from MobileSafari in the iPhone to Safari on Windows and even some of Nokia's phones and other devices that can browse the web. Unfortunately, as with any increasingly popular project, WebKit seems to be getting pressure from a lot of new angles to implement certain features and optimize for one use or another. Many people want WebKit to do things like support the same rich text editing widgets that Firefox does for sites like MySpace, forums and blogging systems, while others prefer to leave those features on the curb so Safari can remain the lean, mean browsin' machine it's known as. In order to avoid getting drawn and quartered by the very constituencies they serve, the WebKit team has understandably announced a set of WebKit goals the team is aspiring towards. While some of these goals are pretty obvious, such as keeping things secure and easily hackable (after all, it's an open source engine), some of the goals are definitely written to help establish a few boundaries to help keep everyone on track and, ultimately, help people understand what WebKit is (and will be), as well as what it is not. For the sake of cutting down on sleepless nights and answering endless feature requests, I hope these goals make the proper rounds.
Shiira 2.2 updated for Safari 3 beta's WebKit
When Apple makes changes to WebKit - the open source rendering engine that powers Safari - like they just did with the Safari 3 beta, many, many other Mac OS X apps that have anything to do with websites need to do a little catchup so things continue to run smoothly. Shiira, the feature-packed alternative browser, is just such an app that fortunately just made the leap to Safari 3 beta compatibility. Aside from the twelve new localizations introduced in this new v2.2 update, I can't tell what else has changed. Still, if you installed the Safari 3 beta and noticed that Shiira has been misbehaving one way or another, this new version should calm the waters.
Apple posts web developer guide for iPhone
If you're a web developer with a hankerin' to write for the iPhone, this is for you. Apple has posted an informative webpage that the outlines iPhone-specific guidelines you'll want to keep in mind, as we as some more general best practices. Topics include: Integrating Mail, Safari and Maps Understanding what Safari supports in iPhone Optimizing page readability There's more, of course, and you can get the full run-down here. Now get to it![Via What Do I Know?]
Safari 3.0.2 beta released
The Surfin' Safari blog dedicated to the open source WebKit project (which powers Safari on Mac OS X, Windows and even the iPhone) has announced the availability of Safari 3.0.2 beta. This isn't a major release by any means, but it does contain a healthy list of squashed bugs, as well as fixes for mysteriously disappearing text in a variety of situations. The announcement post contains links to specific information for Mac and Windows users, as well as a link to more security issues fixed in this new beta.To snag the new version for either platform you're using, simply head to Apple's Safari beta download page and pick your poison. Of course, we must remind you this is a beta, so it is still not all that uncommon for Safari 3 to crash, hiccup and potentially eat your cat. Besides, one could question whether your cat should be getting very close to your computer to begin with.
Safari 3 for Windows
Sign one more up for the browser war, Apple is shipping the third version of its well received Safari WebKit-based browser over to foreign shores to duke it out with the likes of IE, Firefox and Opera... on Windows. The Mac-only browser has already attained a 5% market share, and it seems the Apple folks plan to use it in much the same way they've used iTunes to grow the Mac fanbase by giving Windows users "a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!" Apple claims their browser is up to twice as fast as the competition, and the public beta of Safari 3 is being released today as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.
More ecto 3 details, a screenshot and roadmap revealed
Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible. Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail. While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.
Mailplane update uses latest WebKit to enable rich text editing
Since we last mentioned Mailplane, the Gmail client that integrates with Mac OS X, it's received a series of minor updates that have fixed bugs and added a few features. The most recent update, however, has added some significant new features such as a 'Mail PDF with Mailplane' print dialog plugin, customizable toolbar, clickable Growl notifications that take you to the specific message and - to my personal delight - simple instructions for enabling rich text editing when composing messages. This is big news because Mailplane uses WebKit - the same open source web rendering engine Safari is based on - to interact with Gmail, which means Mailplane is also limited by WebKit's inability to provide rich text editing features like bold, justification, colors, etc. Fortunately, turning on rich text editing is as simple as downloading the latest nightly app build of WebKit and telling Mailplane where you put it. This won't overwrite Safari or interfere with it in any other way, so this process is pretty low-risk for gaining rich text editing, but seemingly only in Gmail (either in Mailplane or using WebKit itself as a browser). I tried surfing to a few other sites and couldn't get rich text widgets to appear in any of them.Either way, this is great news for Mailplane users who want to join the rest of the internet in using some text formatting goodness when composing their messages. If you need a refresher on what Mailplane is all about, check our previous post and photo gallery for a brief tour, or head over to the Mailplane site to read more and sign up for the private beta.
SunriseBrowser for web designers
The SunriseBroswer is neat little WebKit based "open-source browser for web developer[s]." Since it's based on WebKit it will render pages more or less as Safari does, but it has some features targeted at web designers. For instance, the window can be automatically resized to 640 x 480 (pictured above), 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768 with one button click (clicking through the options, you can see TUAW was clearly designed to be viewed in a window 1024 pixels wide). It also allows very easy access to the underlying HTML and CSS files, as well as a nice implementation of the download window which includes the URL (allowing easy downloading of a page element such as an embedded video). There are many other convenient and useful features like zoom levels, PDF export of the entire web page, etc. It even has one nice feature I'd like to see come to Safari: the combination of the address field and search field. If you type a URL in the field it goes to the referent, but if you type anything else it's sent to Google as a search.SunriseBrowser is not, nor is it meant to be, a replacement general use web browser, but it has some neat specialized features and could be very useful for someone developing and testing a website. It is open source and a free download.[Via MacMerc]
Adobe takes wraps off Apollo, uses WebKit
Adobe today took the wraps off their cross platform desktop application runtime called Apollo. The alpha is now available for download on Adobe labs. What the heck does this 'runtime' do? It allows web developers to create desktop applications that run on both the Mac and PC using HTML, AJAX, and Flash. This is all well and good, I imagine you saying, but why the heck is this on TUAW? It would seem that Apollo is using WebKit as its HTML rendering engine. You might recall that WebKit is Apple's variant of the Konqueror HTML engine, which powers Safari and is baked right into OS X.Adobe is using the open source version of WebKit, which is slightly different than the one found in OS X, but they plan on contributing code back to the project. This can only be good for Mac users. The more people that are using WebKit the more pressure companies will feel to support it (I'm looking at you, banks!).[via Daring Fireball]
Safari's market share rises to 4.03 percent
In a post cleverly titled The same thing we do every night, Pinky (an Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain reference), the WebKit blog Surfing Safari links a Switch to a Mac article which notes that Safari's market share has risen once again. Continuing its upward stride from October's 3.53 percent, Market Share now finds Safari at 4.03 percent, though data suggests that Safari's growth, while still on the up and up, has actually slowed in the past month.Since the overall Mac OS market share is still progressing quite nicely - up to 5.39 percent now - this slow in Safari's growth could be attributed to any number of factors, one of which I'm willing to bet could be all those switchers coming over and bringing Firefox with them (note: that's just my theory; I can't find numbers right now to back it up). Still, this is good news for the spread of Apple either way, as it can probably be safe to bet that the company won't be stopping the development of Safari anytime soon.
ADC on using nightly WebKit builds
Last year we blogged about the availability of nightly WebKit builds (WebKit being the HTML rendering engine that Apple uses in OS X and has made available to the Open Source community). The Apple Developer Connection has an article up explaining what nightly builds are and why you might want to use them. The long and the short of it being that if you are a developer using WebKit to power your app (or widget) nightly builds give you a chance to see the changes in WebKit before they become part of the OS.[via Surfin' Safari]
Adobe Apollo uses WebKit
If you are not a follower of Adobe you might not be aware of the recently announced Apollo. Apollo is a cross platform runtime that basically allows developers to write desktop applications using Flash, HTML, and Javascript. Sure, that's a cool idea but why am I writing about it on TUAW?Besides the fact that we can assume that Apollo will run on OS X, the HTML engine that Apollo is using might be familiar to some of you. In fact, you might be reading this post using it right now. That's right, Adobe decided to use Apple's WebKit for Apollo. No matter how you slice it, more people using WebKit is a win for Mac users. Adobe, you might have angered some of us with Soundbooth but you've won me back.[via Surfin' Safari, screenshot via Ryan Stewart]Update: Mike Chambers has posted this set of pictures showing an updated version of the above app running in OS X.
Shiira v2 beta released
Remember that Shiira v2 beta preview that delusions of grandeur had at the end of July? Well instead of simply reading about it, now you can take your own copy for a spin, as a public, localized beta has been released. Shiira, if you haven't been following the coverage as of late, is an open source and uniquely feature-packed browser based on WebKit, the same web (and also open source) rendering engine that powers Apple's own Safari. Most of the new features that were previewed seem to be implemented, including the Shelf, Tab Exposé, a tab thumbnails option (instead of standard tabs found in Safari and Firefox), FullScreen Mode with a really slick and self-hiding navigation overlay, a palette replacement for the sidebar and more. When this first landed on digg, the download was only a PowerPC build, but it has since been replaced with a true Universal version. So what are you waiting for? Get downloading!
OS X browser test, fourth edition
After reading this article, I'm simply giddy with self-righteous indignation for all the people who have ever told me I was silly for paying money for a browser. The guys over at macintalk have revived their popular Macintosh browser shootout and re-tested all of the competitors using the latest universal binaries of Firefox, Camino, Safari, WebKit, and the OmniWeb 5.5 beta. As many of you might expect, Firefox, the PC favorite, lagged behind all other browsers tested in the speed tests, with its sleek sibling Camino not scoring much better. The two gecko browsers also failed to render the Acid2 test properly, while OmniWeb and Safari/WebKit passed with flying colors.Now, I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm bashing Firefox and Camino. Camino will always have a place in my dock to handle all of the sites that WebKit can't, but I much prefer OmniWeb for my day-to-day usage, and the test results seem to agree with me.[Via Creativebits]
Drosera - A JavaScript Debugger for WebKit
The WebKit group released a new tool called Drosera last night. It's a JavaScript debugger that will work alongside any WebKit application, including Safari. This is welcome news for the web design community -- any tool that can help JavaScript to work more fluidly in Safari is a good thing.
NightShift
Now that you have cleared up some room on your hard drive, why not clutter it up with some nightly WebKit builds? What's WebKit? Why, it is the HTML engine that makes Safari work, and that is baked into OS X. It has an active developer community that issues nightly builds, for those that want to be on the cutting edge.I know what you're thinking, 'But I don't want to have to go to the WebKit site and FTP a new build every night.' That's where NightShift comes it. This little application will automatically download the latest build of WebKit and place it in your Applications folder (or wherever you want it to place it).NightShift is donationware, so chip in a few bucks if you find yourself using it all the time.
OmniWeb 5.5 public beta
Earlier this month, the Omni Group offered a sneak peek of their upcoming 5.5 release of OmniWeb, their feature-rich web browser that pre-dated Netscape by a year. If the preview piqued your interest, you might be interested in their public beta. While this new release doesn't pack in a boatload of up-front whiz-bang features, they have implemented some great back-end stuff like using a more recent version of WebKit than Safari, a Site Inspector (also known as a DOM Inspector) and allowing site-specific CSS rules that update in real time.John Hicks of hickdesign has a few more details of what's new and upcoming in the final 5.5 release, and if you want to get in on the public beta, you'll have to register in the Omni Group's forums in order to see the forum thread with details on how to download your own copy.
Sneak a peek at Omniweb 5.5
Omni has let slip some tidbits about the forthcoming (in private beta) version of Omniweb (5.5 for those keeping track). This version will using Apple's Webkit, feature some Aperture influenced menus, and a host of other things. It'll be Universal as well, as fear not Intel Mac users.[via Daring Fireball]
