My god, i almost fell out of my chair when i saw that "cheating" thing, for some reason. as sarcastic as the tone of the article is,though, i am a fan of the splash screens. maybe not on the browser though.

I actually like the idea of the browser window sliding in from the side...as an option of course. I'd actually prefer that as a system wide option - all new main windows slide from the closest side they show up in.

I like this because instead of just popping up, you definately see that you're getting a new window. Sometimes I get new windows and get startled by that.

How about the window just fades in? Now THAT would look nifty.

Hrm, looks like Movable Type has a bug. Both of the category links for this post are for cat_humor.html. While that's good for the first, the second category link should be cat_mozilla.html

I'd rather have a smile/frown face icon that tells me when the site has correct HTML and/or XML.

That is one feature that keeps me firing up iCab as I tweak my web site. Thats the quickest, easiest way for me to check the output of my PHP code. Unfortunately iCab's CSS and Javascript support leave lots to be desired. Add the smiley face and Safari will be the browser!

As long as the splash screen has tabs :p

iCab not only has a smiling face icon but also a detailed HTML error report. I didn't only miss that feature in Safari, did I? :}

But what I want most is - no! not tabbed browsing! - but an ad blocker. At least options to stop animated GIFs and shut off sound output for the browser.

But I really DO like Safari's speed and CSS support! Keep going! :-)

If you want to check HTML and CSS validity, use the W3 validators.

Andreas... modify your hosts file to block them. There's a lot of sites on the web that provide modified hosts files that block quite a few ads.... search google for it.

Or download (for free) Privoxy.

Fast startup speed, not a really cool spash screen is one of the reasons I switched to Phoenix on my Windows boxes.

And I switched from Mozilla (which I switched to fron Nescape 6.2 to Mozilla). Give me a faster startup and save your splash screens. Dave, maybe you can talk to the Mac OS programers about making Mac OS startup faster too.

I have a g4/400 that is around 2-3 years old with mac os 10.2.3 and my computer starts up in less than 2 minutes. When I first installed 10.2, it was around 1:10. That isn't that bad.

Not that it's on-topic, but could we _please_ get bookmark checking, ala OmniWeb? Add that, and Safari will be my browser. :)

Many thanks.

"The entire browser can launch with a randomized delay, or maybe it could slide in from the side of the screen..."

You could use Keynote's transitions to cause kernel panics to get every user's undivided attention. :-)

I agree with A Nony Mouse and Jamison, splash screen manager is less important for today work than speed startup and "intelligent" bookmark manager.
If the bookmark manager can have "the most visited site" like iTunes make with music, it can help me to not spent time to retrieve bookmark :)
Many thanks from a safari user.

Good call Dave, good call :)

LOL!!! Much needed laughter to cure my insomnia. Now I can sleep.

-Aaron

You are joking, right? Speed is key here. The browser should seem like a mere extension of the OS, not some separate program or "experience" that has to be identified. As a developer, I will be so pissed if I have to wait for another pointless bloatware startup screen, ala Internet Explorer. I already clicked an icon to start the program, therefore I already KNOW what program I'm launching. Why do I need to be reminded? (Isn't this why we have bouncing Dock icons anyway?!)

I know your joking, but PLEASE NO SPLASH SCREEN ... EVER! =)

I am the only one who tried the URL "about:safari" and was dissappointed? It would be a neat way of both showing off a larger version of the compass icon and the current version.

how about having an option to select which local version of google to use. it would be very easy to implement which google domain is searched - basically i'm based in the uk and whilst it's great to have google built into the browser it's a pain to find that i'm stuck with google.com when i might want uk-specific information... a bit like the google search bar for windoze...

whaddyareckon?

oh yeah how's the js debugger going ;)

About the bookmarks, I would really enjoy a real-time search to find the sites in history that now take me days to navigate. It would be nice to add keywords to bookmarks so i can search them and find what I want instead of scrolling through hundreds of URLs.

Also, alternate search engines besides google would be nice ;)

Oh and Splash screens are just a redundant reminder of what app I just clicked on!

I'd be careful about some of the things you suggest like sliding windows - Steve might take a liking to them and we'd be screwed.

Witness the genie effect. :p

What is mising from Safari is a more comprehensive 'first use' setup. I'm thinking something along the lines of a message box that pops up saying that you are not an administrator, and thus you cannot set up Safari. After hitting OK the browser should do it anyway, and connect to Apple's servers, send a whole load of information to Apple, add a hundred or so Apple and Apple partner bookmarks, set your home page to .mac, and make Safari your default browser. If it can do this whilst disabling the ability to reset your browser default back to where it was, all the better. Then as a finishing touch, when you quit it should forget that it has done all this (well you're not an administrator, so it wasn't allowed to do it in the first place right?), and do it all again when you next fire it up. Now that would be a great tool to explore the web with.

This will get steved.

off topic here, but if you did have the bookmarks searchable with keywords (as another poster sugested), you could grab the meta keywords from the page in question and autofill those while allowing the user to key in more as an option on the add bookmark dialog.

I agree with edot also. it would be cool if you could search through the sites in your history.

Jeremiah

Speaking of redundant reminders of things just clicked on, it sure would be nice to get rid of the Windowsesque "hey dummy, here's what you clicked a millisecond ago" dotted box that appears around clicked links (without resorting to a custom style sheet). They're the splash screen of hyperlinks!     ; )

Splash screens are stupid, also for long startups.

we are working with OS X here not OS 9...

That's hilarious and soooooo Mozilla! A huge discussion about the splash screen(s) and whether or not they are skinnable. It just epitomizes how out of this world the Mozilla priorities are. After 5 years, they have two ultra-bloated "browser suites" and two decent browsers with death-watches in place.

They need to drop everything and switch all resources to kmeleon/phoenix and chimera.

or it could dance its way out of your dock while singing "Getting to Know You."

Oh dear God that's funny. I could never get into Mozilla. In OSX it always seemed cludgy, didn't look like the interface was something OSX native. Chimera was all well and good but it didn't spin my propeller for some reason.

Safari on the other hand...Woo hoo. I migrated all my IE bookmarks after spending a half hour with the program. It really is an awesome browser! I'm glad we finally have the bookmark bar all set up at the Apple store for the shortcuts we use for customers. Bye bye IE. I only need it for my bank site :)

Wow--how the mighty have fallen! It's fascinating to see Mozilla become such a laughing stock.

It's deeply disturbing to see how many of you have no sense of sarcasm at all. Deeply.

I would like the splash screen manager to have a couple of features added. One is a sidebar, which could include a history of splash screens used and a mozdev "get new splash screens bar". Also an option to block splash screens that you do not like, or find offensive and inappropriate, and also an option to rotate the splash screens. Another idea is a splash screen which displays a customized Bonsai summary so users can keep track of their preferred mozilla project while starting, and this could possibly go in the sidebar, and would be particularly useful if the splash screen is resizable. Please let me know which of these ideas will be implemented, and when.

As far as Safari goes, I believe it will be completely useless until it has a link toolbar (or, as us mozillians say, a "site navigation bar".) Browsing the web is next to impossible without this feature, and many mozilla users are refusing to use safari because of it! I expect that this shall be in the final release. I also refuse to use safari until it has Math ML!

PS. Please visit my website.

I've whipped up a couple splash screens for the Splash Screen Manager. Just let me know where I should upload them.

Of course, the killer application for Mozilla would be tabbed splash screens! Who needs a manager when you can have tabs?! <sarcasm />

Dave, you are suggesting you had nothing to do with the long startuptime? Humour, sarcasm whatever - but what did you do about it when you had the chance? This comment felt little bit like a low blow anyway.

To others who obviously don't know that Mozilla is supposed to have every bell and whistle which real browser companies can rip away if not needed. If a "manageer" is made to provide extra functionality it's not away from something else, don't use it if you don't need it.

OK, somebody has to say it: if there's going to be a manager-manager, there ought to be a manager manager-manager. So that we can choose which manager manager we use to manage our managers. After all--one manager-manager wouldn't be enough, and wouldn't be appropriate for all manager-management situations.

To others who obviously don't know that Mozilla is supposed to have every bell and whistle which real browser companies can rip away if not needed.
I forget, which real browser companies are rushing to hack apart Moz? Seems like everyone is using Gecko and throwing out everything else. I wonder why...

I was reading this post to a co-worker, who was the first person in the office to really play with Safari on the 8th. He's the only one running X, so that's why. Anyways, he had an idea for a semi-splash replacement which I thought was really ingenious and quite a nice idea too. When you have a blank web window (which you get before the page loads, or when you want one) it should have a watermark Safari or Apple logo. That will give an illusion of a splash screen as well as give some indication that something is going on. Also, that was another complaint he had that when it was loading and the page was taking a while, there was no 'progress' symbol like in other browsers, no indication anything was going on. We had this problem when we accessed the secure parts of our server. Maybe throw a chasing arrows (or is it a radar now in jaguar) below the watermark or somewhere in the window.

Hey, I just got a chance to use Safari at high school (those darn TV news kids are the lucky owners of some shiny fruit). The only thing I didn't like was the lack of managers. Don't you know that people don't use browsers for browsing any more? Managers is what makes the user's day. I say that you [Hyatt] need to do something about it! Your previous encounters with Netscape/Mozilla should help make Safari the best manager experience...ever.

Just allow me to configure the timeout interval so all the slow-ass websites I visit all day actually work instead of Safari giving me an error after 30 seconds.

That is all.

heh... what i find funny is that he used VS.NET to create this application... that small icon on top left is from VS.NET default form designer ;-)

You do a good work, keep it going