More Safari coverage
In an article posted and then later removed article by Dave Hyatt (former Mozilla developer, then Safari developer) was archived via Live Journal. His posting gave some very detailed insight into why Safari chose to go with KHTML instead of Gecko. (note: this article was removed because he wanted to write a better version)
The article in a nutshell,
KHTML - Easier to embed, we'll add full standards support later
Gecko - Harder to embed, but it already has full standards support
It's tough to argue with the choice, but since both projects are open source, you have to believe that this will help both projects in the long run.
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Now, as a Mac OSX user myself, I have been using Safari quite a bit. For the most part my experience has been positive. It's a damn fast browser for both starting up and loading pages. As you would expect from KHTML, some web pages do not render properly, but I'm sure that will be fixed over time.
There are some really cool features that Safari has that have me saying "about time!". One example is the spell-checking that is done as you type in FORM fields. So, if I were actually posting this on my iBook instead of my Windows machine, it would show me my many spelling mistakes, ala Word. (btw. This is a outstanding feature request in Mozilla that I would love to see implemented.)
Bookmark management is very good, and very logical. I still weep every time I need to manage something with IE's so-called favorites management system.
The progress bar is displayed behind the URL in the address bar. I found that really annoying at first, but once I got use to it, I found it pretty handy.
As for some of my favorite Mozilla features though, I certainly hope that Safari will soon implement tabbed browsing of course (despite the claims to the contrary of all the so-called usability experts/grocery baggers who blog about how evil it is) and type-ahead find (which I use quite a bit).
Comments
As a combination usability expert/grocery bagger (I have really done both), I'm on the fence about tabbed browsing. When I first heard of the feature, it seems like a bad idea. We already have windows - why tabs inside windows. Then I started using them in Phoenix. I've grown to love the Shift+click option to open links in the background in a new tab.
Neal Deakin makes a good point in his post about tabbed browsing and desktop habits:
The point is that if you don't like tabs, it probably has a lot more to do with the way that you use computer and organize your desktop (your desktop habits, if you will), than with any fault of tabbed browsing itself.
AIUI, an app has to be Cocoa based to have access to spell-checking. Mozilla, not being a Cocoa app, wouldn't have access to this. Does Chimera make the grade for this?
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