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news of 2004-02-03
ATi announces Mobility Radeon 9700
A chip that could well be used in future PowerBooks. From their press release: "The MOBILITY RADEON 9700 visual processing unit (VPU) delivers the highest standards of performance required by the most demanding notebook users. It has more processing power than ever before seen in a notebook graphic card. It redefines the mobile computing experience for the next generation of home and business users."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 18:39 CET ]
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Ambrosia: Snapz Pro X 2.0
Ambrosia Software today released Snapz Pro X 2.0, their screenshot and screen-camera utility. Pity that it costs 69$ (upgrade from 1.0 is 20$).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 14:47 CET ]
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OmniWeb 5 - First Impressions...
The verdict first: Great browser for big displays, almost unusable at 1024*768.
Really, if you've got the screen real estate, this is the browser for the hardcore web user. After testing it for a few hours, I've decided to use it full-time when I'm at home (a 17" TFT display connected to my iBook, giving me an extra 1280*1024 pixels) - but to use Safari when I'm reduced to the 12" screen of my iBook.
But let's get to the features that make this new browser such a revelation...
Shortcuts
It can't be said enough times: OmniWeb's shortcuts are a real timesaver. I open a new window or tab, enter 'mn' into the location field and hit enter. Boom, I'm here on macnews.net.tc. I do the same with 'movie ring' and find the results of the IMDB (internet movie database) for the keyword 'ring'. And 'trailer ring' gives me the results for 'ring' at Apple's movie trailer site. The shortcuts are just really, really good. And you can make them for your own sites.
Visual Tabs
The 'tabbed browsing' feature has been a hit since its invention (I wonder why that first one didn't get a patent for it, it was afaik some strange Windows based browser that used IE as its base in 2001...) - and finally OmniWeb gets its system, too. OmniWeb however, goes a different way with tabs and tab-bookmarks. OW shows tabs vertically in a drawer - as thumbnails you can adjust in size. You can also hide the thumbnails, so you can view more of them at the same time. However, while the graphical representation of the opened pages is really better than 'just tabs', it eats horizontal screen real estate. And that's why this feature sucks at 1024*768. Many modern pages are layed out for 1024 horizontal pixels - and OW's tabs use about 100 pixels to be at least useful. An option for a 'traditional' tab-bar (horizontal) would be nice for smaller screens.
Workspaces
OmniWeb has got no 'tab-bookmarks', OW has 'workspaces'. A workspace, however, is far more than 'just tab-bookmarks' à la Safari. You can open, say, two windows with 5 tabs each and save that as a workspace named 'work'. Then open a new workspace with one window and seven tabs and save that as 'leisure'. Type F1 to get to the first, F2 for the second workspace. Or use Ctrl-Cmd-RightArrow/LeftArrow to cycle through your workspaces. This feature is far faster than using tab-bookmarks in Safari, mostly because all your workspaces keep being loaded once they're loaded. (Sure uses some RAM, but we've got that covered, right?)
Bookmarks
OmniWeb 5 has the best bookmarks management of all available web browsers. Period.
If you're going to try the beta out, keep in mind that it is a beta version. It crashes quite often and quite unexpectedly so, but I'm sure that this browser will do you good service once it's finished, which will be soon. If you've got the screen for it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 13:36 CET ]
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Java Dev. Release
Apple releases 50.6 MB Java 1.4.2 Developer Package to ADC members.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 09:18 CET ]
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10.3.3 7F24 removed from ADC
The beta version of the Mac OS X update has been pulled by Apple, according to our sources. We also need to clear up on the size of the update. As it's a combined updater, the 75 MB are only relatively big. (10.3.2 was 36.9 MB and is obviously included in the 10.3.3 update.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 02:11 CET ]
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