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Random thought:

A new browser for Mac users

I'm willing to bet that a lot of Mac users will soon be going on Safari. No, not to "deepest, darkest Africa", but on a computer at their fingertips. Safari is a new browser that Apple is promoting. It's still in beta, meaning that it's not yet complete and that it's likely to have more than the usual complement of bugs.

Nonetheless, if your computer is a Macintosh and you're running OS X 10.2, Safari is well worth the time you'll spend downloading it. The Mac comes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer already installed. Netscape Navigator is available for the Mac and, if you don't like all the junk that Netscape forces you to accept, there's the open-source version (Mozilla) that's essentially "Nestcape without the junk". There's also Opera for the Mac.

The problem with Internet Explorer for the Mac is that it's a version behind of Explorer on the PC. While that's not a serious problem in terms of what the browser can do, it might be part of the reason for Explorer's lack of speed on the Mac. Mac users also can choose from Chimera (another browser that's based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine) and a few others.

I've asked several acquaintances who use Macs about their experiences with Safari and their experiences generally coincide with mine. Safari is missing a few features (tabbed browsing being the most significant omission) and some of us have seen an occasional problem with a page or an entire website. For the most part, we've found that Safari is a fast browser -- fast to load and fast to load pages. Probably the most encouraging aspect of the browser, though, is that it looks beautiful.

That came as quite a surprise to me, too, because Safari comes from KDE. KDE is a desktop environment for Unix workstations. It provides a graphical user interface, but I've never been happy with it. The only time I've used KDE's software is when I've been working with Linux systems. I've generally felt that it was buggy, likely to crash, and generally not ready for a production environment.

I was more than a little uncertain about what to expect when I downloaded the software from Apple's website and the installer did little to allay my concerns. However, once Safari was running, I quickly changed my opinion. I looked at sites that might be expected to be optimized for Internet explorer (www.microsoft.com, for example) and the display was perfect. The only page that wouldn't display right was a page on one of my sites -- a page that also drives Netscape 6 bonkers.

What others think

You won't want to get rid of your current browser because Safari has one huge weakness: No strong encryption. This means the browser will not work with most bank sites or any other sites that require 128-byte encryption.

One acquaintance mentioned that bookmarks are a problem. "Really horrible bookmark system: you basically need an extra window for bookmarks which you have to select before going anywhere. At least with the bookmarks I tried to import from Chimera, it was a nightmare trying to see any but the top-level ones."

Keep in mind that this is beta software and those with closer ties to Apple than I have tell me that bugs are being fixed quickly. When you download the software, it will also update the operating system from version 10.2 to 10.2.3.

Speed is one of the most enticing features of Safari. A sample page provided by Apple that takes nearly a minute to load in Explorer opens in less than 20 seconds for Safari. This is a time trial established and conducted by Apple. Companies have been known to stack the odds in their own favor (imagine that!) when they do these test. Still, Safari is faster.

Everyone who mentioned KDE or Konqueror was less than complimentary, so most users who have experience with the browser on which Safari is based have said they are surprised by how good Safari is.

Safari is smaller than most other browsers, with the exception of Opera. "I personally have not had any problems with Safari at all. I like the fact that it's small (~2.5 or 3 megs) and it's quick. I also like the streamlined look of Safari's window on my desktop. I'm also happy to have a workable alternative to IE and Netscape," was the opinion of another acquaintance. In fact, the most frequently used words to describe Safari seem to be "pleasantly surprised." This bodes well for the program's future.

Another opinion: "I have used it enough to say I think it is the best browser available. Very pleasantly surprised when I started using it for the first time. I tried it at sites that are buggy when used with Netscape 7 and IE 5.1 for the Mac, and even one that was buggy on IE 5 for the PC. Safari worked flawlessly on all of them. I do expect it will take off and surpass Netscape and Opera in the Mac environment."

What's next?

By mid year, a solid and stable version of Safari should be out -- probably with 128-bit encryption and tabbed browsing. But then what? Will Safari be ported to other platforms. I think the chances are good that it will be ported to Free BSD Unix and probably to Linux. The chances are significantly less that users of Windows will ever see it.

One final comment from an Australian correspondent who says she has no complaints so far, "Things I love about Safari most are the absence of unsolicited pop-up screens, the in-built Google search and the drop-down menus on the bar (no more sliding the thing on the side back and forth to get to favorites). There is heaps more screen real estate. ... Oh yeah, and it is definitely much faster than IE 5.2."

If you want to download it, Safari is free from Apple -- http://www.apple.com/safari/ and you'll find information about development, bug fixes, and more at sites such as http://diveintomark.org/safari/, http://www.macosrumors.com/, and http://bsd.reedmedia.net/.

Books for the webwonk

Besides keeping technology-corner.com up to date, I work on some other websites and I am an advisor to people who maintain still other website. For that reason, I'm always on the lookout for a book that will make my life easier. O'Reilly has a couple of titles that I don't want to be without.

If you're new to working with HTML, Javascript, PHP, Perl, XML, cascading style sheets, and the like, these are not the books for you. Not yet, anyway. Those who are new to anything need tutorials and step-by-step instruction books. But if you've can write a Javascript function without having to open a book to learn the basic syntax, you're ready for these books. They're useful individually, but together they're a powerful reference library in two small books.

In the past, I've called O'Reilly books "dense" and that is particularly true with these two books. A lot of people think "dense" is a bad thing, but it's not. A dense reference manual is one that has a wealth of information that's easily accessible in a small volume. A dense reference manual is one that will fit in your briefcase. These do. "Dense" is good.

Is it time for the titles? Webmaster in a Nutshell is one. The other is Web Design in a Nutshell. I've read a lot of books over the years, but these two are indispensable. I take them home. I take them back to the office. I read them in bed. (OK. You already knew I was a geek, but this is stretching it even for geeks. I have, though, read them in bed.)

Stephen Spainhour and Robert Eckstein (Webmaster in a Nutshell) and Jennifer Niederst (Web Design in a Nutshell) have created what O'Reilly calls "A Desktop Quick Reference". And while I said these books are "small", both are more than 500 pages long. They look and feel small because O'Reilly selects paper carefully. A thin opaque sheet can make even a large book seem small.

Websites are complex animals. HTML isn't difficult to master, but keeping track of the commands that work only with Netscape and those that work only with Internet Explorer (or those that one browser or another botches badly) makes development a challenge. The only way to make a website look "fabulous" for every browser is to create a website for every browser. For most of us, and most of our clients, that isn't reasonable. So we do the best we can to create a site that looks "OK" in any browser, doesn't badly break any browser, and looks fabulous in the "target" browser.

That's the focus of Jennifer Niederst's Web Design in a Nutshell. She admits being frustrated with browsers that botch displays, but she does an outstanding job of describing how to chart a course that safely navigates Navigator's shortcomings and carefully explores the areas where Internet Explorer comes up short. Instead of being an evangelist for any browser or any platform, she helps us understand how we can make the best of what we have.

The book covers just about everything a website designer should know, from how GIFs work to why colors are a nightmare. And for every explanation of a technique that might make your life easier, there's an additional explanation of the disadvantages. Website design is all about making decisions. About choosing the solution that's best today. It may have shortcomings. It may not be the best solution tomorrow, but you have to finish your work today. With today's browsers. You need to know what works (most of the time) and what may not work so well with some browsers. If you like making intelligent, informed decisions, then this is an excellent book to add to your library.

As for Stephen Spainhour and Robert Eckstein, they have created a near-perfect reference that covers HTML in brief, with an even shorter section on XML and CSS, sections on CGI and Perl, a Javascript reference, a PHP reference, and useful information about the server that run our websites.

These aren't cheap books. But at $30 each, you'll find them to be a bargain. The authors of these books have written carefully and clearly. They have been edited well. And the books have been indexed by people who know what they're doing.

For more information on these books, see http://www.oreilly.com/.

We get letters ...

E-mail follows most Technology Corner programs, which Joe and I consider to be a good thing. That means somebody is "out there" listening and that we're not just talking to ourselves (although there's nothing wrong with that -- it's just that we probably wouldn't do it at 8 o'clock Sunday morning if we just wanted to chat with each other.

Here are some recent e-mails that raised issues, asked questions, or made comments that might be of interest to you. The comments and questions are in blue. My responses are in plain text. In the interest of privacy, those who have written are not identified and their e-mail addresses are not listed.

Any updates on fighting spam from your articles of a couple years ago? Seems that my complaints using the tools of SpamCop, SamSpade, and such fall on deaf ears. Most seem to originate overseas (many from China) where I guess their ISPs don't have the same anti-spam rules that those in the U.S. have.

China is a big problem. Some of the big spammers use Chinese servers and nobody over here seems to want to do much about it.

Spam is 30 to 40 percent of e-mail volume these days and getting worse. That, alone, will eventually force some of the backbone carriers to do something. At least I hope it will.

A lot of smart people are looking for clever ways to kill the stuff and some of the things they're working on look promising.

Today, there's not much to be done. SpamKiller and MailWasher and such will catch some of it. Once the crud becomes intolerable, I change my address, but that's a real pain, too.

Maybe somebody will invent a magic button that, when pressed, will trace spam back to its origin and deliver 100,000KVA to the spammer's computer and (preferably) to the spammer's body.

I wonder if you have some recommendations for me. I've searched Technology Corner, but I haven't found very much that would help in deciding on what company might be a good host for a new/transfer domain.

None of them!

Every host I've ever dealt with has run the gamut from more-or-less-acceptable service to (rarely) outstanding service to (several times) service so bad that I left with 6 months or more prepaid.

Forewarned is .... and all that.

You might want to take a look at http://www.featureprice.com/. Last fall when I found these folks, they were extremely cheap, the servers were quite fast, connectivity was excellent, customer service was quick, and downtime was minimal.

Around mid December, MY sites (but fortunately not those of my clients) were down for HOURS at a time. Every day. Mail was delayed for hours or more. Customer service was unreachable. I finally found an e-mail address for the chief technical officer. He said that major improvements were underway. I think there was more to it than that, including the CTO now seems to be the CEO, too.

But since sometime early last week, my sites have been solid. E-mail has been solid. They're back to where they were last fall. If they continue this way, they're an excellent choice because even the cheap plan ($60 per YEAR, $25 setup) provides a lot of space and decent features.

I've seen some that have a cheap option that doesn't include a static IP address. I think that those sites are probably too limiting for other reasons, but should I care about this?

Not any more. Some early browsers (v.2, I believe) can't handle named domains when multiple domains have one IP address. Actually, these people do give you a static IP address, but it's their address. Their nameserver takes care of sorting things out.

We are building a study that will contain 2 computer systems fairly close together. We would like to get wireless keyboards and mice but are not sure if they will conflict if we are both working at the same time.

Can you give us some info on them?

They might interfere with each other. Or maybe not. That wasn't very helpful, was it? If the devices use Bluetooth technology (unlikely) they could be made to stay out of each other's way. If you used infra-red devices for one computer and RF for the other, they wouldn't interfere. If you used RF devices from different manufacturers, they might be OK with each other.

I'd contact the manufacturer (Logitech is the largest manufacturer of these devices) and ask. It would be easy enough to built in circuitry to keep the devices separate, but it would cost money. Manufacturers don't like to add features unless they'll be used by a lot of people.

That still wasn't very helpful, but at least I used a lot of words!

COMMENTING on my experience with tech support at The Really Fast Cartoon Character Company:
Gosh it sounds like my experience. This is why unless it's two things..connectivity or down time of more then a day I never call support because I never get the message what the problem is and I don't pay for Business class connections. First level support at most computer service companies are usually any breathing body.

Yes, amazing, isn't it! I usually try to bypass level 1 by saying, "I've already done, A, B, C, and D. Additionally I tried E, F, and G. Oh, and -- by the way -- I also did Y and Z. That's probably more than what you have on your checklist, so will you just pass me along to level 2?" But on Wednesday, I had time to play.

What bothers me most about what happened is that a lot of clueless users would have uninstalled or shut off services that they really needed and then would have had to pay someone to come out and fix what "tech support" broke.

I think that we should able to pay to never have to talk to those first level support guys. Maybe an extra 10 bucks (or nothing in your case..you should not have to deal with that with Business class service).

In the past, that's what's happened. The techs I got were on the ball. I called the basic support number first just to see what would happen (but couldn't get through). So I expected a 10-second call when I dialed the "special" number ("Problem with the server?" "Yeah, we're working on it." "OK, thanks.") instead of the hour-long charade with a level 1 guy. (Toward the end, though, he claimed that he had checked with level 2 and been told there were "no problems".)

It wouldn't have been too bad even then if, once told him the system had "magically" started working again, he hadn't tried to claim it was antivirus software sending that mail to its server. (Does anyone but McAfee have an on-line antivirus service? I'm not certain that even their service sends anything through the McAfee server.) Even if that was the case, why would there be an "invalid password" message straight from the TRFCC server?

[Serious grumbling about the state of tech support snipped.] (sorry I had to vent!)

Yeah, I understand. That's probably one of the most vexing problems with hardware, software, and service companies. Because I deal with these companies' PR departments or PR firms, tech support calls normally start at level 2. Once I think I started at level 3 and the only people who EVER talk to level 3 are level 2 senior techs and God.

When I'm not in a hurry, I start with level 1 just to see if things have improved. Ha!

I agree with your need to have a clean desktop. All that clutter makes things very confusing. But maybe the system X for the Mac could be more helpful than you suspect. If you are using this new operating system I'm sure you know about the dock (the little strip at the bottom of the screen, or wherever you choose to put it). I think it's the BEST thing ever, once I've gotten accustomed to it. I simply drag the icon for the programs I frequently use and they stay there at the bottom (or side) of the screen, very small, until I'm ready. When I need to launch the program I roll over the dock and the icons get larger, I see the one I want, click and it launches. It took a little getting used to, but I really like the dock.

I have to agree that the Dock (I can never remember its name) is a very good feature (I put mine on the right edge because I kept activating it accidentally when it was at the bottom) but it gets too cluttered for my taste. When I roll over it, I have to try to remember whether what I'm looking for is at the top or the bottom -- and just doing that means I've had to take a hand off the keyboard.

When I have a real mouse attached (this is an iBook), it's not as bad. I don't care for navigating with the touchpad and that's what I generally do on the iBook.

Starting an application with Cmd-Space + a couple of letters is just about perfect for the way I work. I really do hope that this little app gets ported to Windows. It would beat even the modified Start Menu that I use.

I wondered if System X had any features I really needed (since most all of my apps are system 9 compatible) but using the new operating system is turning out to be a good thing after all.

It is, indeed -- particularly the .2 upgrade.

PS-It's good to hear from someone who uses both systems and isn't a crazed evangelist for either side!

I attempted to download an upgrade to MSN only to discover it would not work on my windows 98. I then removed the MSN I thought I installed. Ever since the operating system has given me headaches. When on line I get a notice the program has performed an illegal operation. Most of the time now, I can click the X and everything continues as usual. Other times, it actually crashes or will not allow me to shut down. When I click the details of the illegal operation it is KERNEL32.DLL at 0177:bff87eds.

With all the problems I am wondering if I would be better off trying to purchase Windows XP and installing it myself over Windows 98 or is that something better left to the professionals?

Reinstalling the operating system is probably the best thing to do, but that means formatting the disk and reinstalling everything. Installing Windows XP on top of a Windows 98 installation that has problems will probably not give good results.

First check with the computer manufacturer to be sure that Windows XP will run on the machine. If you do install the new operating system, make sure you have a complete and verified backup of all the data and configuration files that you want to keep. This is no small task, but the machine will run better.

Nerdly News

Update, update, update

Does it seem to you that Microsoft releases a new version of the Windows Media Player about every 6 days? I suppose it's not quite that often, but they do seem to arrive with regularity. WMP9 is now available and it's generally being called the best version yet. To see for yourself, head over to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/ and download it.

This version makes it possible for third-party developers to use the codecs in any application and on any platform. Why is this important? Two reasons: It's less expensive for developers than licensing the MPEG codec and this means we'll start seeing the Windows Media Player on other devices. (Cell phones, PDAs, watches?)

This time around, Microsoft includes a functioning encoder, too. (It is a separate download, but it's free.) When I downloaded WMP9, I thought the download hadn't worked. It looked just like WMP8. That's actually a good thing -- keeping the interface the same from one version to the next. And -- unlike what Real Media does -- Microsoft assumes that you probably don't want to enable all of the functions that report what you're doing back to big brother.

Some of the new features include volume leveling and Dolby 5.1 surround-sound, but only if you're using Windows XP. So now you have yet another reason to upgrade. WMP9 will play most media formats, except for Real Media. It will record only in WMP format. So don't delete WinAmp or MusicMatch Jukebox just yet!

Verizon to be forced to give out information

A federal judge has ordered Verizon Communications to give a record industry trade group the identity of a subscriber suspected of making available unauthorized copies of several hundred songs. The Recording Industry Association of America claims that it has the right require Internet service providers to turn over subscriber information even before a copyright holder filed suit.

Verizon, saying this would violate its subscribers' privacy and due-process rights, refused to comply with a subpoena. That brought US District Judge John D. Bates (Washington) into the picture. Bates says Verizon's position would curtail copyright enforcement on the Internet and ordered Verizon to turn over the records. Verizon plans to appeal the ruling.

Despite the fact that CD sales were at an all-time high when Napster was active and that sales have fallen since Napster has been shut down, the record industry says music trading is responsible for the sales drop. Until now, though, the association took legal action only against those who offered music for trading, not those who downloaded it.

Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
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