Full Feed7 ways that Apple can improve Safari
With the recent release of Firefox 3, Safari finally is seeing some serious competition in the browser space. Its reign as the fastest browser on the Mac seems to be over for the time being, and Firefox’s usage share continues to climb both on the Mac and on Windows.
Now, this isn’t to say I don’t like Safari; in fact, I use it as my everyday browser. It’s just that the competition is finally really heating up, and it’s about time Apple made some improvements to set Safari apart once again.
1. Make the search box customizable
This is something that Apple should have done long ago. Even Microsoft allows users of Internet Explorer to customize the search bar. I realize that Eric Schmidt sits on the board at Apple, and I love Google, don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t groundbreaking territory here. Sometimes you just don’t find what you’re looking for on Google and you want to try Yahoo! or (dare I say it) Live search.
It doesn’t end with just your run-of-the-mill search engines either. Firefox allows users to add searches of eBay, Amazon, ESPN, Technorati, Weather.com and more, right into the toolbar. It’s about time that Apple allowed its users the same “free reign” over their search box.
2. Add a one-click “New tab” button to the toolbar
Once again, not groundbreaking territory. IE7 and Firefox both have it. I know there’s command+t and double-clicking on an empty space on the tab bar, but they can’t substitute for the convenience of an easy, one-click, “new tab” solution.
3. Turn up the speed dial
With the release of Firefox 3, Safari is not the speed king on the Mac anymore. Apple should concentrate a lot of their energy into speeding up performance so that Safari can reign again with the same comfortable lead it once held.
4. Add an “awesome bar” equivalent.
This new feature of Firefox saves you a lot of typing and searching through your bookmarks. It’s a real timesaver, especially if you have a lot of bookmarks. I know some people find this kind of clunky, so for those people, there should be an option to turn it off.
5. Add a “live bookmarks” equivalent.
Safari’s RSS reader is excellent, but wouldn’t it be nice to put some of the feeds you check every day right in your bookmarks bar and view them in a drop down menu rather than having to actually open the feed in the reader? This would be especially great for news headlines or a forum or blog that you frequent.
6. Improve Security
PayPal generated some buzz in the Apple community lately when they snubbed Safari from their list of “safer browsers” due to it’s lack of anti-phishing features. Firefox’s instant site ID feature is really handy and accessible in identifying whether or not a website is a fake, and at the very least, Apple should add similar feature. Ideally though, they would do a lot more than just that.
7. Add live previews of tabs.
This is a features that exists in Opera, and IE has a similar solutions with its “quick tabs” interface. Great for when you have a bunch of tabs open and can’t really read what’s on the tab bar.
So what are your thoughts? I would really like to hear from some of you loyal Safari users out there what you would like to see in Safari 4.0. I’d also like to hear from those of you who are using other browsers and what would compell you to switch to Safari. Leave your comments below.
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Great article, Michael! I’d love for all of these features to come to Safari… I love the browser, and I would love it even more if it was more similar to Firefox.
on July 12, 2008 at 03:50 PM - LINK... there is one new feature of Firefox, that nobody really talks about, although it’s really great: when you zoom in to a page, not only the font size is increased, but the whole page is skaled up, like if it was a vector grafic. For the first time there is a browser that doesn’t mess up the page architecture when increasing the size. I find that almost revolutionary, especially when you’re working on a MBPro with a high resolution and you often need to zoom in to make the website easily readable.
If Apple implemented this to Safari, I would switch right away.
on July 12, 2008 at 04:01 PM - LINKThanks a lot Pat. I just went to submit this to Digg and somebody beat me to it!
on July 12, 2008 at 06:10 PM - LINKWhat about the “save session” feature? For me that’s the most important of the missing features in safari. I use 4 spaces on daily basis and I have a single browser window in every space with as many tabs as you can count on an iPhone line at AT&T;.
When I need to restart the Mac or the browser crashes, I have to seat and cry. The ability to save the session in FF was to me as a breakthrough feature as the navigation tabs a few years ago.
How long will it take Apple to implement this in Safari? I’m assuming it isn’t there. Could it be an incuded feature and I don’t know about it?
Great article by the way.. congrats..
on July 12, 2008 at 06:46 PM - LINKJuan, I knew that there was something I forgot to mention. Word has it that Safari 4 is in developers beta now, so who knows? I would like to think it’s included.
on July 12, 2008 at 07:04 PM - LINKSebastian: The zoom feature is implemented system wide in Mac OS. You turn it on in System Prefs > Universal Access and then use Cmd-Option-+ and - to zoom in and out of the screen.
Juan: Safari 3.0 has had it under History > Reopen all windows from last session for a long time now.
Apple bashing is the IN thing these days…
AM
on July 12, 2008 at 11:56 PM - LINKIt looks more like an article on how to make safari more like firefox.
For the first item - i use inquisitorX. I think you should try too ,)
Other than that - great and insightful article.
on July 13, 2008 at 01:43 AM - LINKSeveral of these features are available via ‘Inquisitor’ which does auto-completion, suggestion and multiple search engines. Find it here: http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/
on July 13, 2008 at 11:16 AM - LINKRegarding the speed of Safari,
In the next release of Safari (safari 4) it is going to be incredibly fast.
I know because I am using it right now and I have run it through Acid3 and it has scored 100/100
on July 13, 2008 at 12:58 PM - LINKApart from being in full agreement that Firefox revolutionizes the browser fiefdom tremendously, I would like to say that there is one feature in Safari that I know of which Firefox or any other browser provides in my Mac: dictionary! I click three buttons over a word and Safari gives me the definition. Could Firefox do that so simple, too?
on July 22, 2008 at 02:07 PM - LINK@Azoox
I mentioned this in the article at the end. To my knowledge, you can only do it in Safari.
on July 23, 2008 at 12:22 PM - LINKI want “reopen all windows from last session” to know about Spaces, and distribute the windows across them, as I had the windows distributed before.
AM, it’s still not equivalent to “save and name this session, and keep it even if I stop and start the browser a few times”.
Regards,
on October 25, 2008 at 02:08 AM - LINKJames.