Safari 3 for Windows Still In Beta

**** UPDATE Update: 19 March 08 Safari 3.1 for Windows is out of Beta and available from www.apple.com/safari ****

I had hoped that the release of Apple’s latest incarnation of its operating system, OS X 10.5 Leopard, last Friday would mean that Safari 3 would finally come out of Beta, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

It’s not just the Windows version that is still in Beta either. The free download from the Apple web site still seems to be in Beta for the Mac as well.

Safari 3 on Windows seems stable enough now after the font display problems experienced back in June but I’m wondering what they are waiting for. Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 release dates are just around the corner and there are even rumours that IE8 will surface some time soon. Perhaps they’re waiting to see what the competition has to offer before committing to their own final version. I just hope this isn’t another perpetual Beta…

Image Courtesy of Apple

---

[UPDATE November 2007: apparently Leopard has Safari 3.0.4 installed, the version number of which differs from the one you can download from the apple site which is 3.0.3.It also seems that there are some font display issues with Safari on Leopard because a lot of the people arriving at this site recently have done so because they are searching for a solution to this problem.3.0.4 is available from the developer section of the Apple website, see this post ]

Filed under: Apple, Free Software, Safari, Support Articles , Leopard, Safari For Windows, safari3, Web Browsers

Chandler – Manage Tasks, Calendars and Notes In One Place

I’ve just started using a Preview version of Chandler. It’s a new (and free) piece of software that lets you manage your diary, to-do lists and notes from a single programme. It’s aimed at small groups of people collaborating on projects and as it develops I think that it could be useful for some of my association/membership organisation clients that need to co-ordinate committee work or other projects amongst disparate groups of people.

Benefits Of Chandler

Apart from the fact that it doesn’t cost anything, Chandler’s key attraction for me is that it runs on Windows, Mac OS X and has an online version that acts as a hub for sharing information with the rest of your team. One of the nicest things about sharing calendars etc via Chandler is that the people you give access to don’t have to have a Chandler account. You just send them the appropriate link to your calendar depending on whether you want them to have read-only or read and edit access.

Email, Calendar, To-Do Lists and Notes All In One Place

You can also integrate Chandler with your email but I’m going to avoid that for the moment until I’m more familiar with the way Chandler works. The developers of Chandler have been quite clear that it isn’t intended as a replacement for your existing email programme However, email integration does make a lot of sense as often something that arrives via email is a task or an invite.

I’ve not used Outlook for a couple of years now (I replaced it with another programme called Thunderbird) so I’m not familiar with the latest version, but I found that I was only using it for email and it just had too many features. Although tasks, events and email were all in the same place, they were unrelated.

Where Chandler differs from Outlook is that events, tasks, notes, emails etc are all gathered in collections which relate to a project or an aspect of your life. You share a collection with the other people working on that project or those that need to be kept in the loop. Because the Chandler Project provide a free online hub outside of your own infrastructure and because they offer free desktop software that runs on Windows, Apple or Linux there are no technical or cost barriers to collaborating with your project members.

Chandler looks like a very promising project that I think could be very useful for associations and membership organisations. In it’s Preview state, it’s not really in a state to be relied on, but you can try it out for yourself at chandlerproject.org

Filed under: Apple, Free Software, Information Management , Chandler Project, Outlook, Personal Organiser, Thunderbird

Web Glossary Will Launch 9th November

A personal project that I’ve been working on recently will launch next week on the 9th of November.

Many people dread dealing with IT professionals. If you’ve ever worked with a web design or software development company that can’t explain things to you clearly and concisely, without resorting to technical language then it can be a nightmare. In some ways they are doing you a disservice and have failed you as a client.

I’ve always tried to avoid the approach of trying to impress clients with technology. It’s a greater challenge and more satisfying to explain how you will fulfil a clients requirements without hiding behind technical knowledge. I prefer to save the technobabble for my peer group. That’s not to say I always succeed, but may aim is always to try make explanations clear, concise and simple.

To hone my skills I’m launching a site called Web Glossary which is at www.webglossary.co.uk.

You’ll be able to get answers to baffling terminology there from on the 9th of November 2007.

I hope you’ll find it useful but never have to refer to it after a meeting with me.

Filed under: Web Glossary , explanations, glossaries, glossary, hosting, simple explanations, web design, web hosting, web terminology

Please, Make An Old Web Designer Happy : Update Your Browser

One bane of a web designer’s life is browser testing. We have to ensure that the web sites we build look and work as intended in all web browsers.

We have official standards to adhere to that should make this an easier task, but the people who create web browsers don’t necessarily implement all of these standards or even implement them in the same way. Add to that the fact that there are lots of different versions of the browser out there and things can get complex.

Most web designers were pretty pleased at the end of 2006 when Microsoft launched the latest version of their browser, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), as it reduced the differences between the major browsers. This should have meant an eventual reduction in the amount time spent testing in different browsers.

Better yet, they announced that they were going to push out the update via Windows Automatic Updates, a routine that runs on the 2nd Tuesday of every month and downloads software that fixes bug on your computer. So users wouldn’t have to choose to upgrade it would just happen automatically.

So the future was looking pretty rosy. It looked like Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the previous version launched in 2001, would soon be dead and gone and our job would made be a lot easier.

But IE6 hasn’t disappeared. In fact it seems there are still twice as many IE6 users out there as IE7 users.

I’ve been wondering why it is that people don’t upgrade (yes I do spend my time wondering about things like that). All the popular browsers are free, all are easy to install so why haven’t people upgraded. What are the barriers to upgrading. I came to the following completely speculative conclusions:

• People just don’t care. (Why should they? They just want to go on-line and visit a web site.)
• People don’t know about upgrades.
• People think “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
• People have switched off automatic updates.
• Not everyone has broadband so they cancel large downloads.
• Not everyone has control over what they install on their computer (e.g. work computer, public library etc).
• IE7 requires Windows XP and some people will be on older versions of Windows.

Then something struck me. Before updating, IE7 checks to see if you have a valid copy of Windows installed. Could it be that there are so many illegal copies of Windows out there that it scuppered the roll out of this update? Could it be that people aren’t sure whether or not they have a valid copy of Windows so bail out of the process for fear of a knock on the door late at night? I’ve even heard that some legal copies were identified as illegal.

Well we might see a difference in the uptake soon. Microsoft announced today that they no longer require XP users to validate their copy of Windows so this hopefully should remove the fear barrier for everyone.

Please, if you use Internet Explorer and haven’t already done so, please upgrade to IE7. You’ll make a lot of web designers out there very happy.

It’s still going to be available via Automatic Updates, but you can download the latest version from the Microsoft web site right now.

Filed under: Free Software, Support Articles, Web Browsers , firefox, ie6, ie7, ie8, opera, Safari, updates, Web Browsers