I do however want to see what the next version of Safari brings with it. Also, will that new version break glims ?

When you start Safari, you get a lovely looking very minimal interface. Unfortunately minimal also seems to mean missing pretty much most of the features I need.

• No session management. When the severely brain damaged excuse for a browser known as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer can even support session management, even if in a barely useable and utterly crippled half arsed approach, then it’s time to question just what exactly we need to do to get Apple to support session management. And let’s not forget, this is a company that can code most of it’s applications to remember where their last windows were positioned, so remembering the last tabs and windows that were open is a simple task. I bet a couple of days is all it would take a Safari developer to create this.
• Speaking of remembering tabs and windows, how about an undo close button. Really, it’s almost 2010 and Safari users don’t get to have an undo button ???? And before you say it, yes I do occasionally close the wrong tab that I want to reopen without having to go to the history menu. And so do you so stop moaning.
• The missing tab preference “open new windows as new tab”. It really bugs me that when I click on a Digg link it opens a new window. I know, I can just press the command button, but I don’t have to do that in Firefox, why do I have to do that in Safari ?
• No Ad block. Before you jump on the whole “sites deserve the their ad revenue” bandwagon, let me say two things. Firstly, lots of sites go out of their way to ruin my whole browsing experience by putting the most obnoxious and annoying adverts all over the page, or in so many cases, making me have to wade through pages that do nothing but load an advert before I get to the content. Secondly, any half way decent ad blocker can let you see the adverts on sites you really feel deserve the advertising revenue (I leave Ads on most of my indie tech sites I visit, but then those sites usually go for unobtrusive advertising anyway).
• Following on from the Ad blocker issue, extensions. What ? Don’t think people want extensions for Safari, then check out pimpmysafari.com. People want extensions, and there are extensions, but go read the hoops the extension developers have to go through to not only get their extension to work in Safari, but to get it to keep working when Safari gets a patch or even a new major release.

Maybe this just isn’t something a software company can do. After all, these are all features you get with every open-source driven web browser out there, but other than Opera (which I just can’t abide, sorry Opera users but I just can’t) no vendor created browser seems to implement these features (or not well anyway, yes, I’m looking at you IE, hang your head in shame).

But as a major proponent of all things Apple, I’m disappointed to see Apple think that doing the same as other vendors is OK. Unfortunately I don’t even know if Apple believes these are real issues. Apple may be happy with how Safari is. After all, Safari is probably fine for the average user. But if there is anything my gut tells me, it’s that the power users are the ones you have to convince to help you gain market share. And we’re not happy with Safari the way it is.

And shame on me, I forgot about the cool, original and snazzy show top sites button Apple developed.

That’s because I don’t use it. Good one Apple.

I had installed Mail.app from the Leopard install disk, but that hadn’t fixed the problem. On a whim I though I’d reinstall the jumbo patch for 10.5.1. Lo and behold, Mail.app now started fine.

Then my menu bar disappeared. Sigh. Let’s restart the Macbook. Three finger salute to get the force quit dialog didn’t work, none of the icons on the dock worked, so it was a complete power down. It’s rare I have to do this, but I’m usually OK if I do, HFS+ journal replay works great. But this time I was a little apprehensive; see about two weeks back my file system had been trashed by the OS (or so I thought). Time machine restore worked a treat, but I hadn’t backed up in about a week, so some emails and other things had been lost (you can bet I’m going to buy iTimeCapsule, as well as a .mac subscription to sync up mail as a backup onto my Mac mini).

Powering up, everything looked OK, but when I press my ID to get the password prompt, nada. OK, let’s go for another forced power down. And here is where I discover what’s been going on. As the machine starts to power up, I hear, coming from the hard drive the dreaded “clunk … clunk” of a total failure. My drive is dead.

It’s now dawned on me that the real reason my file system was fried two weeks back, and that Mail.app was failing so badly, was my hard drive was on it’s way south. Now that it’s gone, I know what the problem is, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Until the replacement drive I’ve ordered arrives, I’m sans MacBook. This thing is my baby, my workhorse. I’m lost with out it. Woe indeed.

I mean, I had to write this blog on a Windows machine. That’s just sick !