Quarter Life Crisis Comments

Nello Lucchesi on Safari Reloaded

Nello Lucchesi — 2009-07-04T04:46:08+01:00

“…it’s visual overload…” should be “…its visual overload…”

ssp on X.5 Quartz Composer Notes

ssp — 2009-07-01T22:01:03+01:00

It’s just the normal Timelines patch that comes with Quartz Composer. I think by default it uses the time point of the parent patch. But using the contextual menu on the patch will reveal a ‘Timebase’ submenu which lets you set the timebase to ‘External’. That reveals the ‘Patch Time’ input as you see it in my composition.

Strangely, this option is rather well-hidden.

Stefen Kaur on X.5 Quartz Composer Notes

Stefen Kaur — 2009-07-01T20:34:16+01:00

Where did you find a timeline patch with a patch time input? Is there any place to get it. That’s exactly the patch I need. The current one does not have a patch time input on it.

Gavin on Safari Reloaded

Gavin — 2009-06-29T11:22:01+01:00

Really bugs me that the reload button is in the middle of the browser now. But I’m glad they moved the tabs back to the bottom of the url bar.

Mihai on MacBook screen flicker

Mihai — 2009-06-29T01:13:50+01:00

I have this problem on my Macbook First generation. Occurred after switching to Leopard, or so it seems. I switched to Leopard as soon as I bought it,used, so I can’t tell if it had this problem running Tiger, but the previous owner, my sister in law, says she never noticed it. I happens while on battery power, shortly after the display turns on, lasts for a bit and the goes away. Doesn’t really happen on A/C power. Needless to say, the computer has been out of warranty for a long time. Unless I find a software fix, I plan to ride this out….

Anonymous spanish one on Das Pop

Anonymous spanish one — 2009-06-22T16:56:33+01:00

Thanks a lot for the lyrics. Like Ozge, I was looking for the name of the song, because the girl who broke my heart last week copied it and put in her subnick on messenger. Thanks a lot, man.

ssp on Safari Reloaded

ssp — 2009-06-19T10:25:55+01:00

@Bapak:
I think I agree about the order of items in the autocompletion menu. In my daily usage I tend to use bookmarks much more frequently than history items, so I’d prefer having those at the top as well.

Enjoy yout 1,50m bookmarks menu popup!

Bapak on Safari Reloaded

Bapak — 2009-06-19T10:06:30+01:00

For disabling the web page previews that Safari creates, folks should see the following tip. I presume it still works simply because I put it to work during the beta period and the previews have not returned since upgrading to the final version of Safari.

Tip at MacOSXHints

Bapak on Safari Reloaded

Bapak — 2009-06-19T09:55:40+01:00

I’m convinced the progress indicator is merely a way to enhance the perception that Safari is loading pages quickly. No, I’m not into conspiracy theories, but since there’s no benefit to the user from this design, it’s all I’ve been able to think of as a basis for this design.

To me, the most egregious design decision is the long-standing failure to implement a user-friendly design for adding bookmarks. Using the Add Bookmark command when viewing a page reveals a tremendously unhelpful pop-up menu. Users like myself who have lots of bookmarks in organized folders are immediately struck by how poor this design is for adding a bookmark. If my screen were large enough to show the entire pop-up menu, it would be more than 60 inches (153 cm) tall.

Worse, in Safari there is already a perfect design in place, but it’s just not applied to the interface for adding bookmarks. Open the Safari Preferences window. Under the General tab, use New Windows Open With to select the option for Choose Tabs Folder. The dialog box that opens would be perfect for adding bookmarks instead of the muddled method currently available. I submitted feedback on this during the beta, but apparently to no avail.

And here’s an additional point on the Apple use and implementation of bookmarks. The prioritization of one’s browsing history over bookmarks with the URL autocomplete is maddening for me. Two examples. I have two bookmarked Flickr pages I visit regularly. In the past I could type ‘fl’ then arrow once or twice to the site I want. Now the history gets in the way and it requires 8 or 9 uses of arrow down to get to the sites I’ve bookmarked. Likewise, if I have bookmarked a newspaper business section, it’s way down the list, preceded in the History section by articles I’ve recently read. Apparently, this interface design presumes I’d rather re-read articles instead of returning to the source of the articles.

Since there aren’t aren’t loads of complaints about this emphasis on one’s web history, I’ve concluded I’m in the minority as a thorough user of bookmarks.

All in all, I think Safari is great. It’s fast, renders well, and it has the clean and simple Apple interface that I prefer. For me, though, it’s remarkable how these small aspects of the design (the interface for adding bookmarks and URL autocomplete setup) complicate my workflow.

ssp on Science Express

ssp — 2009-06-18T02:26:20+01:00

@Paul: Thanks for the further video links. Will have to look at those as well now.

Paul Mison on Science Express

Paul Mison — 2009-06-18T00:39:48+01:00

2lmc have loved Remind Me since it was released and on fairly heavy rotation on MTV2 years ago, back when we had a dozen music video channels.

Recently I discovered that Röyksopp have a Vimeo account with a vaguely decent quality copy of all of their videos, including Remind Me. It’s probably worth skimming their other work; there’s some nice ideas in there.

ssp on Safari Reloaded

ssp — 2009-06-15T17:20:21+01:00

@ncm:
I can see how the Cover Flow is annoying if you use bookmarks beyond the bookmarks bar, but as you point out it can be reasonably minimised. Cover Flow does use the saved screenshots of pages, but as those are created anyway, I’m not sure that Cover Flow itself creates significant overhead. If you could turn off Preview creation that might reduce resource usage, but I wonder whether it will improve performance.

It seems like you can effectively prevent the creation of preview images by doing something like chmod 500 ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Webpage\ Previews but I didn’t have the impression that this improved performance (it just litters up your console log, so I rate doing that mainly a bad idea).

ncm on Safari Reloaded

ncm — 2009-06-15T16:38:41+01:00

Personally what I hate the most in the release version is CoverFlow bookmarks. It takes up far too much room and even if you push it all the way to the top I assume it’s still needlessly using resources in the background. Unlike you I do use Bookmarks to organize my browsing and would love to return to the CoverFlow-free previous incarnations of Safari. No way I could find to completely turn this off.

win39 on Safari Reloaded

win39 — 2009-06-15T04:25:47+01:00

Wow. You hit everything I dislike about the new Safari. Especially the reload being moved to the right. It is driving me nuts. I am totally confused by the right end of the tabs. The double arrow makes no sense. Previously it would show the tabs open, but for which there is no room. Now it gives a list of all the tabs that are open and which you can already see. Then down in the gray part of the list are the tabs you opened, but which do not show followed by a selection of your previous browsing. Just bizarre. Hopefully someone will find some instructions to restore the movable reload/stop buttons, the blue progress bar and the previous tab behavior which was just find. I would also like to be able to turn off top sites everytime I get a spinning beach ball waiting for it to load before I can use the browser.

Bob Forsberg on Safari Reloaded

Bob Forsberg — 2009-06-15T03:03:39+01:00

Excellent analysis of the Safari release and past betas. You identified the problem with all new browser releases. The designers feel a need for a “WOW” factor more than a better working factor. While I understand Safari 4 is faster than 3 the visual overload and file overload runs counterproductive to an effective, streamlined tool Safari could be.

The majority favor software that works well without the glitter. If software developers made product that just worked well with new versions that just worked better, and leaving the extras, modifications and glitter as free downloadable addons our hard drives would be happier and I would also thank them for the simplicity of their work.