14.06.07
New crashes with Safari and Perl saving the blog day
Just now, I was happy about the new Beta version for Safari and Windows. I even was courageouos enough to type the previous blog post using Safari. Unfortunately, I noticed a new bug through this: When trying to enter text in any single-line text field, Safari will crash on my machine. Even when applying the localization fix. What a pity. Because I didn't want to type the whole post again, I searched for a memory dump tool while the crash dialog was still open. I found a Perl module called Win32::Process::Memory . With a Perl script I improvised on the fly, I was able to dump the whole process memory and through this save about half of the blog post (and almost all of the English version). Thank you, Zhou Qingjie!Verfasst von crenz um 18:17 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
Safari 3.0.1
It seems Apple is quite closely following the feedback they're getting for Safari 3. Yesterday, I got a nice e-mail from a member of Apple's Safari product team asking me about the copy & paste bug I experienced.
Today, Apple has released an Update for Safari on Windows. The update fixes several security issues as well as some crashes on non-English systems. However, I am still experiencing several problems with 3.0.1: Copy & paste still causes crashes for me, and displaying Help, License etc. does not work. I am a bit surprised, I would expect that Safari would use the standard localization if no files for the current locale are available, just like on Mac OS X. These issues are fixed by applying a localization fix mentioned before.
Another serious issue is the remaining display problems: Bold and italic text is not displayed at all. This issue is not fixed with 3.0.1, even when applying the localization fix. So for German users of Safari, this version is not usable yet. But I hope Apple will stay on track to fix the remaining problems!
Verfasst von crenz um 17:06 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
12.06.07
End the Safari crashes
Thanks to a comment Niels Leenheer left in my blog entry talking about my Safari problems, I was able to fix the crashes I encountered.
In the installation directory of the Safari Beta (C:\Program Files\Safari), you have to go through all subdirectories and make copies of the localization folders. Copy folders called en.lproj to de.lproj, and folders called English.lproj to German.lproj. For other languages, you need to adapt the folder names, obviously.
That fixed the crashes for me. The font rendering problems still remain, though. However, now I am actually able to report bugs :-)
Niels also posted a description on how to enable the debug menu.
If despite these problems you're still happy that Safari is being ported to Windows, you might drop over to the Surfin' Safari blog and leave an encouraging comment.
Verfasst von crenz um 14:42 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
Unexpected end of a Safari
Update: A solution for the crashes is available (see comments or here).
The keynote for Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference given by Steve Jobs yesterday followed the pattern developed in the past years: No announcements of new hardware (these will probably follow in the coming weeks), but a focus on software and strategic developments instead. A lot of Leopard's new features look rather interesting. I'm just a bit disappointed that there was no mention of ZFS.
One rather surprising step was Apple's decision to port their web browser Safari to Windows. It does make sense, if you consider the need for syncing or admin software for the iPhone (and I think Safari will play a role there). It's a nice touch that a public beta of Safari for Windows is already available.
I wouldn't recommend downloading it, however. On the German Windows XP system I tried it on, it failed to display any text in bold or italic fonts (including headlines). It also crashed the computer when I tried to submit a bug report (!). And when despite these circumstances, I tried to write this blog entry using Safari, it crashed when I pasted some text into the blog entry's subject field. Not impressive at all. Contrary to what is promised on the Safari website, no bookmarks were imported, and when I tried to open the bookmark folder, Safari crashed. I was able to look at the preferences, but there is a noticable delay when switching between different preference panes (on a Core 2 Duo system no less!).
I am rather disappointed that Apple would consider calling something like this a beta version. The only positive thing was that Safari detected and used the local proxy configuration.
Just for fun, here's a shortened overview of the information Safari reveals in its HTTP headers and via Javascript. The Javascript output reveals that Safari automatically detected the plugins I had installed for Firefox.
| HTTP_ACCEPT | text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 |
| HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING | gzip, deflate |
| HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE | en |
| HTTP_CONNECTION | Keep-Alive |
| HTTP_HOST | web42.com |
| HTTP_USER_AGENT | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de) AppleWebKit/522.11.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Safari/522.11.3 |
| SERVER_PROTOCOL | HTTP/1.0 |
Microsoft® DRM: DRM Netscape Network Object (npdrmv2.dll)
Adobe Acrobat: Adobe Acrobat Plug-In Version 7.00 for Netscape (nppdf32.dll)
QuickTime Plug-in 7.1.6: The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site. (npqtplugin.dll)
Shockwave Flash: Shockwave Flash 9.0 r45 (NPSWF32.dll)
iTunes Application Detector: iTunes Detector Plug-in (npitunes.dll)
Apple Java Plug-In: Apple Java Plug-In (npJavaPlugin.dll)
Mozilla Default Plug-in: Default Plug-in (npnul32.dll)
Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library: Npdsplay dll (npdsplay.dll)
Microsoft® DRM: DRM Store Netscape Plugin (npwmsdrm.dll)
Verfasst von crenz um 10:31 | Kommentare (7) | TrackBack
08.06.07
A good reason to get Leopard
ZFS: the last word in file systems. (HTML, PDF)Verfasst von crenz um 10:32 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
09.01.07
I have seen the future
Verfasst von crenz um 23:11 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
12.09.06
Almost made it...
...but not quite. What a pity, I would have loved to get a new laptop battery for free. Still, a note to all PowerBook/iBook owners out there: Make your way to the Apple battery exchange, there's a potential security risk.
Verfasst von crenz um 08:39 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
08.08.06
Mac religion
Verfasst von crenz um 10:49 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
30.12.05
The London Apple Store
Ming Ee and me are having a good time in London. Unfortunately, we left the USB cable for the camera in Germany, so I can't access my pictures yet. But fortunately, there is an Apple Store in London, and using Photo Booth, we took a few nice pictures and sent it to our e-mail accounts.
We had to wait quite a while to get to use an iMac. There were so many people there checking their e-mails, surfing the web etc., but in the end, it was worth it.
The store itself is rather nice, I'd like to see one in Stuttgart as well. But I think that'll take quite a long while.
Verfasst von crenz um 00:27 | Kommentare (0) | TrackBack
10.06.05
Startup sound for Intel Macs
Exclusively composed for you: The new startup sound for the Macintosh computers using an Intel processor.
Verfasst von crenz um 14:29 | TrackBack
08.05.05
A History of the GUI
There's an article on GUI history on ars technica. It's a nice read. It has this interesting quote that intrigued me (my emphasis):
Douglas Englebart completed his degree in electrical engineering in 1948 and settled down in a nice job at the NACA Institute (the forerunner of NASA). However, one day while driving to work he had an epiphany: he realized that his real calling as an engineer was not to work on small projects that might only benefit a few people. Instead, he wanted to work on something that would benefit all of humanity.
Verfasst von crenz um 23:47 | TrackBack
05.05.05
Calling PerlTidy from SubEthaEdit
SubEthaEdit is a wonderful editor with many features, but it lacks one thing for me: A comfortable way to call external utilities. In the last few weeks, I became a PerlTidy aficionado. Using the following AppleScript, you can call PerlTidy from the script menu. It replaces the text of the active document. If something goes wrong, ⌘Z reverts the changes.
tell application "SubEthaEdit" set pt to "-ce -bar -vtc=2 -pt=2 -sbt=2 -bt=2 -wba=\"? : .\"" if the number of documents > 0 then set doc_text to the text of document 1 as string set f_perltidy_in to "/tmp/perltidy.in" try do shell script "rm " & f_perltidy_in & " " end try set f_in to open for access (f_perltidy_in as POSIX file) ¬ with write permission try write doc_text to f_in close access f_in on error close access f_in return end try set cmd to "perltidy " & pt & " < " & f_perltidy_in set output to do shell script cmd set the text of document 1 to output end if end tell
Verfasst von crenz um 20:47 | TrackBack
04.05.05
Safari: Disappeared or irrelevant?
And something else from Spiegel Online: Frank Patalong writes about rising market shares for Firefox, and while reading the article, I noticed that Safari should be below 0,45%? If not, it should appear in the table…
Update: On O'Reilly's site, Safari has a market share of 3,85%.
Update 2: In a current article, Spiegel Online mentions Safari as part of the other Browsers (0.31%)