Late last night, Apple seeded a new build of Safari to developers, 5.1.2 beta, which brings a fix to the embedded PDF viewing and printing issues that were present in previous versions of the browser. It also introduces a “known bug” that causes extensions to crash. As the ancient Romans used to say, caveat developor.
On a Mac everything is supposed to “just work”, and usually it does. However, sometimes a missing internet plug-in or other component may be required for correct operation:
I have been a Mac user since the first home/small Mac computers were available. My recent eMac was 9 years old, so I was out of sync with EVERYTHING. Just bought a new iMac and I have Safari. Sometimes I click on a document on the Internet, and I get a basically blank page that says “Missing plug-in.” So I can’t open everything I need.
For those of us that have something to hide, you’ll be happy to know that in iOS 5 Safari offers a private internet browsing mode. Once it is toggled on it prevents Safari from compiling a history of your browser activity.
If you received a video file via email or stumbled across a clip in Safari that you wanted to save under iOS 4, it just wasn’t possible. You could watch it, but you couldn’t save it. However, one feature you may not yet have noticed in iOS 5 is that you can now download videos to your camera roll.
Rather than complying with Apple’s App Store terms and throwing the Cupertino company 30% of every sale it makes, Audible has launched an iPhone-friendly web app that allows users to add a bookmark to their home screen for quick and easy purchasing.
When you are running a Mac as a kiosk or to run a demo, it can be helpful to block out all elements of the user interface. This user from Norway can’t figure out how to force Safari in Lion to always open links in true fullscreen mode:
We are a group of mac users that can not figure out why or how to get our Safari to be a true fullscreen app when we click on a link to start safari. So here is what we struggle with: how to get safari on Lion to open links in true fullscreen without the toolbar in the top?
Although it’s by no means immediately obvious, Mac OS X includes a handy tool built right into Safari that enables you to capture streaming video from most websites. In this video I’ll show you how it’s done.
Apple is reportedly working on a brand new new online diagnostics tool that could solve problems with your iOS device through your mobile Safari browser — saving you a trip to your local Apple store.
Apple has apparently released an update to its Safari web browser to registered developers which features support for the company’s upcoming iCloud service. Safari 5.1.1 introduces syncing for iCloud bookmarks and the new Reading List feature.
The list of products flying out of Cupertino today continues to grow. Safari 5.1 is now available to download and introduces full screen mode, new multi-touch gestures, Reading List, and a whole lot more.
Just a day after the much-anticipated JailbreakMe 3.0 website went live and over 1,000,000 iOS devices took advantage of the web-based hack, Apple has confirmed it will kill the exploit in an upcoming software update.
New screenshots demonstrating Facebook’s much-anticipated Project Spartan web app platform, in addition to a tentative launch date for the service, have been published online. And despite Facebook’s promise that the service isn’t intended to rival the App Store, developers say there’s no question.
After what seemed like a painfully long wait, Comex has finally relaunched JailbreakMe — the web-based unlock for (nearly) all iOS devices, including the iPad 2, running iOS 4.3.3.
JailbreakMe, undoubtedly the easiest method of jailbreaking an iOS device, is set to return imminently with version 3.0 — the all-purpose jailbreak for any device, including the iPad 2, running iOS 4.3.3 and below. Comex has updated the site for the second time in the past week, leading some to speculate the relaunch of the new service will be today.
Undoubtedly the most simple jailbreak solution to ever be available for the iPhone is the JailbreakMe online exploit from Comex. Apple quickly patched this hack shortly after its release, but Comex has updated the JailbreakMe page with a teaser its upcoming relaunch… reminding people that this was a jailbreak a LONG time in the making.
Mozilla’s Firefox 5 web browser officially launches today, “bringing together all kinds of awesomeness to make browsing better for you.” Here’s what’s new…
In an effort to deter the freeloaders who have been accessing the New York Post for free on their iPad through the NYPost.com website, the company has now blocked mobile Safari — directing readers to the subscription-only iPad app instead.
Being a Chrome man, I generally don’t pay much attention to Safari, but I just noticed a really neat new feature in Safari 5.1 under the Lion Developer Preview 4: a new downloads manager.
For those of you who use Google’s Chrome web browser on your Mac or PC, a new app called iChromy aims to offer an identical browsing experience on your iPad, with a polished user interface and some rather nice features.
Twitter announced on its blog yesterday that the company is finally rolling out an update to its mobile web application which will integrate HTML5 and introduce some nice new features, meaning it will no longer suck so much under mobile Safari.
Cloud Player, the recently launched online storage service from Amazon, now works on iOS devices through the Safari web browser. When it first went live, the service – which offers 5GB of storage for free – was only accessible from Flash-supported browsers and Android devices.
When you first navigate to Cloud Player on your iOS device, you are greeted by a warning that tells you your browser isn’t supported. You can just ignore that and proceed into your music collection. Once there, you can use Cloud Player flawlessly: it will pause when you receive push notifications and incoming calls, you’ll get the blue “playing” icon in your device’s status bar, and you can control playback from the buttons in the multitasking tray.
For a while Cydia has been the one and only source for jailbroken applications and tweaks, and it hasn’t really had a lot of competition. That’s about to change, as a new web-based installer called Lima is on its way to give Cydia something of a challenge.
Developed by the Infini Dev Team, Lima runs in the Safari browser and doesn’t require any additional applications – you just navigate to its webpage to access all of its packages. Downloading and installing packages is just as simple as it currently is with Cydia.
Judging from the video at the top, Lima looks like a nice, snappy way of accessing jailbroken apps and tweaks, without the downsides of the often slow Cydia. However, I’m not sure whether you’ll we’ll still be able to add our own repositories like we can with Cydia, or whether we’re stuck with whatever Lima has to offer.
As much as I love Cydia, sometimes its slow reload times and all too frequent errors prove to be a huge frustration, and I’m looking forward to giving Lima a try. What do you think; will Lima give Cydia a run for its money, or is it facing an uphill battle? Let us know in the comments!
A new malware threat called ‘MACDefender’ is targeting Mac OS X users browsing the web using Apple’s Safari browser. The software automatically downloads a file through JavaScript, but users must first agree to install the software, making the potential threat a low risk to careful users.
The malicious software was highlighted on Monday by Intego – the company behind the VirusBarrier X6 antivirus software for Mac – after Apple Support Community users started reporting the threat. Intego say the software prompts users to download a compressed ZIP archive after clicking on a dodgy link in their search engines. The file is then decompressed and begins installing MACDefender on the system.
A new Safari feature hidden within the latest Mac OS X Lion build is expected to compete with services like Instapaper and ReadItLater as a method of saving pages for later reading. The ‘Reading List’ feature appears to be partly based on HTML and javascript, and is likely synchronize bookmarks between Mac and iOS devices.
Discovered by MacRumors, Apple’s description of the feature is the following:
Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.
The feature is currently inactive within the latest build of Lion, so those running the release won’t be able to try it out just yet, but as a massive Instapaper addict I can’t wait for Reading List to go live.