Linkstew

After I found out about the power of shift-space in most web browsers, I went and played around a little more and I found a few more things I didn't know about.

While space in Mail.app will pages down in the message you're viewing (until you get to the end of the message, at which point it goes to the next message), shift-space will go to the previous message. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually page-up first, and instead it just jumps to the previous message.

In iTunes, Enter (as opposed to return) will put the title of the currently selected track into edit mode.

And I found this one out a few weeks ago, and I really love it: In many apps (including Mail, Safari, and iTunes), command-option-f will select the "Search" (on in the case of Safari, the Google) search widget.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this one out, though, because I used to have command-option-f mapped to "skip forward 20 seconds in iTunes" using Key Xing (an excellent keyboard mapping tool). Which kind of makes me wonder if any of my other keymappings -- or even LaunchBar's command-space invocation -- are masking anything interesting.

I just accidentally hit shift-space in Safari, and it paged up! This thrills me, because this was one of my favorite features in OmniWeb -- OmniWeb mapped page-up to 'b' until they implemented type-ahead link search features, and I was sad when I thought it had been removed. Sure, you could argue that I could just use "page up," but on my laptop that's a two-handed operation. I wanted a one-hand (and more importantly, left-hand) solution, which shift-space just happens to be. And it turns out that shift-space works in lots of browsers (I just tested it in Safari, OmniWeb, Mozilla, Konquerer, and IE).

Well, I'm excited. Hopefully someone out there didn't know this.

And still no net at home, by the way.

So I actually wrote the following post, fully thinking that what I describe below works, only to realize afterwards that it doesn't. The problem is, Safari's history feature is a little lacking, and for some reason if I already have the page open and just reload, it doesn't pop to the top of the history. Instead, I actually have to close the page and open it again, and only then does it pop to the top of the history. I suppose I could write an AppleScript to get the addresses of all of the open tabs, close them all, and then reopen all of the pages, but that is 1. completely ridiculous, and 2. would break pages that have POST data submitted to them. In other words, the only real fix is to fix Safari's handling of this. So, click here, then click your Safari bug report icon, and fire away! (You should of course include a description of the problem in the bug report field, too, and not just rely on them to read this page...)

Anyway, here was the post I originally wrote:

So if you're anything like me, you've been browsing using Safari pretty much exclusively in one window with a lot of tabs open. But if you're like me, you're also a little paranoid about Safari crashing. Sure, it's pretty much as stable as the non-beta browsers I've used, but it is still a beta, and so there the paranoia is.

And while all of the pages you currently have open are in your history somewhere, if Safari does crash, it's a pretty big pain to have to go figure out what you had open -- especially since some of those tabs could have been open for days.

To handle this, I've been periodically context clicking on any tab and selecting "Reload All Tabs," which pops all of my currently opened tabs up to the top of my history list. Convenient!

On an unrelated note, I really wish that if a window has tabs, that the item in the Window menu for the tabbed window would have a sub-menu that showed all of the open tabs in that window.

A new beta of Safari was released today, and it includes tabbed browsing features. As I was using it, I noticed a few things that are very useful, but are easy to overlook:

• The google search box in the toolbar is pretty handy, but it was kind of annoying having to take my hand off the keyboard to use it -- especially since my old google habit was to type command-l, type 'google', hit return and wait for google to load and wait for google's javascript to autofocus on the search box, and then type my query and THEN use the mouse. But I noticed that you can type command-l and then hit tab and it will select the google search box.
• If you use a program like NetNewsWire, you probably fire off 10-15 "open link" requests at a time as you skim your news. Before, this would open 10-15 new windows, which was pretty obnoxious and slowed everything down. But if you turn on the "Open links from applications in the current window" and have tabs enabled, it will open the link in a new tab, which is fantastic. I completely overlooked this option initially, because if you don't have tabs enabled, this is a destructive setting that I really don't like, since it blows away whatever I had open in my frontmost window. Unfortunately, this feature isn't 100% yet, because it doesn't regard the "Select new tabs are they are created" preference yet -- instead, the newly created tabs from another application always make a new tab that becomes the frontmost tab, despite the fact that my preferred behavior is for tabs to be created in the background.
• I've complained before about people who force me to open links in new windows, and while the new Safari doesn't completely solve the problem, it does give me a better option than I've had before: If you enable tabbed browsing and command-click on a link that would otherwise open in a new window, it will instead open in a new tab. Of course, normally clicking on the link will still open a new window, but at least I can avoid having the new link open and pop up in front of what I was doing now, which is better than nothing.
• This one is documented, but easy to overlook: After you've entered text into the location bar or google bar, enter will open the request replacing the currently frontmost page. If you type command-enter or command-shift-enter, it will open in a new tab (this time respecting your "Select new tabs are they are created" preference).

Anyway, I'm happier and happier with Safari. Now, if they'd just beef up their bookmark features... but more on that later.

I just came across these Save and Restore Safari URLs AppleScripts, and it made me kind of cranky, because this was totally something I was planning on doing.

My original version of the idea sometime last year was to write a script that would back up my open OmniWeb windows to an OmniOutliner document. I gave up on that idea when it became apparent how much OmniOutliner's URL handling doesn't just suck, but is completely non-existant. I could have written a "restore from OmniOutliner" script, but then there would have been no point of storing it in an OmniOutliner document in the first place: The reason I wanted to store it there was because I wanted to be able to use the checking and grouping features of OmniOutliner. Then I forgot about the idea for awhile.

When Safari came out, lots of people started posting Safari AppleScripts, and I remembered my earlier idea. But this time, I came up with a new storage mechanism: Wouldn't it be neat if I could just make a "sessions" bookmark folder with subfolders for each "backup?" There were a few other details I don't really feel like explaining, but it was pretty cool in my head.

Well, that idea too was dashed to a halt when I actually started writing the scripts, only to discover that bookmarks in Safari aren't (yet?) scriptable. Blah.

So I left the skeletons of the scripts I'd written sitting there in my home directory until such a time as bookmarks in Safari were scriptable, or until I got motivated to use a file... until I saw those scripts today, and now I'm just kinda bummed. It's not like I could have charged for the scripts or anything, but I'm just kind of put out that I just didn't bite the bullet and use a file in the first place. I wanted the practice, and I guess I kind of wanted some sort of recognition... I wish I could just get motivated to develop something as some sort of first step to developing more full featured Mac software.

Sure there were my headless iTunes scripts, but I didn't exactly keep them up to date or even package them in any reasonable way, and really, PTHiTunesNotifier is exactly what I wish I'd written. It has most of the features I couldn't implement in AppleScript, though it doesn't have all of the features of my scripts. Oh well. I'm thinking about writing them and seeing if they'll give me a pointer (in particular, I'd like to know what mechanism they're using to know when a song changes, and what mechanism they're using to display the transpent overlay), but I'm kind of pessimistic about the chances of that happening. Then again, I should just write some simple useless apps before I worry about the details of how the transparencies are implemented.

The MacWorld SF Keynote today, and it really was a doozy of announcements. I watched the whole keynote, and enjoyed it pretty well, and I just can't stop thinking about some of the announcements. Since there's no way I'm going to be able to afford any of that stuff at the moment, I really just need to do a brain dump of my thoughts on the thing, so I can get on with my life in the mean time. Plus, posts like this one are always amusing for me to read a year from now.

• Obviously my favorite announcement was the Burton AMP iPod/Snowboard jacket. In an IM conversation, Keith said "I heard the promo for the jacket and I thought 'who the heck would buy that??' then thought 'benjy seems to be the target demographic.'" Heh, so true.
• Of course, $499 is way too much for a snowboard jacket (it's so expensive because it's some sort of exclusive limited release for this season available only through the Apple store online. In the keynote, Jobs claimed it'd be more generally released next season, so it should be cheaper then, too). Damnit, I still need to call Apple and see if they'll replace my iPod battery.


• I don't have a lot to say about iLife or Final Cut Express, really. I think they look good for what they are, but I have no use for almost any of them. The iPhoto updates will be nice, but I'd really like to see more iTunes features, since that's the only app of the lot I use regularly.


• Keynote also looks really nice, and seems like the obvious first step towards Apple trying to become even more independent of Microsoft. I don't have much use for a presentation app (hell, I only made my first PowerPoint presentation last month), but it looks good for what it is, and I look forward to Apple's answers to the rest of MS Office.


• Safari is Apple's new web browser, and so far I really like it. I've been running it since I downloaded it this afternoon, and for a beta, it's really nice. It hasn't crashed (though OmniWeb crashed about 5 minutes after I launched Safari).
• There are a lot of features I'd like to see still (and I might post a list later), but it's already got me considering switching over from OmniWeb. For a beta, that's pretty impressive.
• And I like the name a lot. It's pretty clever. But what's in a name, you ask? Well, Safari is way better than Apple's last web browser, Cyberdog, which (embarrassing admission time) I used for more than a year as my primary web browser / email program / etc back in the day. I mean, Safari is *way* better than Cyberdog ever was. Hm, not that it would take much...


• As far as the new PowerBooks, well, of course they're sexy, but I'm doing my best to not desire them too much.
• There's not a lot in the 12" PowerBook that I really want. The size will be good for some people, but my 15" Ti is good for me.
• The new 17" Monstrosity, on the other hand, has a lot I want in it. I don't actually want the 17" screen -- once again, my 15" Ti is just the right size.
• What I do want is the new Airport Extreme (Maybe I'll get lucky and when I call Apple about my busted basestation, they'll send me a new Airport Extreme Basestation) ;-). I want Firewire 800, and I want built in Bluetooth. I also wouldn't mind a SuperDrive, but that was a choice I already made.
• As for the new backlit keyboard in the 17" PowerBook, well, I already talked about that more than two years ago.
• My last note on the PowerBooks: Even if you're on a modem, you must take the time to download this commercial. It's the funniest thing I've seen since Apple's Hal Y2k commercial.


• I was amused by Jobs saying "the rumor sites were saying this was going to be a really boring keynote. Well, I hope you don't believe everything you read." I almost felt like releasing the minor TiBook revision back in November was to completely cloak the new PowerBook announcements. No one expected new PowerBooks at all after they were just updated. I still don't regret buying the model I did when I did, though, because they didn't update the 15" model at all.
• I was also amused by this Jobs quote. "Some people have a problem with open source. We think it's great." Between comments like that, the Safari announcement, and the Keynote announcement, I really felt like Apple was moving into a more aggressive posture with regard to Microsoft. It'll be interesting to see where that goes in the next year or two.

My final thought on the keynote? Damnit, now I want to work at Apple! Oh, hey, look at that, I just graduated... Fancy that.