Bryan Pieper's Blog : Safari

Do you use Safari and miss the reload button? I certainly did until the other day.

Safari 5 now supports extensions. But I have to say that I find it odd that a browser needs an extension for a normal reload button.

First, you have to enable the “Develop” menu.

Go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced. Turn on “Show Develop Menu” in menu bar. Then select “Enable Extensions” from the Develop menu.

Now that you can install extensions, download the Safari Reload Button extension. Once downloaded, install by opening with Safari or dragging it onto the Safari window. Finally, select “Customize Toolbar” from the View menu to add the new button. Reload button restored!

Microsoft has not been serious about Internet Explorer since the days of Netscape. Back in those days, they set out to oust Netscape as the #1 browser. As you know, they succeeded in that mission.

With Microsoft’s recent announcement of the preview version of Internet Explorer 9, I believe they might be serious about the future of Internet Explorer. More specifically, they seem to be serious about the idea of advancing the web.

When IE8 was released, Microsoft had basically upgraded its rendering capability to CSS2 and increased the JavaScript performance. The rest of features did little to advance the web. It did bring IE up to the days of Firefox 2, a little dated, but not bad!

Enter Internet Explorer 9, with Firefox-grade JavaScript performance, SVG, HTML5 features and support for CSS3. It is currently in development, but I see this as the most significant upgrade to IE since IE6.

What is a web browser anyways?

For those of us in the tech community, this would be a stupid question.  However, the lay-folk out there may not know what web browser they have. In fact, in the last few years the browser landscape has changed dramatically. It seems like the browser race of the 90s is back. Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple are releasing new browsers on a fairly regular basis.