There's
Always New Software: The Irish Browser Apple's Safari
Just
when you thought the browser market was owned by Microsoft's
Internet Explorer, along come some interesting new developments.
We believe they prove two things:
-
All of the good ideas can't be confined to a single place.
-
Smart, curious people are always trying to find a better
(or at least different) way to do things.
The Irish Browser:
Young And Very Fast
This
one's straight out of left-field, folks.
A 16-year old student in Ireland invented a browser for his
school's science fair. It's four times faster than the commercial browsers we're
using.
Adnan
Osmani's XWEBS works with a normal 56Kb modem on a dial-up
telephone line. Testers
at University College in Dublin, found the browser could run 100%
to 500% faster than commercial browsers.
Adnan says it's technically possible for it to go 6x as
fast.
XWEBS
also integrates all the available media players, a DVD sidebar,
and a friendly character (talking and animated) named Phoebe.
Phoebe not only serves as an interface, it can also read
email and Web pages to very young or handicapped users.
In
case you're wondering, Adnan is being besieged by computer
companies. He was smart enough to patent his invention, so we'll
hope that he gets not only a science prize, but some cash for his
clever idea.
Please
note, as far as we can tell, the product is not available for
viewing or download.
Apple Safari
We
have some more general comments about Apple below, but it seems
appropriate to comment about Apple's new Web Browser here.
At
MacWorld, Steve Jobs announced a Macintosh Browser, Safari, which
is about 3x the speed of the current Microsoft Explorer for the
Mac. Safari features a built-in Google search engine, a SnapBack
feature which takes you back to the last URL or bookmark selected,
the ability to clean up after file downloads, and a blocker for
pop-up ads.
Safari
uses the Open Source khtml codebase, also used in the KDE
Konqueror browser and, of course, the improvements made for Safari
will be provided back to the source base. Safari's beta is
available for download at http://www.apple.com/safari/download/index.html
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