Safari 4 Beta: A Review
The news that has the tech and Mac communities all abuzz this week is Apple's release of the public beta of Safari 4. I'm not one to run beta software on my machine, especially software so critical as a web browser. However, since I'm looking at replacing this computer real soon, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and give it a try.
Well, I surely was not disappointed. First, let's see what's new:
Updated Webkit core. Webkit, Safari's engine has seen itself emerge as the first engine to get score a 100/100 in the Web Standards Project's Acid 3 test. In comparison, Firefox 3.0.6 scores a 71/100, Opera 9.51 scores an 84/100, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer fails badly at 12/100.
Faster HTML rendering. Apple claims Safari 4 is 3 times as fast as Firefox on the Mac, 3.25 times as fast as IE7, and 4.71 times as fast as IE8 beta. Though I have no means to do accurate timing, my impressions are that it is indeed faster on this Dual G5.
Faster JavaScript rendering. Using the i-Bench scoring, Apple claims speeds of almost 2 times as fast as Google's Chrome (which also uses Webkit, though an earlier build), 5 times as fast as Firefox 3.0, 5 times faster than IE8 beta, and almost 11 times as fast as IE7. Apple makes similar claims using the SunSpider benchmark, with the exception that IE7 is humiliated even more than in i-Bench. Again, I don't have a means to measure this objectively, but my impressions are that the performance truly is better.
Top Sites. Like Opera, Safari 4 now offers an opening page (accessible at any time) with your most visited sites displayed as a bank of screenshots. The difference between the two, however, is that Safari's pageis arrayed like a bank of screens. Those with stars in the corner have changed since your last visit. Click on one and it will zoom in to fill the window and then automatically be replaced by the live web page. It's a very slick implementation.
History in Cover Flow. Apple gets panned from time to time about their love for Cover Flow, but seriously, it makes perfect sense here. Instead of browsing through a bunch of page titles that may be the same, but represent different web pages (happens a lot), you can flip through your history and choose the page by the screenshot. This makes the browser's history function far more useful than any of its competitors.
Fully History Search (+ Cover Flow). This is another function where Apple added Cover Flow. Again, it works well. Searching your history searches the full text of the pages stored in your history. Again, choose your selection by the screenshot.
Tabs on Top. This is perhaps the most controversial of all of the changes. Apple haters mock them for taking a feature from Google Chrome. Many Apple fans grumble that it's an un-Apple UI. Here, I beg to differ.
The concept behind the Mac UI is that each window should represent a document rather than an application (unless the application has no document). That central concept is what makes the menuing scheme in place since 1984 work so well. The thing that has always bugged me about Safari in the past (as well as other browsers on the Mac) is that the traditional tabbed interface broke this convention. It visually gave the document window the feel of being the application itself with the tabs as the documents in a Microsoft Windows-style MDI interface. Moving the tabs to the top, in my opinion is an elegant and very Mac-like compromise between one window per document and the efficiency that tabs brings, especially for those of us who regularly have 10 or more open at a time.
Windows Native Look and Feel. I won't spend much time on this because I only use Windows because I'm forced to at work. Otherwise, it's been exiled from my home. Well, for you Windows users, Apple slipped Safari into a Windows-native look and feel, which for all its faults, is the right thing to do. I constantly b**** about Microsoft not complying with Apple's UI guidelines in their Mac software, so Windows users' complaints were justified.
Smart Address Field. This is much like Firefox's Awesome Bar, which if there was one draw for me to Firefox, this was it.
Phishing and Malware Protection. Overdue. Long overdue. This will warn you if you are attempting to access a site that is known to be dangerous.
Apple lists more at http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html. One feature, which isn't new, but would make many photographers happy if Safari were used more and more by those who view their work online is the ICC color profile support.
Safari uses advanced color management technology to deliver web images with rich, accurate color. In fact, it was the first browser to support International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles and has done so from day one, so the photos and images you see in your browser stay true to the original.
Now, a word of warning. This is beta software. With that comes the risk of crashes and data loss. However, based on my usage, it's pretty darn solid. I have read reports of people having Apple Mail issues when installing the beta and judging by what I've read, it seems to be related to the Growl plugin for Mail.
If you're comfortable with running beta software, then by all means, give this a try. Apple has raised the bar for browsers and this is good for everyone, even if you don't use Safari.
Addition Through Subtraction
Craig Strachan has an excellent post on his site titled, "You will never fit everything in." In it, he stresses the importance of limiting the content to what's appropriate for the audience and the time allotted. You can have the greatest slides in the world, but if you have so much content that you have to either race through it all or have to skip through over some, you're hurting your message.
It all comes down to preparation. The effectiveness of those 15, 20, 30, etc. minutes you're up in front of your audience all rides on your prep work.
Understand how much time you have. If you don't know how much time you'll be given, ask. If you still don't know, and frankly, even if you do, plan accordingly. Have a plan A, plan B, and plan C. Even if you're budgetted 30 minutes, there's always the chance someone else could cut into your time due to their lack of planning. If you all of a sudden have 15 fewer minutes to give your talk, if you planned for this possibility, then you should be able adjust your content. If you're using slides, before you get up, set to "skip" those that you need to so the audience doesn't get the impression that you're skipping something important.
Understand your audience. If you're presenting to a bunch of sales reps, leave out the content useful for teachers if it's not relevant to your audience. Cutting out irrelevant content saves time for relevant content and can help keep your audience engaged. If you're telling them something irrelevant, they'll disengage and their minds will wander. It's here where you need to remind yourself of the adage, "addition through subtraction," where taking something irrelevant away will actually add to your message.
Practice, practice, practice. There's no way to tell how long your talk will take if you don't practice. You should do at least 3 full run-throughs with a timer. Keynote has a great timer in the presenter view. If it's too long, look for areas to cut, either in slides or your speech, without compromising your message. Once you make the cuts, practice again at least 3 times more. I'll put hours over a few days into practice for a 15 minute talk and every time it pays dividends.
Site Redesign
OK, I didn't do the designing myself, but I did choose what I hope will be a better theme for the site. My goal was to change the visual emphasis of the site. The previous design was too focused on me and seemed to minimize the content, which is what this site is all about.
Sidebar items , especially those that are content-related seem more prominent, even with the "about this site" block. An additional nicety is that the color scheme matches nicely the slides I've been designing for a workshop I'm putting together.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Did this achieve what I intended?
Kick-starting Creativity
We've all had those moments where, creatively, we hit a wall. We're thinking about this one slide and no matter how hard we try, we either have difficulty thinking of a design that works or everything we come up with just isn't good enough.
Well, one of my passions is photography and the only way I can get better is by actually getting out there and getting practice. The problem is, I hit that wall where I couldn't think of where to go or what to shoot. I've hit Harper's Ferry and the C&O Canal so many times, I couldn't think of anything original to focus on. Cities, be they Washington, DC, or any of the much smaller versions in the area aren't of any interest to me (I'm a rural kind of person). I was in a rut, but I really, really wanted to get out there shooting. I just needed to get my creative juices flowing again.
Apple On the Snow
Thanks to a trip up into the wintry north to see family, I learned that what I needed was a change of scenery. Getting away from the everyday forced me into a fresh and new view of the world around me. Compositions started forming in my mind again. One morning while up there, right as the sun was coming up, I went out in the sub-zero air to take some photos. I didn't have to go very far, either. Heck, I didn't even have to leave my aunt & uncle's property to get some material.
Later that day, as I was going through my photos, my aunt commented how she always felt she had a beautiful home, but never quite saw it the way I had captured it. At that point, I knew the change of scenery not only helped, but was exactly what I needed.
Granted, a 12-hour trip by car and train isn't always practical or necessary. On the contrary, we can probably achieve the same results by taking a walk to some place we've never been or haven't been to in quite a while. If it's an area you normally see from within a car, travel it by foot. Force yourself into unfamiliar territory, or at least an out of the ordinary situation. Force your mind's eye to view, digest, and perhaps interpret the world around you in a fresh and new way.
Dealing With Nerves
We've all heard that Americans fear public speaking more than death. There was even that line from "Seinfeld,"
“According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
Frankly, it makes sense. When speaking in front of an audience, you're in an extremely vulnerable position. You're up there in front of 10, 20, 50, 100, or more people all of whom (hopefully) are all looking at you and paying close attention to everything you have to say. Unless you have a true phobia, how you react to this situation says more about your preparation, than anything else. The unprepared crack and fumble. The prepared can deal with virtually any pressure or situation Murphy throws at them.
So, what does it mean to be prepared? It surely doesn't mean you have your presentation memorized. Just look at Chief Justice Roberts' swearing in of President Obama and Vice President Biden's swearing in of Secretary of State Clinton. Those are examples that show just how fragile your performance becomes when counting on the precise word-by-word repeating of text. One little slip-up quickly becomes a highly-visible train wreck.
Being prepared means knowing your material. It means knowing your story. If someone were to completely deny you your slides, can you still give your presentation? Sure, your word-for-word performance will be different, but can you get your message across? Can you still sell your big idea? An obvious way to get prepared is practice, practice, practice. Keep practicing your presentation. Don't try to memorize anything outside of quotes that may be up on the screen. Those shouldn't be a big deal anyway because any on-screen quote that's not going to detract from your presentation will be brief.
Well, how about slides with facts and figures? Don't memorize them either. The point should be to practice the presentation enough such that if you couldn't see your slides, you know which slide follows the next. That way, when you advance to the next slide, you know what's up there. If you know your material, then you know the story that the chart on the screen is supporting.
Another way to learn your material is to write out your story in narrative form for the handouts that you (may) hand out after your presentation. I have found this to be an effective way to reinforce in my mind what it is I'm sharing with my audience. The organization of the content also gets reinforced through this process.
I've been in that zone where even though I could look at the laptop that showed the next slide, I advanced on and on, continuing with my presentation, all without looking at the laptop. It's a wonderful situation and can be compared to a runner's high. What I even find is that in situations such as those, I'm talking on auto pilot. This is thanks to practicing enough so that I literally knew my material inside and out. Fear and nerves are tossed aside and I am on a roll.
Keynote
If you're not lucky enough to experience the speaker's high, then what else can you do in addition to preparation? One thing you can do is to take advantage of the presenter's tools in your slide program. Don't be staring down at them, but glance every now and then, as needed, to maintain your sense of place. Don't use them to read your material to your audience, either. However, merely having them there can be a mental support to help you stay in sync with your audience's visual aids or nail that quote on the screen without looking at either the on-screen or on-laptop version. I can't say why that helps, but it surely seems to help me. Maybe just knowing it's there is enough to calm nerves, allowing me to focus on the content I'm sharing rather than the slide itself.
Lastly, one piece of advice that has helped me over the years came from a college friend of mine who would also be the Best Man at my wedding. It was simply, "What are they going to do, hate me?" They're not going to assault you physically. You're not going to be leaving by way of an ambulance. So, if the audience hating you is the worst that could happen, you're going to be OK.
Do you have your own ways to deal with nerves when presenting?
