Mac « Thoughts On Presenting & Design

27Feb/090

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.

Tagged as: Apple, Mac, Safari, Web Standards No Comments

4Jan/090

Cross-platform PowerPoint

If there's one thing that's certain about presenting, it's that we can expect the unexpected. This is especially true when presenting our slide deck on someone else's equipment. There's the potential for breakdown and all sorts of mishaps. One such risk that we face is the host computer not using the same version of PowerPoint (assuming, of course, that you're using PowerPoint). I see this with my day job. I'm on a Mac and the computers where I work are running Windows.

Cross-platform compatible PowerPoint slide decks may not seem important to a lot of Windows users, but in this day and age, you can't assume the host is using the same OS as you. Fortunately, both the Windows and Mac versions of PowerPoint open and save PowerPoint documents. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't get its own development shops on the same page. Some features don't translate from the Windows version to the Mac version and some features from the Mac version don't translate over to the Windows version. In addition, some features just behave differently. This is exasperated when a someone brings a slide deck and the computer just won't play it for any reason.

There are fairly simple steps that can be taken to be sure you are prepared for whichever technical environment you face when you show up to delivery your presentation.

Save Your Deck As A PDF

One simple thing you can do is save your slide deck as a PDF. This would free you from any PowerPoint-specific constraints you encounter. If the host computer is running Windows, you need it to have Adobe's reader. If it's a Mac, you're good to go, reader or no. With a PDF, you can still step through your slides as you would normally be able to, but any multimedia, transitions, and slide builds will be lost.

Be Mindful Of Media Types

One cross-platform issue I tend to run into is using media types that are not well supported on the other platform. For example, using Windows Media (video or audio) will likely cause problems on the Mac. Using QuickTime or MPEG-4 media will likely cause problems on Windows. Using TIFFs on either platform will without a doubt (with one exception) cause problems for the other platform. In some situations, using PNGs can throw PowerPoint off, though, when you consider Microsoft's sordid history with PNG, it shouldn't be much of a surprise.

So, what does this all mean we should do?

Target the lowest common denominator. Until Microsoft gets it cross-platform media house in order, stick with the older and better supported formats. For video, that means MPEG-1. For audio, MP3 or WAV (fair warning: WAV files are uncompressed and will be huge). For images, stick with GIFs, JPEGs, BMPs, and PNGs. Each has its own limitations. GIFs are limited in color depth. JPEGs are lossy and can be fuzzy and/or grainy. BMPs are uncompressed and thus will greatly increase your file size. PNGs need to be tested if you're able to. If you add PNGs to your slide deck while in Windows, there's no fear that they'll work just fine on the Mac. The Mac had excellent PNG support since at least as far back as the very first release of OS X.

When Full Bleed, Put It In the Background

For the vast majority of visuals, they're more effective when you go full bleed. You accomplish this by making the image cover the entire slide, all the way to the edges. Unfortunately, going between operating system within PowerPoint can lead to some funky image shifting and resizing. The best way to prevent this is to make your full bleed image a background for that individual slide. It is when doing this that you can rest assured that that TIFF you're using will work across platforms. My suspicion is that when PowerPoint makes an image a slide background, it converts the image to another bitmapped format.

Go Easy On the Special Effects

This is true even between different versions of PowerPoint on the same operating system (e.g. 2003 & 2007). If you're using transitions or slide build effects, stick to the ones that will work across the most common versions of PowerPoint. If your version of PowerPoint supports it (2004 will do this), run the compatibility checker to catch any issues.

SlideRocket (or similar)

Services like SlideRocket allow you to host and deliver presentations remotely. All you need is an Internet connection and the Adobe AIR engine. I'll be looking into this service in greater detail and will be following up with a review in the next few weeks.

This is a fairly quick list of steps you can take to reduce the chance things will go awry when using someone else's equipment to display your slide deck. Thus, it may not be the most comprehensive. If you have any tricks or issues to watch out for, please share them in the comments!

Tagged as: Mac, PowerPoint, Windows No Comments