We’re still waiting for Tweetie 2.0 for Mac to be announced (though we’ve heard something new is going on this week) yet a lot of developers haven’t given up on developing and refining their own unofficial Twitter clients. And since Apple released Safari 5 with the possibility to install extensions on it, it was just a matter of time until someone developed a “full-featured” Twitter client for it.
Meet Ostrich.
Apple has just started sending out emails to remind Mac OS X developers that they can now submit Safari Extensions to Apple to be featured in the upcoming Extension gallery.
The iPad comes with a great default browser, built on top of another great technology called Webkit. Safari for iPad makes browsing from a tablet feel good, and I haven’t find a single alternative in the App Store worth replacing Apple’s default app.
If there’s a webapp that showcases the great capabilities of Safari for iPad, that’s PadEdit.
Apple has posted a new support document online, describing all the security vulnerabilities they have addressed with the release of iOS 4.
So many developers have tried to build alternative browsers for the iPhone on top of Webkit. See, Apple gives you the tools to create your own customized browser, and I’m not blaming them for the attempt. I’m blaming them for the experience they failed to achieve, developing alternatives just for the sake of it. And people, the average App Store users, seem to appreciate this trend, perhaps because they’re willing to accept every single alternative some devs give them. Look at the success of Opera Mini for iPhone, and look at how bad it is when you compare it to Apple’s MobileSafari.
What I’m trying to say is, you don’t mess with MobileSafari. Sure you can try to add thousands of features, and you can also promote your app by saying that it does whatever MobileSafari doesn’t. Seriously, it’s fine. But you can’t really think someone won’t notice and eventually talk about your crap. That’s why we usually avoid to talk about these “alternative browsers” on MacStories.
Developers are now realizing that, with 2 million iPads out there, the tablet might indeed be a profitable market for “alternatives”. I won’t go into all the details, but just so you know - this thing has been the top paid iPad app for days. Is it possible to develop a decent alternative to Safari for iPad?
Let’s look for the answer in Life.
While they aren’t necessarily secrets, they are rather hidden features of the browsers that casual users might not even discover or need to explore. Though once revealed, they can be incredibly helpful. Macworld has posted four Safari 5 secrets that you might be interested in if you’re wanting the most out of Apple’s new web browser.
If you’re a developer and have been playing around with the idea of creating Safari extensions, you can now submit them to Apple to be included in the Safari Extensions gallery. To do so, head over https://developer.apple.com/submission/safari/ (requires a registered Apple developer account) and fill out the form about your extension.
Ok, I’m quite into this “discover the coolest Safari extensions out there” thing. Developers are coming out with innovative and useful tweaks every day, and we’re here to cover them. But when it’s about Spotify, the beloved music streaming service everyone wants to use somehow, I’m kind of a fanboy. The service is great, the catalogue is huge and the social features are neat.
Most of the time though, I hear about new artists I’ve never heard of while reading news in Safari 5. We Are Scientists have a new album out there? Let me search in Spotify. Wakey Wakey? Let me paste in Spotify real quick. See, it’s all about moving between windows and pasting stuff - boring and slow. Thanks to Johan Brook’s Spotify for Safari I can now do all of this directly from my browser window.
Glims is one of the most popular plugins ever made for Safari. It allows you to customize every little bit of your browser, like tab and linksbehavior, search engines, fullscreen settings and more. Before extensions for Safari 5, there was Glims. And Safari 5 broke it. But fortunately for us, it’s back and compatible with Safari 5.
