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April 2009 eNewsletter NVMUG Meeting The meeting began and ended with member news and hints, and individual help with questions. In the middle Geof, Stephen, and Hartley demonstrated Safari and Safari 4 Beta features. The winners of the book raffle were Warren Walker who chose "Photoshop CS4 Companion for Digital Photographers" from O'Reilly and Stephen Farber who won "Do Good Design" from Peachpit. Safari 3 Geof Gonter said that Safari, Firefox and one other browser use the same Gecko process. Opera is supposedly the most web based standards compliant. Microsoft Explorer uses its own standards and does there own thing, so. since Microsoft has by far the most used browser, people develop web pages for Explorer. The next version of Microsoft Explorer will be more compliant with the new browser standards. Stephen said that only Safari 4 will pass the new test for most compliant.
If you use Safari and connect to a web site that tells you to use Explorer, or some other browser, you may not have to install their recommended browser. Safari has a “User Agent” that sends a message to the web site to tell it you are using the recommended browser. Geof said go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced. You will see something like Show Develop Menu in Menu Bar. Then click on Develop and Select User Agent to see a drop down list of browsers. Choose the one you want to sign up as. Most of the time this will enable you to see the web site. It may not be perfect but you will not have to switch to another browser. Stephen - try Safari 4 Beta - it does not replace Safari 3 when you download it Geof recommends running through the menus for each program to learn what they do. Also, do not forget Help - Search. Safari 4 Beta I have been using Safari 4 Beta and have experienced no problems. I hooked up my computer to show some of the features I like about it. Stephen recommends that you download Safari 4 Beta to try it out. It will not it affect your earlier version. Later you can delete Safari 4 Beta if you decide you do not like it, or Safari 3 if you do. To see Safari 4 Beta, learn more about it, and download it free go to http://www.apple.com/safari/
The main reason for using Safari 4 Beta is that it is fast, but there are other delightful new features. Apple list 150 changes. When Safari 4 Beta opens it displays windows with images of your favorite web pages. If there is a star in the upper right hand corner of an image it means that the web site has been updated since you last viewed it. When you move your cursor over one of the windows, its URL shows up below these windows. When you click the edit button on the lower left side of the page every image displays an X and a thumbtack. Clicking on an X deletes that image making way for a new image. Clicking on a tack holds the image where it is on the screen. You can drag images to rearrange them. On the lower right you can chose to display Small (24 images), Medium (12 images), or Large (6 images) at a time. Click done when you are through editing. Clicking Search History on the lower right brings up a Cover Flow view of past web sites. In Safari 4 Beta, Tabs are displayed at the top of the window. Tab options can be set in Safari Preferences. Command click on one of the bookmarks or images in the Safari window to open it in a tab. If you have opened a news report and there are three articles you want to read, command click on each of them to open them in Tabs in the background while you are reading the current page. Then you can click on any one of the three Tabs to quickly see what is in it. Member News, Hints, and Individual Help Stephen Farber is now a grandfather with a new grandson in Massachusetts. Warren Walker has been shooting frozen waterfalls this spring (with a camera, not a kayak). He explained why Mary Wicker was selling her iMac. She had bought an Apple laptop from Best Buy at $100 off. When she got it home it was wrapped in plastic instead of the usual Apple packaging. It had already been opened, so she took it back and bought a new low end 2.4 ghz iMac. She decided it was too big, so she bought a nine inch screen Linux netbook. She is selling the iMac including $350 worth of software for $1050. The software includes 200 Leopard instructional videos from Mac Academy and an unopened Microsoft (either Word or Office). Her telephone number is 802-324-0963. Stephen said that she is mad at me because I put her picture in one of our newsletters in a captioned photograph several years ago without her permission. Geof said lots of information service providers, isps, will send messages to the closest address which could make it easier for scammers to find us. He also said that some schools are switching to Google Aps (which are purely broadband). Google Aps are attractive with a lot of capability, but schools cannot shut off just one kid making discipline more of a problem. He said the federal government is requiring six years of archiving of student email. Warren said that a lot of shopping doesn’t work on a regular dial up modem because it is too slow. Some sites just shut them off. Geof uses TinkerTools to set navigation arrows in the top and bottom corners of a window so he does not have to move his mouse so far to scroll his windows. Onyx and some others may also turn them on. These programs use what is already available in Unix without you having to use the command language. Midge uses List View to see what is in her download folder because it shows the date of each item. I am going to start doing that too. Which brings up the question: When it is so easy to switch between different views, why do I use just one view for everything? Geof saves dmg files on his hard drive and the program packages on his pen drive. Stephen asked when Leopard 10.5.7 is coming out. Geof answered probably after the weekend, they never put out updates on a weekend.
Geof (left) and Stephen (right) helping Jane with her questions. |
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Geof demonstrating the Safari User Agent on his laptop.
Stephen Farber demonstrating Safari 4 Beta