I’ll post a few screenshots and briefly go over some features I see but you can get a full list of new features and much more details from apple.com/safari/features.

First thing I noticed when opening Safari is the Top Sites feature, which is basically graphical tabs of the websites you frequently visit. I thought this was pretty convenient, you also see this screen each time you open a new tab although I’m sure you can change the new tab to open whatever you’d like (blankscreen, google, etc.).

I really like how they made the Address and Search bars much more usable. You can start typing in a query in the search and have google (or your default search engine) do a prediction, latest search or at the bottom it gives you the options to search the page your on for a certain word/string. When typing in a website in the address bar in starts to populate with your bookmarks and history based on your entry, making it easy to find a website you may have visited in the past. I’m not sure if this feature is just for the Beta software but I like having the ability to report a bug to Apple, linking them to the exact website you are experiencing problems. I think this could potentially make Safari almost flawless.

I’m also liking the history/bookmarks graphical view, similar to iTunes and Finder. Also digging the RSS reader and Address book built into Safari 4.

My only disappointment is the lack of developer tools. The only reason I don’t use safari as my main browser is because of Firefox’s plugins, mainly Firebug which I use daily for web development. I think I may have read somewhere that there will be plugins available for Safari soon, but I could be wrong. If this happens I would think there will be something close to Firebug for Safari released but not likely since Safari is not an open source browser like Firefox. I’d like to see Apple address this and give developers some useful CSS/Markup tools in addition to this javascript debugger that I haven’t dabbled with yet.

I mean I’m not mad about the situation at all, just a little surprised. I started looking around for a new host after my current hosting provider told me they couldn’t provide me with any unique C Class IP address for SEO reasons. I started asking around and got the following email from Rackspace.

Hello Michael,

This is Amie Naber from Rackspace Hosting. We had a chat last night on the website regarding a potential hosting project. I just wanted to let you know that I have received a reply from our AUP department. They said that if there is any direct links that point from your site to gambling link then we will be unable to host your site. So your site would not be able to send any customers directly to any gambling sites. If this is something that your site complies with, we can certainly host your site for you. Please do not hesitate to email or call me if you have any questions at all.

Thank You,

Amie Naber

This makes me a little nervous about my current hosting provider, what if they realize I have direct links to gambling sites and this violates their AUP as well. Can they just shut me down ? That would not be good. I better do some research and if necessary seek hosting outside of the US.

Anyways I found this napkin to be rather amusing, the only logical explanation I could come up with was the Cow is grillin’ veggie burgers?

My First impressions were that it looks a lot like Safari, which has been my browser of choice lately for browsing (not development). Take a look and tell me you don’t see a little Safari in the new interface.

Even the tabs look almost identical to how they appear in Safari.

On top of the design changes, which I think look great, there has been quite a few enhances as far as functionality. There has been rumors that FF3 will eventually be the fastest browser to date, which would obviously make Firefox the best browser available. The amount of Add-ons for Firefox is endless and leaves an open door for any developer who wants to add functionality into their web browser of choice.

I noticed the address bar has undergone some changes, it gives you a bit more information in your history of recently visited web pages, traditionally it would just give you the link or the address of a website in your history, now it gives you the title of the page along with the URL, check it out.

Now to my favorite thing about Firefox, which is Firebug. If you have no idea what Firebug is and you do any web design, you have been missing out on the best utility ever for web development. It’s saved me tons of time and is an absolute must for any web designer. Firebug version 1.2.0 Beta is compatible with Firefox 3 and appears to be working without a hiccup. Here’s my proof for the non-believers.

I’m very impressed by the latest browser from Mozilla, I would highly recommend anyone who doesn’t currently use Firefox as their primary browser to checkout Firefox 3 and anyone interested to install the Firebug add-on.

• Download Firefox 3 RC1
• Download Firebug 1.2.0 Beta

It was a Dell Dimension 8110 that was so infected, it couldn’t even detect a USB drive so I could load some anti-virus software or establish an internet connection, even in safe mode. So I pulled out the HD to hookup to another machine to scan as a slave drive, it found a bunch of viruses and “repaired” about 50 problems. So I was hopeful that maybe it was in better shape to at least get some software installed. I installed the HD back into the Dell, to find out the Dell machine no longer could detect the Primary Disk 0 (hard disk). I tried severally different things, swapping out the IDE cable, making sure the jumper settings were correct, I even went as far as trying a different HD, no luck. So it led me to believe that maybe the IDE controller on the board was toast, I did some research and apparently it’s a pretty common problem and the only solution I found was to “wait it out, it will eventually start detecting the primary disk again”. I thought that was funny, so I pulled out everything from the board, and let it just hang out on my desk overnight. I came in the next day, put everything back together and it boots, no problem. Finds the HD and loads right up! unfortunately it was still taken over by spyware to a point where I decided to reinstall Windows.

Windows XP stuck in Safe Mode
This was where i ran into my biggest problem, while troubleshooting I had went into msconfig (Start -> Run -> “msconfig”) within the BOOT.INI tab and checked the /SAFEBOOT option under Boot Options, which basically sets the system to boot in safe mode without jamming on your F8 key while your system is booting. Problem was I never removed this option when I decided to re-install Windows. I came to find out, that although you completely reinstall XP it somehow keeps the bootcfg in memory and uses the options set in your previous installation.

So at the finally steps of the XP installation where your machine reboots and you are asked to set the language and all those settings, it would come to a halt and say “Windows XP Setup cannot run under safemode. Setup will restart now.” Which doesn’t really give you many options because this will happen each time you try to boot from your HD, since the XP installation is only partially complete.

Solution: change bootcfg options from Recovery Console

1. boot from the XP CD and into the recovery console.
2. Once you chose the number OS you want to repiar (usually 1) type in this command: bootcfg /list to see what was going on in the bootcfg.
3. Then enter the command bootcfg /rebuild and reenter the necessary info. If you’ve never done this, first you select the Windows installation to use and enter the corresponding number (default is “1″). Then it asks you to enter the load identifier. (Microsoft Windows XP Professional).
4. Finally, it will prompt you for the OS load options. Here you would type in:
   “/noexecute=optin /fastdetect“(without the quotes). Restarted the machine, and the setup continued normally.

Right now I’m reinstalling all his Dell drivers and migrating all his Documents and Settings back to the new installation. It’s been a nightmare with this Dell, and this guy is probably missing his computer, but at least it didn’t cost him anything and now I know that the bootcfg does not get reset during a fresh installation of XP.

Once I got everything in place I was having trouble working with my files on my admin account. I was unable to make changes or rename the recovered files, without giving “Everyone” Read & Write access through the Get Info menu, which obviously wasn’t the solution.

For example when trying to rename a directory; Users/mike/Sites/PSD I would get this Error Message:

Although when I checked the info of the PSD directory, it looked fine (see below):

So OS X was contradicting itself because it was telling me “You Can read and Write” but at the same time telling me “You do not have sufficient access privileges to rename the item “PSD”. I tried a series of things as far as running the Repair Permissions within the Disk Utility, creating a new admin account to try to reset all the permissions enclosed within the Users directory. Nothing was working.

So since the notebook is very new, I still have some free telephone support from Apple so I gave them a call. Spent about an hour on the phone with Tech support and we finally got it working. Here are the steps that we took.

1. Boot your system from the OS X 10.5 install disk. To do this put the install CD into your computer, restart the system while hold the “c” key on your keyboard. This will force a boot from CD.
2. Once you select your language from the Installation wizard, you will notice the menu bar appears at the top of the screen, from here go to Utilities > Password reset.
3. From this screen, select your user account from the combo box. Then without entering a new password, go down towards the button and you will see a “Reset” button that will reset this accounts Privileges and ACL libraries.
4. Once this is done you can Quit the OS X Installation, and reboot your system to your HD. You may need to remove the CD from your machine.
5. once the machine boots, open a Terminal and enter the following two commands, entering your password when prompted. (be sure to replace “Mike” with your own Short Name)
   • sudo chown -R Mike ~
   • sudo chmod -R 755 ~
6. The last steps are simple, open up Macintosh HD/Users then command+click on your Home directory (in my case this was mike) then go to Get Info. In the info screen, Make sure the admin group is in the list, if it’s not then add it with Read & Write Access. Also change everyone in the list to “Read & Write” access temporarily. Then click the tiny Gear icon to and chose “apply to enclosed items” which will apply these permissions to all the files within this directory.
7. Once this is set, go see if you can now make changes to the files. If so then your just about done, you need to only go back into the Get Info screen you were just in for your home directory and change the permission of “Everyone” to Read Only access. Then Apply to enclosed items again.

Hope that works for anyone else having similar insufficient access privileges. After doing a bunch of research on this problem it appears there is quite a bit of issues out there with permissions on OS X Leopard, so if this did not help take a look at these two links:

• Leopard – File permissions | ACLs | User Group Issue
• Administrator privileges gone
]]> http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/05/insufficient-access-privileges/feed/ 2 http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/03/drug-deal-on-google-maps-street-view/ http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/03/drug-deal-on-google-maps-street-view/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:13:45 +0000 admin http://www.interwits.com/2008/03/25/drug-deal-on-google-maps-street-view/ This dealer probably has no idea what Google Map’s Street View is but if he ever discovers this: 3912 S Vincennes Ave (approximate address) he will realize the streets is watching, literally.

That is epic. If you are having trouble viewing the page, heres a screen shot of a drug deal in progress caught by Google Maps.


]]> http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/03/drug-deal-on-google-maps-street-view/feed/ 0 http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/03/hoppy-easter/ http://www.scriptflipper.com/2008/03/hoppy-easter/#comments Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:18:32 +0000 admin http://www.interwits.com/2008/03/23/hoppy-easter/ Happy easter to everyone that celebrates it, although it’s not a very positive photo, it definitely made me laugh.

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