...from:
http://www.macworld.com/article/153299/2010/08/ipad_reading.html?lsrc=nl_mw…
How the iPad changed my reading habits
One editor reflects on how the device has changed how he peruses magazines and books
by Jonathan Seff, Macworld.com
The iPad is a curious device—not quite an iPod, not quite a laptop. I typically bring it to work with me during the day, and keep it on my nightstand at home at other times.
And although I use it for many different purposes—checking e-mail, ordering from Amazon, catching up on Twitter, controlling one of the Macs in the other room—what I’ve really noticed is how the iPad has changed how and what I read.
Magazines
I typically have magazines strewn about the house in various states of being read—especially The New Yorker, which comes 47 times a year—with bind-in cards or random scraps of paper used as bookmarks. And when I’m done with them, they often wait their turn to be tossed in with the recycling.
Zinio has been around for a while now, providing digital subscriptions to magazines that you can read on a Mac, PC, or iPhone/iPod touch. I never really found it very enjoyable to read a magazine on my computer or the small screen of my iPhone. But with the iPad and a universal version of the app, it’s a whole different story.
(Disclosure: the digital version of Macworld is a Zinio publication as well.)
Rolling Stone in Zinio
With the Zinio app on an iPad, I have a large screen on which to enjoy digital replicas of magazines. Unlike with printed magazines, however, I can pinch out to zoom into section to make it easier to read. The app keeps my place without the need for paper bookmarks. There are hyperlinks that take me directly to the jumped portion of an article without making me flip to the back to pages that often have no page numbers on them. I can read in bed without a light after my wife goes to sleep. I can download new issues as soon as they’re available and carry around as many magazines as my iPad can hold. And there’s nothing to recycle.
Thanks to Zinio, I’ve re-subscribed to Rolling Stone—a magazine I haven’t read for years. When my current print subscription to Outside Magazine is up after one more issue, I plan to switch to the Zinio version. And I look forward to Conde Nast bringing The New Yorker to the iPad (although I recently renewed my print subscription for another three years).
To be fair, the Zinio app and experience are far from perfect. Subscription pricing is all over the map and seems to change on a whim—I checked the Outside Zinio page three times over the course of several weeks, and a one-year subscription went from $16 to $20 before finally settling to $24 in that time. Also, there are no multi-year subscription options. Although Outside currently offers me one year of print for $30, I can opt for two years for $40 or three years for $50, dropping the price per issue if I’ll commit for longer. With Zinio, that’s not an option. I don’t mind paying the same price for Zinio as for a printed magazine, but it shouldn’t cost more.
Also, as with other types of digital publications, I can’t hand an issue off to a friend or family member when I’m done with. And there’s no way to loan or share these types of purchases with other Zinio members.
Books
Before the iPad, I had never read an entire book on a portable device. I’d read bits and pieces using the Kindle app on my iPhone (including a 25 cent version of Alice in Wonderland) but I don’t own Kindle hardware.
Hitch-22 in iBook
I tested out the iBookstore by purchasing Samantha Bee’s I Know I Am, But What Are You?. After adjusting the font, type size, and brightness to my liking (and turning on the Sepia background option) I enjoyed breezing through the book, without worrying about remembering my place. The iPad is heavier than other e-book-only devices, but I haven’t found it oppressively so.
A nice thing about the iPad (or Kindle or Nook or other e-reader) is the ability to download and carry multiple books with you for a vacation, say, rather than schlep around lots of heavy tomes. Or buy a new book from your hotel room without having to care about finding the nearest bookstore (and worry about its selection).
Having finished that first book, I’ve now moved on to Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22: A Memoir.
Comic books
I must admit that I haven’t read a comic book since I was a teenager (although I still have a few boxes of nicely preserved issues in the basement). Or at least I hadn’t until I started playing around with the Marvel app on the iPad.
Ultimate Spider-Man in the Marvel app
Thanks to Marvel’s selection of free comic book issues (which change on a regular basis) I’ve given the iPad a opportunity to show me what it can do with another type of reading material. (This “the first taste is free” mentality seems to be an important marketing tool for the shifting comic book business, as our editor in chief, Jason Snell, discovered at Comic-Con recently.)
Although I’ve yet to plunk down my credit card to buy any comics, I’ve found the reading experience to be mostly a nice one. Text can be a little small and hard to read without zooming in—especially on double pages displayed while reading in portrait orientation. It’s not quite the same tactile experience as I remember from my comic-reading days, and digital distribution means an end to collecting in the classic sense. But in general, the graphics look great and are very colorful, and it’s nice to have yet another reading option on the iPad.
...from:
http://www.macworld.com/article/152101/2010/08/safariextensionshandson.html…
Hands on with Safari extensions
Posted on Aug 10, 2010 8:00 am by Dan Frakes, Macworld.com
The latest version of Safari (5.x), released earlier this summer, introduced a new extensions feature to Apple’s Web browser. Extensions allow you to alter the behavior of Safari through small, downloadable packages from by developers, created by using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Activating the extensions feature
Now that we’ve logged a few months of browsing with Safari 5, it’s time for a closer look at this feature: how to turn it on (if it isn't already), how to install and use extensions, how to update extensions, and how to troubleshoot issues with misbehaving extensions. Once you've gotten a handle on Safari extensions, take a look at some of our favorite extensions.
Starting with Safari 5.0.1, the Safari-extensions feature is enabled by default. Launch Safari 5.0.1, and extensions just work—you can skip to the next section to learn how to download and install them.
If, for whatever reason, you're still using Safari 5.0 and can't update yet, turning on the feature isn’t as obvious as you’d think. In fact, Apple has hidden the feature in Safari’s Develop menu…which is alsodisabled by default. So the process for turning on extensions requires a couple steps:
In Safari’s Preferences window (Safari -> Preferences), switch to the Advanced pane, and then check the box to Show Develop Menu In Menu Bar.
In the new Develop menu that appears in the menu bar (between Bookmarks and Window), choose Enable Extensions.
Once you’ve used the Enable Extensions command, you can uncheck the Show Develop Menu In Menu Bar setting to regain that valuable menu-bar space.
Installing extensions
With the extensions feature activated, Safari’s Preferences window sports a new Extensions pane that lists all installed extensions and lets you customize the behavior of each. This screen also lets you disable and enable individual extensions or turn off the extensions feature altogether—useful when troubleshooting (more on that below).
So how do you get extensions? With the release of Safari 5.0.1, Apple introduced the Safari Extensions Gallery, a curated collection of third-party extensions Apple has chosen to showcase—you can even access the Gallery right from the Safari menu. Divided into categories such as News, Social Networking, Security, and Productivity, the Gallery currently contains more than 100 extensions, each with a short description, a link to the developer's site, and an Install Now button. (If you haven't updated to Safari 5.0.1, you won't see these Install Now buttons.) Click the Install Now button for an extension, and in a second or two the button will change to an Installed graphic indicating that the extension has been installed.
But there are plenty more Safari extensions out there that don't appear in the official Gallery. Some you'll find while browsing the Web, but perhaps the best alternative source for extensions right now is the Safari Extensions blog, which has been publishing info about newly available extensions since Safari 5.0 was released. I recommend subscribing to the blog's RSS feed so you can keep an eye out for useful new extensions as they're released.
However, extensions you download outside of the official Gallery require a different installation procedure—they don't install automatically. The Website hosting the extension will provide a standard download link, and then Safari will download the extension—a file (actually a Mac OS X package) ending in .safariextz. (If, instead of downloading a .safariextz file, Safari displays a window of ugly code, click the Back button and either Option-click the download link or right-click—or Control-click—on the link and choose Download Linked File.) Depending on how you’ve configured Safari to handle downloaded files, Safari may immediately ask you if you want to install the new extension. If not, find the newly downloaded file package in the Finder and double-click it to view the same Don’t Install/Install dialog. Read the official warning text, click Install, and the extension is installed.
(In case you're wondering why a third-party extension isn't included in Apple's Gallery, there are a couple possible reasons. The first is simply that the developer hasn't submitted it to Apple for possible inclusion. The second is that the developer has submitted the extension and either Apple hasn't yet approved it or has rejected it for some reason. This doesn't mean you shouldn't install extensions that don't appear in Apple's Gallery, but you should be a bit more careful before doing so.)
Safari's Preferences window sports a new view when extensions are turned on.
Whichever method you use to install extensions—Apple's Gallery or manual download and install—installed extensions are stored in ~/Library/Safari/Extensions and appear in the new Extensions screen of Safari's preferences window. For some extensions, the new features they provide are immediately available—no restart or other action is required. In fact, if the extension uses a toolbar button, that button may automatically be added to Safari’s toolbar without any further action from you. (If it isn’t, just choose View -> Customize Toolbar and then manually add the toolbar button.) However, I've found that most extensions work only on new tabs you open after installing the extension—you won't get the new features on existing tabs. (This is often the case even if the extension has automatically added a toolbar button to Safari—the button won't do anything when viewing existing tabs.)
Using and managing extensions
As mentioned above, many Safari extensions function as new buttons for Safari’s toolbar. For example, Ars Technica and Macworld contributor John Siracusa’s Reload Button restores the Reload button found in Safari 3 and earlier, and Clint Ecker’s Short URL adds a new button that automatically shortens, using either is.gd or bit.ly, the current tab’s URL. You use these toolbar buttons just like any other: click the button to access the simple feature.
Other extensions add new commands to Safari’s contextual menus: right-click somewhere on a Web page, and you’ll see the new options. For example, Shortenz Linkz lets you right-click on any URL link on a Web page to generate a shortened URL using the URL-shortening service of your choice. It also provides an option to send the URL in a Twitter message.
But many Safari extensions work in the background, doing their thing without any effort on your part. For example, there are already extensions that automatically reformat YouTube pages or Google Reader’s interface for easier viewing, that add additional options to specific Web pages, or that disable JavaScript elements hosted by particular servers.
If an extension provides settings to customize its behavior, you’ll find those settings in the Extensions pane of Safari’s Preferences window. Select the extension in the list on the left, and that extension’s options appear to the right.
If you decide you don't like a particular extension's feature(s), you can disable it. Just select it in the list of installed extensions and then uncheck the Enable [extension name] box. Alternatively, you can uninstall it, as explained below.
Updating extensions
Like other software, Safari extensions are updated to fix bugs and add new features. This is especially true right now, as developers are still learning how to create and perfect extensions. Thankfully, Safari provides a built-in mechanism for checking for, and updating to, new versions of extensions.
Open the Extensions pane of Safari Preferences, and click the Updates item in the lower-left corner. To the right, you’ll see a list of any extensions for which newer versions are available. Click an individual Update button to update that extension—the new version is downloaded and installed. Alternatively, click Update All to install all pending updates with a single click.
To avoid having to manually check for available updates, you can check the box to Install Updates Automatically. This configures Safari to automatically download and install updates whenever they’re available. Given how frequently extensions are being updated these days, this is a welcome option, although it’s not yet clear how often Safari checks for new versions of installed extensions.
Troubleshooting extensions
Depending on which extensions you choose to install, the neat features you gain may come with a price: Safari crashes. Between the release of Safari 4 a year ago and the release of Safari 5 in June, I had very few problems with Safari; in the first couple weeks after installing Safari 5.0 and testing extensions, I had literally dozens of crashes, and I was able to trace nearly all of them back to issues with extensions. (Unfortunately, unlike the Safari 4-and-later feature that lets Safari plug-ins crash without taking down the entire browser, an extension problem often crashes Safari outright.)
I've personally had the worst luck with extensions that aim to block specific JavaScript hosts that alter the behavior of sites. For example, several extensions block JavaScript from intellitxt.com in order to let you avoid those annoying ads that pop up on Web pages when you mouse over words. Unfortunately, whenever I’ve had one of these extensions installed and active, Safari would crash regularly.
I also occasionally experience a problem where simply disabling a particular extension, by turning off that extension in the Extensions screen of Safari Preferences, crashes Safari. This seems to be especially common when disabling an extension that use a toolbar button. In many cases, I've been able to avoid such crashes by manually removing the extension’s toolbar button (using Safari's Customize Toolbar screen) and then disabling the extension.
Thankfully, over the past couple months, I've found that Safari's stability has improved dramatically when using extensions. I suspect the biggest reason is that extensions developers have been improving their extension-coding skills, but it's also possible that Safari 5.0.1 included some extensions-handling improvements of its own. Whatever the combination, using extensions seems to be notably safer—in terms of browser stability—these days than when the feature first debuted. That being said, extensions can still cause problems with Safari, so it's good to know some basic troubleshooting procedures.
If you know which extension is causing a problem, you’ve got two options: The first is to simply disable that extension (as explained above) and then wait for an update to see if a new version fixes the problem. The second is to remove the extension completely. To do this, select the extension in Safari Preferences and then click the Uninstall button that appears to the right.
What if you don’t know which extension is causing a problem? Remember the “classic” Mac OS extension conflict? Welcome back, old friend. It’s time to do some conflict testing.
The first step is to turn off Safari extensions completely: Open the Extensions screen of Safari Preferences and move the main slider to the Off position. Then browse the sites that were open the last time Safari crashed or exhibited otherwise troublesome behavior—Safari’s Reopen All Windows From Last Session command (in the History menu) is great for this. If the problem still occurs, you know extensions aren’t the cause.
If the problem is gone, at least one of your extensions is to blame. Turn the main extensions slider back to On, then scroll through the list of installed extensions in Safari Preferences, noting which ones are currently enabled. Then disable one and reload your last session. If the problem occurs again, the extension you disabled is likely not the cause. Disable the next suspect and reload the last session again. Is the problem gone? You’ll want to repeat this process until disabling an extension fixes the problem—that extension is likely the cause.
Of course, just as with classic Mac OS extension conflicts, it’s possible that a combination of Safari extensions is the real issue, but I haven't yet come across such an issue (and uncovering such combinations is the topic for another article…).
Use it wisely
As you browse Apple's Gallery and the Web for useful extensions, keep in mind that the more extensions you install, the more you increase the chance of problems. But just as important is that you increase the complexity of the browser itself—more toolbar buttons, more keyboard shortcuts, more contextual-menu commands, and more ways in which the content on Websites is tweaked or otherwise affected. So use extensions judiciously. Despite downloading and testing scores of extensions, I've kept only a couple dozen installed, and only a few of those are currently active. Nevertheless, Extensions has become one of my favorite new Safari features in years.
...from:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/08/despite-petition-uk-governmen…
UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
By Emil Protalinski | Last updated a day ago
The UK government is not yet interested in ditching Internet Explorer 6, saying the costs required to do so outweigh the benefits. Six months ago, an online petition started in hopes that the UK would abolish all use of the world's most-loathed browser.
The petition debuted soon after the German and French governments began to advise their citizens to use a different browser than IE in the wake of the Chinese-Google hack attack. It closed on June 6 after gathering 6,223 signatures; on July 30, the government gave an official response. Here's the crux of it:
Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them. There is no evidence that upgrading away from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure. Regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats. The Government continues to work with Microsoft and other internet browser suppliers to understand the security of the products used by HMG, including Internet Explorer and we welcome the work that Microsoft are continuing do on delivering security solutions which are deployed as quickly as possible to all Internet Explorer users.
The UK government is correct in saying that Microsoft will continue to keep IE6 updated and secure. In fact, the software giant has promised to do so until April 2014, which is when Extended Support for Windows XP (which includes IE6) ends.
That said, Microsoft trash talks IE6 every chance it gets, promoting the increased security of IE8 at the same time. Furthermore, as IE flaws are discovered, IE6 and IE7 are affected more often than not, while IE8 usually remains unaffected.
The true reason the UK government doesn't want to upgrade becomes clear in the last paragraph of its explanation. It doesn't want to spend the money:
It is not straightforward for HMG departments to upgrade IE versions on their systems. Upgrading these systems to IE8 can be a very large operation, taking weeks to test and roll out to all users. To test all the web applications currently used by HMG departments can take months at significant potential cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users.
On some level, this makes sense; not every benefit is worth the costs. But such testing will have to be done eventually, and not even Her Majesty's Government can stick with IE6 indefinitely.
