Apple Briefs

One of the biggest surprises of the summer has to be Chrome, the open source web browser from Google. Chrome for Windows was released today, with versions for Mac and Linux coming later. Google put together a web comic describing their rationale behind Chrome and its major features (its also available as a Google Book).

The best way I can describe Chrome is to say that it’s designed for web applications, in contrast with other browsers which were designed primarily for web pages. Because of its architecture (described in quite a bit of detail in the comic), Chrome should be more stable and responsive when one tab or window gets a bit unruly.

I have downloaded and installed Chrome – a process which was surprisingly quick – but haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces. The few sites I did visit loaded quickly and everything seemed quite crisp. I look forward to the Mac version of Chrome.

There is a nice article over at Lifehacker on the top 10 Firefox 3 features. I still use an army of browsers at home, but I have been warming up to Firefox 3 (which I use almost exclusively at work). I can’t wait until some of these new Firefox features make it into Camino (I hope!).

Not to be outdone by Mac Law Students’ excellent article, Macworld today posted their own Mac Browser Roundup. It’s light on lawyerly details, but it covers the basics quite well. I still run with my own mix of Safari, OmniWeb, and Firefox (3.0 beta) for reasons that are beyond explanation.

Mac Law Students posted a nice review today of the current state of the Mac browser field. The focus of the review is how nicely each of the eight browsers reviewed plays with LexisNexis and Westlaw. Safari 3.1 seems to be the best of the bunch (which isn’t surprising given the effort put in to making Safari standards-compliant). Really, though, none of the browsers did poorly. It’s obvious that both Lexis and Westlaw are designing their sites now with more than just the Windows / Internet Explorer world in mind.

I like (and dislike) a variety of things about Lexis and Westlaw. During law school I primarily used Lexis because Westlaw has historically not played well with tabs. Westlaw’s frame interface throws a wrench into my use of tabs. Invariably, I would click on a Westlaw link in the current tab and nothing would happen – or so it would seem. What actually happened was that a page somewhere on one of my other tabs had been replaced because Westlaw decided that particular tab had the window the page should be loaded in.

One reason I do like running Westlaw on a Mac browser is that Westlaw prints and downloads work better. I am not sure if it’s a bug or a feature, but if I switch to another application while doing a Westlaw print in Internet Explorer (on Windows XP), the Westlaw popup window closes and the print stops. The same thing happens if I switch applications during a download. It’s irritating that Westlaw forces me to sit there and watch, unable to do any other work on the computer, while it’s building the pages. Westlaw doesn’t do this on any of the Mac browsers I tried. For some reason I haven’t tried Westlaw on Firefox for Windows. Does anyone know if Firefox for Windows has this “feature”?

One omission from the review is Firefox 3.0. The Firefox team recently released Firefox 3.0 Beta 4, and I haven’t encountered any problems with it (unlike with Beta 2). Firefox 3.0 is getting close enough to an “everyday browser” that it should probably have been included.

LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, released a mobile version over the weekend. You can access it by visiting http://m.linkedin.com from your mobile browser. The reason this is news for Apple users is that there is a special version of LinkedIn for the iPhone.

I briefly tested the mobile version of LinkedIn and it seems like a good first step, but it is missing a few features. Overall, the experience is a pleasant one. There are three tabs: Updates, Contacts, and Profile. Above the tabs are links for Search and Invite. Navigation was straightforward and pages loaded quickly (a nice contrast with the regular site which has become quite slow).

The first limitation I noticed is that you can’t update your profile. In fact, you can’t really do much of anything besides invite people. This makes sense to a certain degree given the medium – mobile phones with very slow data entry. It doesn’t really work, though, for a social networking site and turns the LinkedIn mobile website into a glorified address book.

Unfortunately, the LinkedIn mobile website doesn’t fill that role very well because the mobile profiles are missing a lot of the information you will find on the regular site. A few egregious examples – vcards, email addresses, and website links are nowhere to be found. For some strange reason, you also can’t view your contacts’ connections.

They will probably eventually get it right, but it’s really a wonder that they released it in this state. Calling it a Beta website is quite the misnomer. Beta software is supposed to be feature-complete (or nearly so). The LinkedIn mobile website feels more like a technology demonstration than something “ready to go except for the testing.” Thankfully, there is a feedback button at the bottom of each page. If you’re adept at the iPhone keyboard, I suggest sending LinkedIn a note or two to remind them what social networking is all about.