Bleeding edge users have had the option for the last couple of months of downloading the nightly builds of WebKit and compiling your own version for testing purposes. However, the process was not for the faint of heart, or the command line challenged. No more.
As of today, compiled nightly builds of WebKit are available for download. There are two flavors available for testing – WebKit, and WebKit with SVG enabled.
And for those who are wondering, yes – the nightly WebKit builds do pass the CSS AcidTest.
Enjoy.
Category: Software
David Wantanabe, author of OS X gems Acquisition and NewsFire, has another amazing little application out. Called Inquisitor, it is a plug-in for Safari that replaces the Google search field with a predictive search field, somewhat like Spotlight. You can download the app for free (donations welcome). Also in beta is the Inquisitor Instant Search, a web based version of Inquisitor that will run on any browser on any platform.
It’s little applications like these that make turning on my Mac every morning a joy. The Mac OS X development community is truly second to none in inventiveness, ingenuity and quality.
Category: Software
Back in the mid 1990′s, there was a program that was a low cost alternative to Photoshop. If featured a comparable feature set to Photoshop 3.0/4.0, and cost about 1/5th the price. It used Photoshop’s plug-in format, and accepted most of the Photoshop plug-ins of the day. The program was called Color it!, by a company called MicroFrontier.
MicroFrontier still exists, as does Color It!. MicroFrontier is set to release a new carbonized version of Color It! soon. The application is now in beta, although no timetable is given as to a possible release date. Those interested can sign up for an email notification when it is available here. The OS 9 version of Color It! costs $49, or $29 for upgrades from any previous version.
Category: Software
Apple has issued Security Update 2005-008 for users of Mac OS X 10.4.2 and Mac OS X 10.3.9. The update contains fixes to the following components: ImageIO, LibSystem, Mail, QuickDraw, Ruby, SecurityAgent, and securityd. The udpate is available through Software Update or through Apple’s website (see links below).
[ Update for 10.4.2 - 4MB ] [ Update for 10.3.9 - 7.1MB ]
Category: Software
The long awaited update from Microsoft to the Mac version of Office 2004 was released today. The new version features bug fixes and improvements in all of the applications, but focuses mostly on improving Entourage’s enterprise features.
From Microsoft’s web site, the improvements are:
Word 2004
- Improved performance when using a scroll wheel.
- Improved performance when formatting documents.
- Improved encryption for password protected documents.
Excel 2004
- Improved encryption for password protected documents.
- Improved performance when using scroll wheel in Page Layout view.
- Improved stability when opening spreadsheets from other Excel versions in Excel 2004.
PowerPoint 2004
- Improved text compatibility with Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.
- Increased performance when using QuickTime movies in presentations.
- Improved stability when opening presentations saved with Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.
Entourage 2004 Exchange Server Support Improvements
- Gain full access to your organization’s Global Address List information.
- Provide delegate access to your Mail folders, Calendar and Address Book.
- Share your Mail folders, Calendar and Address Book with assistants and colleagues.
- Take advantage of improved public folder performance.
- Receive password expiration notification before it expires.
- View and manage how much disk space your Mail folders use to ensure you don’t exceed your organization’s set storage limits.
As one who uses Entourage in a company that is a sea of PC’s running Outlook on an Exchange server, this upgrade was welcome. Many of my criticisms of Entourage have been addressed, and I can now remove my dependence upon Outlook at work.
Category: Software
Adobe has announced the next version of Photoshop Elements. Adobe
Category: Software
Last week Apple seeded another version of Tiger to developers. This was the first post WWDC seeds of Tiger to come out of Cupertino. Among the new features added to the OS were new features added to iChat. iChat in Tiger will gain support for the Jabber protocol. According to AppleInsider, other new features present in this seed of Tiger included additional security features and more options to the RSS features in Safari.
Category: Software
Arbor Software has released their new application, iCamShare. iCamShare
allows you to easily capture movies or stills and share them via
e-mail, .Mac, or other applications. iCamShare features:
- Digitally zoom iSight up to 300%
- Video e-mails can play on most Macintosh and Windows computers.
- Recipient does not need a web cam, nor broadband.
- Videos can be easily compressed, as much as 500X compression,
so that they can be sent and received faster.
- Can balance image quality versus transfer speed.
- Can export videos and pictures into any format that QuickTime supports
- Access to camera and audio controls.
iCamShare requires:
- Mac OS X 10.2.8, or 10.3.4
- QuickTime 6
- A webcam, such as Apple’s iSight
- An internet connection (any speed, broadband not required)
- To share e-mails, you need an e-mail account, configured in Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage, Eudora, MailSmith, or other compatible e-mail program
- To publish on a .Mac HomePage, you need an active .Mac membership
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Category: Software
Camino, the open sourced web browser based on the Mozilla rendering engine, has been updated with a new tab system. The new tab patch was landed in to the source code over the weekend. Caminos previous tab implementation used native widgets. This was to maintain compatibility with older versions of OS X. The new tabs implementation uses custom widgets that are visually more appealing than the previous tabs. The new tabs will only be available in the nightly trunk builds until Camino 0.9 is released. Also slated for the next version of Camino is the ability to reorder the tabs manually.
Category: Software
Want to run KDE without utilizing the X11 environment? Well, the KDEXTREME website has a detailed guide on getting KDE and it’s applications running on OS X. It’s a great, well explained resource that should take most of the pain out of using the new OS X capable KDE binaries.
Category: Software
