Cool Mac Gear

Notwithstanding Apple’s partial reprieve for OS 9 dual-booting, I guess a sign of the Times is Mozilla’s announcement in the release notes for their new version 1.3 alpha release that:

Looks like Mozilla 1.2.1 is the last Classic OS native Mozilla build, which probably means that Netscape 7.0.1 will be the last OS 9 Netscape build as well. The old order changeth, although I think this abandonment of Classic is a bit premature. I think they’re underestimating how many users are still sticking with OS 9 for now, or only partly switched to OS X. I mean, iCab still offers a 68k version.

New in Mozilla 1.3a:

• Many new Mail and Newsgroup features and fixes.
• Mozilla Mail now has basic junk-mail classification capabilities. This means you can train your client to distinguish between good mail and junk-mail. For this first release the junk-mail controls can mark a message as junk but automatic deleting has not been enabled. To learn more about this new feature check out the Mozilla Spam Filters info page.
• This release also contains some great new filtering tools. We now have new multiple actions for filters so you can do things like moving and labeling at the same time and newsgroup filters have also been implemented.
• Message Views is a new Mozilla Mail feature which will help users locate, organize and prioritize their mail messages. A View is used to filter and display only those messages matching a given set of criteria. Mozilla ships with a set of pre-defined Views, but users can also create their own.
• Improved interoperability with certain imap servers (especially iMail) and ACL problems on Cyrus servers have been fixed.
• The Mail team also fixed the problem with biff not working on accounts you haven’t logged onto and Message Search on the body of local messages doesn’t lock up the UI anymore
• Bookmarks now has a convenient quicksearch functionality similar to Mozilla’s Mail&News (and Mozilla’s Phoenix browser). This search field allows the user to quickly filter his bookmarks by typing the a few characters into the search field. There is an input box at the top of the list of bookmars, and search terms entered filter based on bookmark title.
• Users of Mozilla’s DOM Inspector can now toggle the display of empty #text nodes.

System Requirements:
• Mac OS 9.1 or later
• PowerPC processor (266 MHz or faster recommended)
• 64 MB RAM
• 36 MB of free hard disk space
• QuickTime
• ContextualMenu Library

Mozilla 1.3 sounds interesting, but I think I’ll wait until the first beta before downloading it. I got Netscape 7.0.1 for OS 9 down on the weekend, but had two failed attempts to download the 7.0.1 for OS X disk image -- once with a browser and once with an FTP client. For some reason, corrupted downloads are a frequent problem with Netscape’s download site. It took me two tries to get the OS 9 full installer for 7.0.1.

Mozilla and Chimera:
http://www.mozilla.org

Netscape
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp?vt

Download hassles with Netscape aside, Mozilla and Netscape are now so comprehensively good and feature-rich that I can’t imagine why anyone would continue using clunky old Internet Explorer.

While on the topic of browsers, I also downloaded and checked out the Opera 6 final over the weekend. Regular readers will recall that I wasn’t too favorably impressed with the stability of the Opera 6 betas I tried recently. That seems to have been fixed, that least I’ve had no unexpected quits with the final so far. New in Opera 6 final:

Bug fixes
• Drop of bookmarks folder results in tabs in tabbed windows.
• Updated preference dialogs.
• Fixed problem with multiple bookmark files.
• Fixed problem with empty bookmark menu.
• Fixed problem with dragging address bar proxy icon.
• Fixed problem with splash screen when starting from other application.
• Fixed crash on quit in background.
• Enabled reload frames, reload all and load all images.
• Dialog resizing for translation.
• Disabled non-working menus.
• Updated default searches on personal bar.
• Fixed truncation of addresses in progress and status bar.
• Fixed problem with file upload.
• Fixed warning about sending passwords under OS 9.
• Fixed crash with save windows.
• Fixed problem with pop-ups windows in tabbed mode.
• Fixed problem with panels not displaying.
• Fixed problems with clicking on banners.
• Fixed crash at authentication dialogs and crash.
• Enabled context menu for add and remove foreground skin.
• Fixed quit crash on open modal dialogs under OS X.
• Enabled autosave of windows settings file.
• Fixed wrong text on “Reload every”.
• Fixed crash problem with pop-ups that occur after closing windows.
• Fixed problem with multiple sheets in tabbed windows.
• Fixed problem with keychain access when opening new page.
• Fixed problem with empty select menus in forms.
• Removed non-working menus in Quick Preferences and Link bar.
• Added preference for skinning.
• Enabled skinning, default turned off on OS 8.6 - 9.2.
• Fixed problem with click-through closing in windows under OS X.
• Fixed problem with opening new windows with docked bookmarks.
• Updated preferences dialogs.
• Fixed problems with history pop-ups.
• Fixed inactive menus after startup dialog.
• Enabled bookmark search.
• Fixed problems with startup dialog.
• Fixed problem with focus on open window in background.
• Enabled keyboard navigation in listboxes.
• Fixed problems with navigation in docked bookmark windows and panels.
• Enabled search in docked bookmarks.
• Enabled borders in listboxes.
• Unicodified forms listboxes.
• Fixed problems with horizontal bookmark scrolling.
• Fixed problem with dragging from a docked bookmark window to the browser area.
• Fixed problem with Unicode input in search and URL dialogs.
• Fixed problems with modal dialogs at startup.
• Enabled middle mouse button on multi-button mouse.
• Fixed alignment of text and icons in the personal bar.
• Enabled preference for showing text on right in toolbars.
• Fixed problem with panels being saved as pages.
• Disabled startup dialog at first run.
• Add preferences for startup dialog.
• Added preference for not showing zoom slider.
• Fixing problem with chasing arrows and “chevron” arrow.
• Enabled Unicode support in text-transform:Uppercase/Lowercase.

Opera offers a somewhat unique and highly customizable user interface, and commendably still supports the Classic OS. It is also quite fast, although not as consistently so as Mozilla and its Netscape and Chimera cousins. Opera also lacks the extremely cool tabbed browsing feature of Mozilla and company, and is lacking the ability to save Web pages as plain text or Web archives. Opera is resonably small, but not as small as iCab, which is a solid performer with the best Bookmark (Hotlist) management and download support of any browser. I don't like the way Opera handles Bookmarks. I was able to import my bookmarks from Mozilla my HotList from iCab, but they live in separate windows, (as does Opera's own Bookmark list), and the links require a double-click. The conventional Bookmark configuration is better, and I like iCab's the best.

I’m delighted that Opera is continuing to support the Mac OS, but at this point, it seems to lack any really compelling reason to use it compared with, say, Netscape or Chimera.

Opera 6.0 supports Mac OS 8.6 - OS X
http://www.opera.com/

The 2.3.3 build of Notepad Deluxe fixes a very bad bug in the 2.3.2 release, which could (and did for me) cause data loss. I kept using it anyway, making sure to back up critical stuff as I really like this very convenient and user - friendly desktop database program. It’s good to have it (presumably) stable again.

The Tex Edit Plus X 4.4 final is also out. No new features that haven’t been available in the latest betas, but if you’re still using a previous final release of TE+X, the new one supports spell-checking.

For more on the Notepad Deluxe and TE+ releases, see Shareware Beat today.

From John Martellaro

Regarding the e-mail from Robert Emslie about Mac OS X security. There is really no such thing as absolute security on a UNIX system when one has physical access to the machine. Mac OS X is tough to compromise from a distance, but if I can touch it, I can break into it.

Clearly, it’s a bad idea to provide a tutorial here. My advice is to set up the machine to provide iron clad Internet protection and then reasonable security against people unfamiliar with Mac OS X who are local. Don’t go overboard because absolute protection from people who can physically access your Mac is a lost cause.

John Martellaro
QUANTUM THREADS:
http://www.applelinks.com/quantum

Charles W. Moore