Those of you who’ve been trying out the new Safari 4 beta – at least on the Mac, though I imagine you could find similar data trails on the Windows version too – have no doubt been impressed at its shiny new features. But if you’re a stickler for disk space like I am, or a stickler for privacy (or, heaven help you, both), Safari’s poor housekeeping is quite alarming.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. In ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari reside two folders: Bookmarks and History. Inside the history folder is a file for every webpage you’ve visited, regardless of when you’ve set Safari to delete history items in your preferences. I suspect Safari does some cleanup here as the files become slightly more sparse as one travels farther back in time (the past week – the time I’ve set Safari to delete history items after – usually comprise about half of the items, and I’m pretty sure my browsing habits aren’t increasing logarithmically), but I cannot figure out what gets kept and what doesn’t. Each item can be anywhere from 4-200k, but those add up when you get thousands of them. Deleting everything past a week old saved me over 100 MB.

This particular dump has been around at least since a version of Safari 3, but Safari 4 is even more egregiously unhygenic. You know the fancy new Top Sites feature, and how it tells you with a little blue star peeled away from the page preview if it’s been updated since you last checked? Safari makes a little file for every site, every time it checks on them, which if RefreshInterval is in seconds as I suspect it is, means it creates a nice XML file for every one of your top sites every 30 minutes (1800 seconds). These are located in ~/Library/PubSub/Feeds/ and given arcane hexadecimal names, and contain whatever turned out to be new on the webpage. As the Wikipedia homepage is one of mine and changes just about constantly, the vast majority of my XMLs were filled with Wikipedia content. I had over 24000, and deleting everything more than a week old (again, about half of the items) saved me about 93 MB.

But even this isn’t the worst of it. The most outrageous thing I found, and it took drinking from Spotlight’s firehose of filesystem changes with FSEventer to find it, was that Safari does not delete the webpage previews it generates for Quicklook. Ever. 2.03 GB of webpage previews (2 per website – a full resolution and a thumbnail), all generated since downloading the Safari 4 beta, residing – not in the user library, not even in the root library – in /private/var/folders/et/etuAKaR1GTeV9DVeRGfst++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari/Webpage Previews/, a hidden folder far away from the mouseclicks of all but the most relentless tinkerers.

This is completely unacceptable, for two reasons: The first is that there is no reason for Safari not to clean up after itself and let these folders get this big. If it grew to over 2 GB in just a few months, was it just going to grow until I ran out of disk space next year? What of the users who don’t know to delete it? As much as Apple might like to think we have practically infinite disk space for it to throw its crap everywhere, truth is, not all of us can afford terabyte drives to offload our media onto. The average user is going to have no idea where his disk space has gone, and 2 GB is definitely a noticeable amount. I can’t think of a good reason they couldn’t have at least put it in the user library with everything else: hiding it there is nothing short of deceptive.

Secondly, this is a huge privacy concern. With no good way of getting rid of them except manually (clearing the history doesn’t do it) these hidden files are strewn all over the user’s hard drive unbeknownst to him waiting for snooping relatives (or more pertinently, law enforcement) to dig them up.

I really like Safari, but I’m going to have to seriously consider using Firefox now (ack). Or maybe Chrome will arrive with enough polish to take over.

Update: It seems this is indeed a bug and not a feature, possibly confined only to Leopard systems as Tiger users’ histories seem to clear when they’re set to. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final Safari 4. Also fixed miscellaneous typographical errors.

Snap is the Animated GIF for sophisticated bloggers. It’s something you tack onto a site to elicit a “ooo, that’s cool”. In-text hover ads like ContentLink and Vibrant Ads are the same, except marginally more obtrusive, less functional, and monetizing. They’re appearing all over the web at an alarming rate not only on small and overambitious blogs, but on popular and oft-trafficked sites: even the site for Matt Mullenweg’s legendary Akismet uses Snap, and many high-profile news blogs (especially tech blogs) are putting up these in-text ads.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons not to inflict these sorts of things on one’s readers, the first among them being, it’s Annoying. This should be the first consideration before implementing an idea on a live site. Perhaps for ads the desire for money wins out over this consideration, but there’s no excuse to put Snap on a site. The bubbles from both of them obscure content on a mouseover, violating one of the most central tenets of good interface design: Mousing over should not initiate a layout-changing action. There’s a reason why in concrete interfaces – The Mac OS, Windows, various Linux desktop environments, as opposed to web interfaces – menus require you to click on them to show their contents. Mousing over is a passive action, and websites with Snap, hover ads, or even dropdown menus that activate with a hover are using this passive action to actively change the layout, something that in most cases requires a conscious and active move of the pointer (or, heaven forbid, even a click) to dismiss. Since passive actions usually elicit no response – at most a change in appearance (like a button that glows under the pointer) – a popup is unexpected, and as loath as I am to use the condescending terminology of interface designers, disconcerting. Normally I give users enough credit not to be disconcerted by something like motion (as critics of the myriad animations of Mac OS X and now Windows Vista occasionally argue, in favor of something more spartan), but when something totally unexpected like a hoverbox ad pops up after moving the pointer across the page, that’s disconcerting even to me.

There are certainly worse offenders, such as the Blackberry Pearl’s expanding banner ads that would slide out unceremoniously into the content that made their way onto Wired News not too long ago, but the backlash against those was immediate and strong enough so as to stamp them into quick disuse. There are of course the perky “Congratulations! You have been selected to receive two free iPod Nanos” ads that blare sound at you when opening the page, but those are mostly relegated to sketchy sites anyway. For these high-profile sites that ostensibly value long-term credibility and respect more than short-term profit but install hovers anyway, the message from readers and users needs to be unequivocally clear: Hoverboxes are a pollution to the internet, and will not be supported.

I’m having mixed feelings with regard to the Wired article on image licenses. On the one hand, I completely agree that copyrights on digital images have put graphically uncreative or photographically challenged (me without camera) bloggers with a huge inconvenience in searching for cool images to put up. When I don’t use photos of things I’m reviewing, I like to create my own images – AllOfMP3/Russia and Universal/Borg, for example – but even these are based on copyrighted logos, though I like to think they’re protected under fair use, being parody and all.

NetUtopia is on its way, but until then, I’ll declare here and now: All images I create on this site for the purpose of blog posts are from this point forward under a creative commons license. Go use the Microsoft/China logo on your own blog. You can even email me to change the background to a different color if the dark gray clashes. Or to tell me that I’m just flattering myself thinking that people are going to use them. A link back here would be cool (it would be cool even if you didn’t use the images; I’m always happy for referrers!), but it’s not like I’m going to sue if you don’t. I probably won’t even complain.

If only the rest of blogdom were so magnanimous.

Secondly, on the topic of HTML bloat, I believe a license tag would be a non-solution that makes a completely unrelated problem worse. First, hardly anyone will use the tag, because it adds to their markup without adding to the site’s functionality. I’m all for markup that makes sense, but the W3C has already taken it to ridiculous extremes. What was wrong with the <i> tag that <em> had to replace it? What difference does it make if I “emphasize” a block of text rather than “italicize” it? Why can’t screen readers emphasize the <i> tag instead of creating a different tag?

The <i> and <b> tags will never go away for 2 reasons. They’re shorter than <em> or <cite> and <strong>, respectively, and elementary web design classes still teach them that way. This is just one example of the problem: the ‘alt’ attribute requirement for the <img> tag, for example. The argument that “the tag is already bloated enough” is an argument for getting rid of and condensing attributes (getting rid of ‘alt’ and using ‘title’ for that purpose would be a good start), not adding more.

The only tag I can think of that would warrant a license attribute would be the <body> tag to indicate content as a whole rather than individual elements thereof as creative commons or other licenses. I still wouldn’t agree with putting it there, but I could at least see why it would be wanted.

A license attribute on any tag would also not solve the underlying problem that images are not legally copyable. Stay tuned for more on that…

Christmas came 2 weeks early this year. They say you can’t beat the feel of a brand new computer. In a lot of ways, the opening of the box, the techno beats of the welcome screen, and the never-opened manuals are sort of magical, but otherwise, it’s a lot like getting a used computer. The important thing is that it’s new to me.

What’s more gratifying in the long term, though, are the specs that you can’t get from a used computer. This will be my first that has 1) over a GHz clockspeed, 2) a gig of RAM, 3) over 1024×768 resolution, 4) USB 2.0, and 5) sweet dual latches. It closes more tightly than the iBook G3 did, but you kind of have to wiggle the button to release. Nothing major. The keyboard isn’t detachable, but it feels a lot sturdier than the iBook’s flimsy one. The trackpad is wider and a bit taller than the iBook’s, making it easier to work unplugged, and the CD slot is on the front, which would be good if I worked in a cramped workspace.

Booting it up beside the iBook to transfer files, the higher PPI of the Macbook made the iBook’s screen look dim and fuzzy by comparison. I had wanted the glossy screen, but it came with free AppleCare, and it seems customization (even free options) isn’t allowed with bundles. Bah. The matte screen shows sort of a speckled pattern, but it’s barely noticeable.

The backlit keyboard is a nice feature too for typing in the dark. I spent a few minutes covering up various parts of the computer looking for the sensor, until I figured out that it has sensors on both sides of the keyboard. Tricky! But while this is a nice feature, I did expect it to be fully automatic: three of the F-keys are used for controlling the keyboard brightness – F-keys that I would like to use for Exposé. Instead, I have to use command-F11 and command-F12 for the two that don’t fit on the free F-keys. It’s not too big a deal at the desk since the mouse takes care of the functions, but it gets irritating unplugged.

As for the more minor things – USB 2.0 is handy; now I can sync my iPod at full speed again, FrontRow is nice to have back again (10.4.8 borked FrontRow installation on non-supported Macs), I’m enjoying having a working ethernet port again, Magsafe takes some getting used to, the internal speakers are leaps and bounds better than the iBook’s pebbles (though not nearly as good as the external set), and PhotoBooth is still great fun to play with.

Speedwise, I’m not noticing as gigantic of a difference as I’d hoped. Certainly things are faster, but bootup takes about the same. I was impressed, however, with Rosetta: It ran each of the most intensive apps I threw at it even faster than the iBook did. Things like Photoshop, MarbleBlast (a 3D game), N64 emulators – they all work without a hitch. Considering how different the two architectures are, and the abysmal performance of VPC on PPC, I’m impressed at how efficiently they were able to make it run.

Apple USB iPod Cable: $17
Apple Universal iPod Dock: $35
A dock without a cable: Worthless

Some things you just can’t leave out of a package. For everything else, Apple does.

Since the FireWire bus shorted out on my iPod, I’ve had to borrow a USB cable to sync it. It’s slow (USB 1.1), but it works. Being a nice guy, I don’t want to indebt myself too much with use of the cable, so I paid a visit to the Apple Store today. My thought was that if I’m to get USB connectivity anyway, I may as well get a spiffy docking station. After all, there’s not much point to a dock sans connectivity without a video iPod.

Knowing Apple quit bundling accessories with the iPod a few generations ago, I should have figured they’d quit bundling essentials with the accessories. But alas, no cable was to be found in the (very thick) box. Looks like I’m going to have to keep borrowing for a while.

So my question is this: Besides being an S-Video adapter for the new video iPods, what’s the point of the dock? The IR receiver doesn’t do much good without a remote (sold separately, surprise!), the iPod still can’t be used while mounted, and it doesn’t even connect to the computer on its own. Except for the neato factor of having an upright iPod, it’s completely worthless.

It’s a shame I had to open the package before I realized that.