After playing with Google Wave for about a week, I found myself wishing I could check my waves on the go. How is this thing going to replace email in the future if I have to be at my computer to use it? Well, it turns out that Wave does work on at least two mobile platforms: the iPhone and Google Android. Although the mobile versions of these browsers aren't technically supported - so you'll have to click through a warning to use it - the fact that they're built on WebKit means it's more or less Wave-ready.

There's even a mobile-optimized site for Wave, similar in design to mobile Gmail. Although there's no official Wave iPhone app, you can add Wave to your home screen on the iPhone for convenient access. Obviously, some of Wave's features won't work in the mobile version - dragging and dropping images, for example - but for basic reading and adding to conversations, it's fine. Preparing a decent mobile web version of Wave is certainly one alternative to going through Apple's app store approval process, especially after the infamous Google Voice rejection.

[via TechCrunch]

When it comes to paring a browser's UI down to the smallest possible size, the discussion always seems to focus on Firefox. Granted, Firefox is a very customizable browser, and with the right extensions cleverly applied, you can minimize its UI. But as John Holdun notes, often overlooked in this regard is the fact that Safari is very capable of being pared down to almost nothing, and you don't need any add-ons to do it.

In fact, if you're comfortable with keyboard shortcuts, all you need to do is learn a few key ones and you'll be able to minimize Safari to a Title bar and tab bar. One warning - I've only tried this using Safari 4.0 on a Mac; I don't have easy access to Safari running on Windows, but I imagine that there are equivalents for the keyboard shortcuts I'm about to discuss.

Firstly, let's get rid of the Toolbar -- that is, the bar with the back and forward buttons, address bar, and search field. To hide the toolbar, click View > Hide Toolbar from the menu, or simply press the Command-| shortcut key. Don't worry, if you need to enter a web address quickly, you can either show it again using the same shortcut key combination, or better yet press Command-l to have the cursor automatically placed in the address bar. Type something and press enter, or tab to the search field and type something and press enter, and your page will open, and the Toolbar will immediately hide again. Slick.

The other desktop real-estate offender is the status bar at the bottom. Hiding it is just as easy - the shortcut key combination is Command-/. Like John, I tend to like to use the status bar to snoop on the destination address of links by hovering over them. This takes an extra step now, but the extra room gained by not constantly showing the status bar is worth the occasional inconvenience for me.

If you're a Safari user who enjoyed plug-ins -- some people insist on calling them Input Managers, we're agnostic on the subject -- like Glims and PithHelmet in Leopard, and you're sad to see that they don't work in Snow Leopard, you'll be happy to see an update to SIMBL that will let you hack your plug-ins back to life. The new version of SIMBL does indeed work with Snow Leopard, although you'll need to run Safari in 32-bit mode until plug-in developers write 64-bit versions of their plug-ins.

After installing SIMBL, you'll want to drop some plug-ins into your /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins folder. Next, find Safari and put it in 32-bit mode by doing a quick Get Info and checking the box. When you fire up Safari, your plug-ins should be working just as they did in Leopard. It's a bit hacky, but I definitely prefer it to browsing without an ad blocker. If you're wondering where to find plug-ins, you can check out some of my favorites in this post.

One of the first things you'll want to do with any smartphone is get your bookmarks set up in the phone's browser. It can be a real pain to add them one-by-one, though, so it's a lot easier if you can just import them from the browser on your computer. Fliq Bookmarks lets you do just that, assuming the following: 1) Your browser is Safari, 2) Your phone is a Palm Pre and 3) You have the Missing Sync, a Pre-specific media-syncing app for your Mac.

Fliq seems of limited use, although it does sync your toolbar bookmarks from Safari. Really, bookmark syncing should be a feature of the $30 Missing Sync app, not a standalone app. Also, how many Safari users have a Pre instead of an iPhone? Feel free to flame me in the comments if I'm wrong, but it seems like if you're one of those folks, you're probably in the minority.

[via Appscout]

Wait, Safari has plug-ins? Yes, it's true! When it comes to choosing a browser, a lot of people consider Safari because of its speed and standards support, but ultimately settle on Firefox for one reason: plug-ins. Firefox has a plugin for everything, and it's hard to live without them once you get used to the added functionality. Some of the best plugins have Safari equivalents, though, so take a look at these and see if it changes your mind about Apple's browser.

Glims

Glims is the pinnacle of Safari plugins, adding a whole Swiss Army knife of features to your browser. Glims does tabs really well, letting you open links in a new tab instead of a new window, and choose whether new tabs open on the left or the right. It restores tabs from previous sessions.

It adds thumbnails to Google and Yahoo! search results. It lets you change search engines, and adds configurable search suggestions. And, as if that weren't enough for one plugin, It also allows you to enable full screen mode. You can adjust all of these features in the preferences, so don't skip Glims just because it sounds like more than you need.

Saft

Saft is a direct Glims competitor, offering a slightly different (and a bit more extensive) set of features. The two plugins tend to conflict, so take a look at what both have to offer before you decide which one to install. It's also worth noting that the full version of Saft costs $12.

If you're not excited about the potential of updated CSS and HTML standards support in the newest WebKit browsers, you might be after you check out Snow Stack.

Snow Stack is a demo of some slick visual effects using just HTML, WebKit CSS effects, and some Javascript. To see the live demo, you need to be running Snow Leopard and Safari, or Leopard and the latest nightly build of WebKit.

Snow Stack shows off a 3D wall of Flickr photos - if you're familiar with the Cooliris photo viewer, it looks a lot like that - and all the animation, reflection and transformation is done in CSS. If you're not on a Mac or can't run a new version of Safari, there's also a YouTube video that shows Snow Stack in action.

For developers, the source code and some useful development notes are available on the webpage, so you can check out how the demo was built.

Scramball 2 is a dead-simple time waster, where the goal is to roll your ball as quickly as you can through the maze to the goal. There are only four control buttons - up, down, left, and right. The ball is bouncy, and touching the walls will usually cost you time, but if you aim strategically sometimes you can use the bounciness to your advantage.

The game quickly becomes difficult, but I surprisingly found I had a lot more success when playing the game in Safari on my Mac as compared to Firefox; for some reason Flash apps seem to perform better in Safari. It was enough of a noticeable difference that I was easily able to get two levels further ahead than I'd been able to on Firefox.

The goal in each level is to get a trophy by achieving a certain speed, as measured by how long it takes you to complete the level. Unfortunately, you don't get to see what the target time is ahead of time. If you get an exceedingly fast time, you get a gem, which seems to indicate that you've mastered the level.

This is the perfect game to play for three minutes when switching tasks, or otherwise trying to relax your brain. I doubt you'd want to spend an entire coffee break on it, but sometimes that's a good thing.

Ninja Roll 2 is a simple ball rolling game that has you drawing a line for your "ninja ball" to roll and bounce down. The goal of the game is to collect all of the stars on each level.

The game has a very sparse look, and the physics of the ball remind me of the superballs that I played with as a kid. It's actually frustrating how bouncy this ball is. Sometimes it's hard to maintain momentum because just as your ball is about to ascend a ramp, it hits some tiny bump and bounces off in an unexpected direction. To be fair, part of the fun of playing Ninja Roll 2 is watching the ball make crazy moves.

Some of the levels appear physically impossible at first, but that's where your ball's incredible bounciness becomes an advantage - you can make it perform moves that you would have never thought possible.

My only gripe with the game is that for some reason it was choppy to the point of almost being unplayable when running in Firefox, but in Safari it is perfectly smooth.

Apple is taking the beta label off of Safari 4 today amid a flurry of news at WWDC. A public beta of the web browser has been available for Mac and Windows since February, and in fact when you go to the Safari download page, you're still greeted with a beta version of the browser. We're guessing the full version will be available later this afternoon. Update: It's available now.

Apple claims Safari 4 runs JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Safari 3, 4 times faster than Firefox 3, and 8 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. The company says the browser loads HTML web pages 3 times faster than Firefox 3, although the company admits that performance can vary from system to system. I'm going to venture a guess that it may differ from web page to web page as well.

When OS X Snow Leopard is released later this year, Apple says Safari will be able to run as a 64-bit application, boosting performance by up to 50%.

Safari 4 features a Google Chrome/Opera style new tab page which provides you with thumbnail shortcuts to pages you visit frequently. The browser also features full page zoom, and a smarter URL bar with auto-complete functionality.

Safari 4 is available for Windows XP, Vista, or mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer.

Update: It's worth pointing out that Safari 4 is also the first non-beta browser release to get a perfect score on the Acid3 test.

Update: Nope, sorry, nope...Chromium still beats Safari on V8 (rather soundly, at that)...Dromaeo results in in a few minutes! --Lee

Update: Ok, on Dromaeo the results were much closer. My Chromium Nightly Build won 26 categories while Safari claimed 23. I tried several Chrome Experiments, and they generally run much more smoothly on Chromium. --Lee

[via Engadget]

According to May numbers from analytics service StatCounter, Opera is once again the most popular mobile browser in the world, narrowly overtaking the iPhone's built-in Safari browser. Of all the webpages that were loaded in mobile browsers in May, Opera had a 24.6% share to the iPhone's 22.3%. Nokia came in 3rd with 17.9%.

Opera started the year ahead of the iPhone browser, but Apple's product passed it in February. Although they're both mobile browsers, we're comparing two very different products here.

Opera is supported on a huge number of devices from different mobile carriers worldwide, while Safari only runs on the iPhone. In effect, the competition doesn't tell us as much about which browser is the better product as it does about how popular the iPhone is compared to other devices.

The Mac's built-in PDF support is pretty strong, which is nice because if there's one piece of software I have always despised for its unnecessary bloat, it would be Adobe Reader. To be honest, I've always liked the fact that when I come across a PDF online, clicking to open it results in it being downloaded and opened in the built-in Preview application. Opening PDFs in the browser was always slow and clunky using Adobe Reader, and always annoyed me.

But recently a friend convinced me to try Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin, and I'm glad I did. PDF Browser Plugin does exactly what you'd expect, allowing you to view PDF files in the comfort of your favorite browser (provided your favorite browser is either Firefox or Safari). But what I found surprising was how fast PDF Browser Plugin is. If you happen to be viewing a small PDF, it will open almost instantly, with the only delay being how long it takes to download the actual PDF file. This speed is possible because PDF Browser Plugin is leveraging the Quartz technology built into the Mac that allows it to render PDF files in the same way the Finder or Preview does.

The plugin's other claim to fame is a distinct respect for the Mac's look-and-feel. Schubert|it PDF Browser Plugin is free for personal or educational use, but requires a $69 site license for business users.

There wasn't a whole lot remarkable about my Sunday this week. We're still thawing out here in the Great White North, so my son and I were relaxing and watching The Super Friends on TV. The longer we watched (and the more blown away I became with just how awesomely bad that cartoon really was), my mind started to wander.

"I must be reading too many blog posts," I said to myself, "because I'm starting to imagine the characters as web browsers." As the train of thought steamed ahead unimpeded, here's what I came up with.

Firefox as Batman
Like the Dark Knight, Firefox doesn't actually have super powers. What he does have is experience, a little kung fu, and a vast arsenal of tools he can clip to his belt before heading into battle. I don't know if any evildoer really killed Firefox's parents, but you sure don't hear much from Netscape anymore.

Unlike Batman, however, Firefox is actually good friends with The Penguin.