Oddly enough, there’s a quick and easy fix.

1. Open the Preferences window (Command+,).
2. Switch to the Security tab.
3. In the “Web content” section, uncheck Java. (But leave JavaScript checked!)
4. Close the Preferences dialog. Now tabs should no longer reload whenever you switch between them. You won’t be able to run Java applets embedded in web pages, though.

I’m guessing that the behavior is the result of a bug, and not some weird decision of Apple’s.

I’ve traditionally been a Firefox guy. I like Firefox. I like the peeps at Mozilla, and they do great things. I also like Apple, and when I can, I try to use Apple products. So for an entire week, I decided I was going to suck it up and just try and make the switch to using Safari as my main web browser. No going back and forth, no half-assing it. All-or-nothing. Some people claim to be able to use different web browsers for different things. Not me, I can’t do that. I can’t even have more than one pair of shoes without getting confused.

I, too, have long been a Firefox user. I’ve liked the browser ever since it was first released back in 2004. It’s still my primary browser, even since becoming a full-time Mac user. There are several extensions that I depend on, such as the veritable Firebug.

But it just seems so slow. All of its major competitors are now so much faster than the browser that single-handedly put an end to Microsoft’s decade of browser domination. What went wrong? Why isn’t it being rectified?

Safari is a great browser, but I can’t give up functionality for the speed, however tempting it may be.

Chris’s title, The Safari Challenge, is more apt than he probably thought. That is the very challenge Mozilla faces: to catch up to the speed of Safari and Chrome. Hopefully it will be soon.

CUPERTINO, California—June 12, 2009—Apple® today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari® 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.

More than half of the downloads were from Windows users. Isn’t that interesting? And no, they were not pushed through some sort of automatic update. I had to manually download the new version of Safari for my MacBook, and it’s not yet on either of the Windows-based machines that I administrate.

In contrast, Google Chrome nearly had 2 million US downloads in it’s first week (no word of the full numbers), and Firefox 3 had over 18 million.

What if I wanted to switch to another browser, say Safari? The new Safari 4 Beta is pretty good. I couldn’t take those wonderful extensions with me. (Of course, I’m happy with Firefox…providing Mozilla can fix it’s slow launch time soon…)

Many browsers support extensions of some sort. Safari and Internet Explorer do now, following Firefox’s lead.

I think it’s high time that browser extensions be standardized. I think that the WebKit and Mozilla projects should get together and develop an open browser extension standard to be implemented across browser platforms. (Microsoft too, if they’ll cooperate…)

Imagine a set of specifications, for XML and JavaScript-based extensions, that could be implemented by any browser maker. The same extensions that run in Firefox could run in Opera or Safari or Chrome. It’s certainly possible, and I could see it happening, providing the stars align properly.

A common extension API would benefit users greatly, preventing them from being tied down to one browser as easily.

The updated browser is lean and lightning fast, and it passes both the ACID2 and the ACID3 test.

With Safari 4 and Google Chrome on the loose, Mozilla needs to get going and deflate Firefox’s bloat, ans fix the overly large startup time especially. The New Browser Wars are upon us, and this time it’s between Mozilla, Apple, and Google.

Read the full details on Apple’s new browser over at NETTUTS.

For those in the design business, this is a big issue. Do the designs you make work on the iPhone, and how long until your customers start asking if it will be iPhone-compatible?

I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks, as well as wondering how my own sites function on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

A few days ago, I discovered a post about Apple’s iPhone Simulator.

Designing websites that take advantage of the iPhone web environment requires more than simply designing for a smaller screen size. The iPhone automatically scales websites when needed. iPhone readers use multi-touch gestures to zoom or move around the page. Flash isn’t supported, and neither are larger animated GIFs (a surprise to me).

Tucked away in Apple’s free iPhone Software Development Kit is a terrific iPhone Simulator you can use to test and preview your websites. In the full version of this tip we’ll show you where that iPhone Simulator application is hidden, and include a few tips on how to test various iPhone features.

The Simulator allows you to see how the page will be rendered on the iPhone/Touch platform, and try-out Pinch and Double-Tap functionality. Basically, it’s the entire iPhone browser on your desktop.

The catch? The Simulator only works on the Mac OS. What about those of us who don’t have Macs (yet)? So, great, you don’t need to buy an iPod Touch to test sites…as long as you have a Mac. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck spending $300. I think a lot of us, especially professional designers, will need to do this in the future, as the iPhone gains market share. If Apple really wants to increase the number of iPhone Web Apps, and sites fully compatible with the device, they should probably release a Windows version of the Simulator.