August 14, 2010 Meeting
Tony DiPiano opened the meeting shortly after 9 AM. There were about 55 attendees. There were three visitors, all of whom joined: -
Jean H., who heard about MLMUG from her friend Ken Hanson. She uses an iMac.
- Elliott C., who has an iMac, but was using his wife's Mac laptop. A converted PC user.
- Dennis W., a repeat visitor from last month.
Tony reviewed the agendas for the three Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which meet for the first hour.
Dave Berg announced plans for 3 iPad sessions in the Intermediate and Advanced SIG: 1.) iPad Basics and included Apple apps; 2.) Productivity apps; and 3.) Music and Entertainment. There was a comment from the audience that this should be a main program. The Board will consider that.
Maria Arguello reported that the budget for Andy Ihnatko's visit in November, is $600.
Main Presentation: Bob Barton — Web Browsers
[Note: Bob's slides are available online here.]
Bob showed SimAquarium, a free "widget" for the Opera browser. Then he asked who doesn't have a web browser? No one didn't. He summarized what he plans to cover today.
What is a Browser? An application that lays out an HTML file for presentation to the user in a form the page's designer intended. But not always; What you get is what you get (WYGIWYG). All have web navigation features like Bookmarks or Favorites.
You can get a lot of good comparison data on Browsers at Wikipedia. Actually, too much information (TMI). Bob showed a slide showing percentage of use by browser, for all platforms, which said the winner is Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). There was a question about Google Chrome, which no MLMUG member reported as using.
The next slide showed the results of Bob's poll in Yahoo Groups. Following that he spoke of the two main underlying engines: Gecko, and WebKit. Next, processor and RAM requirements. To find out your RAM amount, use "OPTION-About this Mac" which will launch System Profiler; the 7th (or so) item is the list is "memory". All the browsers he mentioned run on PPC and Intel, except Google Chrome, which needs an IntelMac.
Desirable browser features: Fast, robust rendering of web pages; good navigation, and flexible user configuring. He showed "Show Source" which has all the HTML Tags.
The next slide gave some basic definitions of browser terms, like URL and IP Address. Some browsers use Thumb Strips to show recent sites. Bookmarks are user-saved URLs. Bob uses the FISH inventory System (First In, Still Here). He also reviewed other definitions, such as Cache and Cookies.
Next, how to set browser preferences, which should be the second item under the Application's menu item (e.g. Firefox). Tabs include items such as: General, Tabs, Content, Applications, Privacy, Security and Advanced. You can tell if your connection is secure by the closed padlock in the bottom right and by the URL Having an "S" at the end (HTTPS). For banking and financial transactions, make sure the connection is secure (encrypted).
Add-ons - mini apps that add to the browser's functionality: Plugins typically decode file formats. Examples: QuickTime and Flip4Mac. Some browsers use the terms differently - Opera calls them Widgets. Bob showed a add-on sites for Mozilla and Safari. There is an add-on manager in most browsers.
Cool Iris gives you a Video Wall but the current version only runs on Intel Macs. [Ed note: That is a feature that is minor compared to CoolIris' other capabilities, which work on PPCs.]
FireFox' Tools menu lets you manage add-ons, get new ones, and get themes and plugins. DIVX is another video converter. Others: Google Earth, shockwave, etc.
MiniMap
is a miniature version of Google Maps. Bob also has a Dilbert icon, a weather set of links, and a thumbstrip icon on his thumbstrip. All these take up real estate on the page.
Bob showed a comparison of menubars for several browsers, highlighting any differences. OmniWeb has a workspace menu; opera has a Widgets submenu.
Safari details: Available on both Mac & PC. It has a pop-up blocker in the main drop-down menu. Many web pages are ad-supported. Safari's preferences allow you to pick your default browser, whether Safari or not. You can set where downloads are to be stored. Bob showed Safari's menu choices, and explained a few.
Autofill will let you fill in fields from its stored choices. The window menu allows you to view the Activity window, where you can download the video currently playing. History does not give you an option to list them alphabetically.
View Menu - See HTML Source. "Command +" will enlarge the text. Extensions has a list of all the extension installed in Safari. He showed his settings for several parameters: Java, Javascript; cookies; etc.
There were lengthy discussions about Java, Javascript, and 404 errors (which are unrelated to "fraudulent sites.") Safari has a "Reader Link" ala Readability. Mark Bazrod likes Reader better than Readability, because you cannot go back to the page. Moe Comeau pointed out that Readability has a BUTTON on the top left, to return to the page.
Safari 5 has Cover Flow for History pages, a video wall of webpage snippets, which you can easily scroll through.
Firefox ia the most popular Mozilla browser. Bob has an add-on that displays a kitten photo when selecting "about:Firefox."
Bob's favorite mail browser is in Sea Monkey, which also has several other capabilities like Netscape used to have.
Bob reminded everyone that they can get a Yahoo email account and greatly expand their use of our list on Yahoo Groups. Instructions on how to do that are at: www.mlmug.org/NuList.html.
He showed Sea Monkey's Mail interface. He likes the submenu toggles. He has many local folders. You can use more than one email client at the same time.
Next was Demeter, the current flavor of Shiira. Built for speed; Mac-only. has built-in thumbstrips, which can be turned off. Also Camino, yet another Mozilla browser. Others: Opera, with widgets; and MSIE, no longer maintained; iCab, which is shareware; Omniweb, the first OS X browser; Mozilla, no longer under development; Netscape, now discontinued; and Google Chrome - Intel-only.
Next Bob had a few slides on browser email clients: SeaMonkey, Opera, Apple Mail, and others. He showed some info on email filtering.
In Conclusion, Bob said the most-used Mac browsers are Safari and Firefox, but several other choices are out there, too, some of which have built-in email. Take an hour or so to try out some other browsers.
Raffle
Moe Comeau summarized the rules for the free raffle:
- You must be present to win, but you do not have to be a member;
- You can only win once, so the best prizes get raffled first.
Today's winners were:
- Steve Evans won the book "iPhone 4 - Portable Genius, donated by Dave Berg and Wiley Books, who also gave us discount coupons for 40%s off Wiley books.
- Michelle Barton won the iDevice Car Charger donated by the Raffle Fund
- Mary Faraone won the mini tripod, donated by Stan Horwitz
- ? won the battery charger w/AA battery, donated by Tony DiPiano
- Carol Campanelli and ? won the WD-40 NoMess Pen, donated by the Raffle Fund
- Rochelle Goldman and ? won MicroCenter SDHC card certificates, donated by Pete Torelli.
The meeting adjourned well after noon.
— Moe Comeau
Main Meeting Recording Secretary (Temp)
Author's Note: These minutes are written using audio recordings made on the venue's sound system. Those who choose not to use a mic will not have their questions or announcements included the minutes.
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