Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Miscellaneous Ramblings Review

Cruz Browser Introduces Useful New Features

Charles Moore - 2008.11.17 - Tip Jar

Popularity: LEMLEMLEM

Rating: 3 out of 4

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

I have a new favorite WebKit-based browser.

I'll cop to not being much of a Safari fan. Safari 3 is a perfectly competent browser, fast and stable, and it has pretty well every feature I consider non-negotiably necessary in a web browser, but there is simply nothing about it that I find compelling, unlike Opera, my perennial fave browser, or even Firefox, which are the two browsers I use most.

However, a new WebKit open source browser project by Todd Ditchendorf, developer of the somewhat geeky web-app browser application Fluid (Leopard only), has got me using WebKit technology for production work. The Cruz browser (also Leopard only) is genuinely different - notwithstanding that it looks superficially an awful lot like Safari - and some of the differences are really convenient and useful advances in browser functionality.

Cruz browser window

WebKit Engine Plus Plugin Architecture

Cruz takes the familiar, solid WebKit browser engine and basic Safari-esque front end and adds a Firefox-style plugin architecture - only with a native Cocoa plugin API that opens up virtually unlimited customization and extension potential

A couple of plugins are included with Cruz, which is a modest 3.7 MB download, including one called "BrowsaBrowsa" that allows you to display three Web pages side-by-side in the same browser window or tab by way of two hideaway sidebars toggled by buttons on the toolbar, each page subwindow having its own address field and navigation buttons.

BrowsaBrowsa plug-in for Cruz

This is slick for doing side-by-side comparisons, coordinating research from multiple resources, and keeping an eye on a particular site while you surf in another site and/or have a search engine at the ready. Obviously, it shines best on wide displays.

Cruz browser

More unique and interesting Cruz features include a menu command that takes you to a site called "Down for Everyone or Just Me?", which lets you know if a website is having problems, and another that instantly creates a "tiny URL" to replace the long web address string for the page you're on. I use tiny URL conversions a lot, so this is a really convenient time-saver for me.

Down for Everyone or Just Me?

Thumbnails and Web Address Shortcuts

Another Cruz feature is a CoverFlow plugin that can display link thumbnails on websites that support it, although I found that considerably less useful than BrowsaBrowsa,. It will also display thumbnail images in Google search results that support it.

Cruz also supports Greasemonkey scripts, of which I am ignorant. There's a "Mail Link To This Page" command that may prove handy if you use the built-in OS X Mail email client. I don't, so it doesn't help me. What does work for me is customizable Web address shortcuts. For example, just type g in the address field, hit Return, and up comes Google.

Yet another interesting and potentially useful wrinkle is a Web Inspector window that can display page detail information and a Network Timeline represented in color-coded bar graphs.

Cruz Web Inspector

There's more: built-in user scripting, user styles, single-window browsing mode, full-screen mode, integrated Gears-loading, custom user-agent strings, and custom window opacity/level/style.

Stable and Speedy

Despite being a 0.1 release, Cruz has proved to be quite stable. I've been running it now for about three weeks, using it a lot, and have had just one crash in that time and not much in the way of other unwelcome behavior. Cruz is also at least as fast as Safari, if not faster, which is to say satisfyingly speedy.

Negatives? Unfortunately, there is no bookmark import function yet, something I expect will be added in a later build. Session Restore, which I really can't abide being without anymore, is there already. It works great for routine shutdowns and startups, but for some reason was unable to recover the session I had open at the time of that one crash. Having two Macs in production service still running Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", I was also disappointed that Cruz requires Leopard, but one does have to eventually bow to the inevitable.

Good browser. Three stars with a bullet.

System requirements: OS X 10.5 Leopard

System Support: PPC/Intel

Free LEM

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2009 by Charles W. Moore. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.