Opera 9? Non!

Well, reluctantly, because it is an attractive piece of software. But at heart that's the only real charm of the thing.

Unless you're not living in cyberspace, you'd be aware that Opera 9, the "third" browser - the other two being IE and first Netscape, now Firefox - (kind of like the Fifth Beatle) was released a few days ago.

Since Opera has been free for some time now and since I like to experiment with free software, I downloaded it, gave it a spin and then deleted it. I'm back to where I started on the Mac: Safari.

What's to like about Opera 9?
- Slick, attractive interface But beauty gets you only so far.

- Tabbed browsing Yawn! Been there since Maxthon on IE-Windows, Safari, Firefox, et al. Even IE 7 does it now.

- Thumbnails of your open tabs Okay, but clunky interface: you hover your mouse over the tab to see the thumbnail. No point to that.

- Navigate tabs with the keyboard Good for quick jumps between your tabs, but Opera uses the digit keys 1 and 2 to jump to the previous and next tabs and those keys aren't located close enough to the trackpad to be convenient. I prefer my current add-in to Safari which lets me use ,. (comma, period) - much closer to my fingers. Opera also uses Option-Tab to cycle between tabs, but that's too close to Windows' Alt-Tab and OS X's Command-Tab for comfort - confusing.

- Widgets Well, might get the Windows crowd panting, but we've got Dashboard and we don't honestly need any more of those widget thingies. And even those other guys have had Konfabulator - now Yahoo! Widgets - for some years.

- URL shortcuts/aliases Potentially useful if you're fast on the keyboard (like me): You can define say, 'ymac' to stans for the Why Mac Blog URL http://whymac.blogspot.com, type 'ymac' in the address bar, hit Return and get to your chosen site quickly. It can be faster than Bookmarks if you've got a lot of those to navigate through. Maxthon had this about 5 years ago, but I've got the same thing in Safari with an add-in. So no, doesn't get me excited.

- Mouse gestures Potentially very sexy. Maxthon had these about 5 years ago too. Essentially you click and drag your mouse in a defined direction or "gesture" to do something like open a link in a new tab or reload the page. Can be very useful. But a complete bitch to do on a trackpad with a single button (like on my MacBook Pro). So, reluctantly, no.

What's to, well, dislike about Opera 9?
- Occasional weird page rendering GMail is a case in point. The font looked all squished up and the checkboxes were h-u-g-e.

- Weird color rendering Well, this may be because it's just too strict. For instance, I had tagged the blue text on my blog pages using the font color="blue" tag, which may be lazy, but all other browsers didn't mind. Opera however showed that text in burnt red. I had to recode the tag to use #0000CC instead. And "red" showed up as black.

- Crossword applets This was the clincher. Okay, I know it's probably a bit of an esoteric downer, but it was the reason I deleted Opera. I like tackling crosswords and my favourite is the Times cryptic crossword. It's available via subscription from timesonline.co.uk and you can choose to print it out or solve it interactively in your browser using a java applet. The applet has worked fine for me in Maxthon and Safari. I tried it in Opera. The applet loaded and then froze. I couldn't move through the crossword grid at all. I tried it a couple of times but to no avail.

Bye-bye, Opera.

Pretty Damn Funky

Yup, PDF. Support for the PDF file format in Mac OS X is awesome. Coming from the Windows world, that's the only word I can use. I'll say it again: awesome!

In my job I have to do a lot of pdf creation: sending files off to perfect strangers who may or may not have my version of Word or Excel and, more importantly, whom I don't wish to grant the right to futz around with the content of my files. PDF is the way to go.

Now, in Windows, I had downloaded a plugin for MS Office that allowed me to save my Word or Excel files to PDF. That was a darn sight cheaper than springing for the full version of Adobe Acrobat. And, of course, I had downloaded Acrobat Reader to allow me to read the darn things. And the latter kept pestering me to upgrade every time I opened it.

I had resigned myself to hunting about for a similar download for Mac OS X until I got around to reading the fine print.

Mac OS X supports reading and writing PDF files out of the box.

Reading files is achieved via Preview, so if you double-click on a PDF file in Finder, it launches Preview and you can wade in on your PDF.

Even cooler is the ability to create PDF files directly from your Word or Excel (or any other) documents. Choose the Print option and instead of printing the document, click the "Save as PDF" option, give it a name and file destination, and your PDF is ready to roll.

But the coolest of all, is that you can use the same technique to save entire web pages. That beats any Save As HTML or Save As Web Archive trick. When you want to save a web page that you're reading, hit Command-P and choose the Save as PDF option again. It's the best way to send someone a web page. Using a site's built-in "Email this page" link often sends only a link to the page, not the page itself. And some sites require the reader to register and log-in. And others might have browser-specific quirks. Yet others have pages that expire after a few days or depend on complicated ASP variables in the URL to display the right page. Sending the page as a PDF eliminates all these hassles for the recipient and is easy as pie for the sender.

It's also a handy way to save any web receipts that you get if you purchase online and the site solemnly advises you to "Print this page for your records."

Pretty Damn Funky!

Widget wows! Google Blogger

My first widget plug: well, the logical one is the widget I use to write this blog.

F12 gets me the Dashboard and there's my widget waiting for me, logged in to my blogger account. It's not a fancy interface but I can specify the title and use Command-B and Command-I to bold and italicise stuff.

And of course, I can pop in any html tags I feel like.

I can save my entry as a draft or publish it directly.

The best part though: since it's a widget, I can have multiple copies open, one for each of my blogs. That is mucho nifty!

Get it here: Google Blogger widget

Steel Vault

This is my first software plug on this blog. There will be others, I promise, and there's no real reason why this should be the first, other than the fact that I just used it.

Do you have trouble remembering the various passwords and identities and pins you have in both the physical and cyber worlds? Do you even know how many you have?

I just put together a bunch of mine and I discovered I have no less than 56! Fifty-bloody-six! That's like a respectable Test score (cricket, not SAT).

My RAM needs help in remembering so many pieces of critical information - I ain't getting any younger.

There are loads of password managers out there. I used to use something called e-wallet in my Windows days.

For the Mac, I've adopted Steel.

Clean interface, attractive icons, flexible categorization options.
And at $9, it's a steal.(Steel, steal, get it? Get it?)

What I miss from e-wallet: I can't add more than 6 user-defined fields. Not a deal-breaker, though: 6 is plenty most of the time.

Get it here: Steel

Monitor-ed

As I blogged earlier, I have a 15" Samsung LCD monitor for WPC and my original plan was to share that with Mini via a KVM. The obstreporousness of the KVM in refusing to recognise my wireless keyboard has put paid to that.

I am about to reconcile myself to unplugging and re-plugging the monitor from one to the other. But it's too painful a solution for a lazy sod like me. Just then as I'm poking about disconsolately behind Mini I realize that she's sitting right next to my TV - she needs to be there to connect easily to my amplifier. And I know that computers can be plugged into TVs, so this might be worth exploring.

My TV is also a Samsung, but more than that, it's an LCD TV. I had been particular to choose an LCD one rather than a plasma one when I went looking for a flat screen TV because the industry buzz was that LCD was the wave of the future. So I had settled on a somewhat smaller LCD that cost me about what a larger plasma would have. I had figured the trade-off would be worth it.

My hunch is about to pay off in spades!

I rootle about behind my TV and discover a socket that looks awfully like a computer monitor one. I frantically burrow through my drawer of manuals and locate the TV manual and with trembling hands I flip through the pages. Yes! It can be used as a computer monitor! And it uses DVI which is what Mini uses too! Oh, frabjous day!

There is little else to tell. In a few seconds Mini is connected to my 42" LCD TV, the wireless keyboard is on my lap and the mouse is at my side as I sit on the bed 10 feet away and surf iTunes in glorious technicolor and large-enough-to-read-from-ten-feeet-away font size and blast the music of my choice.

When Front Row is introduced a few months later, I scoff at it and flick the dust from the irreproachable Logitech keyboard at my wrists and laugh out loud from lazy eyelids. I've been on Front Row from Day One. (Why Front Row, anyway? I always thought the Back Row was the place to be at the movies.)