In case you missed this over at TUAW this morning.
A zero-day vulnerability in Safari that could litter a user’s desktop (or downloads folder) with arbitrary files is a serious security flaw, argues ZDNet, and not a mere “annoyance” as Apple claims.
In theory, a user must click a link to visit a malicious website that can begin downloading arbitrary files (including applications) to the user’s computer without their permission. The problem affects both the Windows and Mac versions of Safari.
If you are using Safari (Mac or Windows), just be careful where you click. And be sure to pass this along to your other Safari using friends that you know don’t read any of ‘the blogs’.
The Lad’s mom was just here for the weekend. What a nightmare. But, instead of dredging that up, I shall instead take this time to tell you why I’m not going to be able to use Safari full time. It’s pretty easy, really. And I can sum it up for you into one word.
Gmail.
Huge fan of the Gmail I am. In fact, it’s the only thing that I have found that can actually manage the volume of email I have to sort through. Including the over 15K pieces of spam I receive every month. Nothing else even comes close.
Well, Google, in their infinite wisdom, has been making changes. Changes that are actually pretty cool but, and you probably saw this coming, don’t work with Safari. The big one is auto-complete.
I use auto-complete exclusively for filling in the To:, CC: and BCC: boxes. Without fail. 100% of the time. But one of the changes in Gmail has made that feature no longer work in Safari.
That’s ok, since I’ve been using IMAP and Mail.app, right?
Not so much.
IMAP in concept is a great idea. All of your email stored on a server and you can access it with a client on your desktop. Bonus with Gmail is that you can access with a kick ass web client as well. The problem, for me, is that is too slow. Or I have too many labels (folders for you desktop app users). And Spam is handled weird.
I can deal with the slow. But when I’m not notified of a new message because it is in the bottom of my label list, that is a bit of a pain in the arse. But, I do now exactly how many spam messages I have, always staring at me from the dock. Sure, I could turn that off and only have notifications about messages in my inbox, but what about the labels? This is problematic for me.
So, what I have done, is turned firefox into my web-based application running app. I’m still using Safari for general browsing, but for email (Gmail), news (Google Reader) and FTP (leave me alone about anything because I have tried them all and they all suck), I’m using FireFox. All set to tabs that open when it starts.
Now if the Mozilla guys could make FF run as fast as Safari under Leopard I would be a VERY happy guy.
