Like many of you who develop on the Mac, I was amazed and very impressed by the WebKit team’s Web Inspector tool when it was unveiled in January. However, it was clearly not yet complete… two critical tabfulls of data were missing, which kept me turning to other tools—like the excellent Firebug for Firefox—when getting into a serious debugging session.

Well, tonight I was delighted to discover that the wait is over! On downloading a new build of WebKit today, I found that Web Inspector finally can provide those critical Metrics and Properties of each DOM element on my web pages. And boy, have they done a great job in the implementation! Every bit as cool and functional as the original bits, so I can now get all the details on any element of the page with a right-click of my mouse (control-click for some folks) and a simple selection of “Inspect Element.” Now come on Firebug fans, don’t you wish you could inspect an element that easily? Not that it’s hard with Firebug, but I always say, “Save a millisecond here and a millisecond there, and pretty soon you’ve saved a whole second!” (Just kidding… I never said that before.)

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Another day, another cool new WebKit-related application that made me stop what I was doing and take some screenshots! In this case, I also took a couple of home movies to demonstrate features that words may not quite do justice to. What am I talking about tonight? Much to my delight, I’m referring to the new public beta release of Shiira 2.0, an open source web browser based on Apple’s WebKit and its WebCore/JavaScriptCore framework.

Most of the folks who wander into this blog from a Mac OS X background have undoubtedly tried Shiira before. The project’s humble goal is “to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari.” That goal has been elusive in the past, although Shiira 1.2 has certainly put WebKit through some powerful experiments and come up with a few features that Apple would do well to emulate (draggable tabs, anyone?). But mark my words… if the Shiira team finishes version 2.0 before Apple unveils Safari 3.0 next spring with the launch of Mac OS X 10.5 (”Leopard”), they will have accomplished their goal—at least for a little while.

This prediction is based on no more than an hour of browsing and tinkering with the as-yet-unfinished Shiira 2.0 beta release. I’m not going to go through a blow-by-blow of Shiira 2.0 here. (For that, check out this useful “visual preview” of Shiira 2.0.) Instead, I want to highlight a couple of the features that I think could very well lead me to switch from Safari to Shiira once the developers complete a few more of the missing functionalities (e.g., bookmark bar). In my opinion, this browser is that good.

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I swore recently that I’d adopt a kinder, gentler attitude toward Earth’s computing majority, which knows (and thinks it loves) Microsoft Windows and nothing else. After all, switching operating systems is no easy task, and merely pondering a switch no doubt evokes mostly fear in the gentle Windows folk of this world. Continuing to use Windows, therefore, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s bad for your health, isn’t a sign of weakness or weak-mindedness. It’s simply Human nature to loathe and fear change and to cling to the familiar and comfortable. Hence that wise adage, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” and its close relative, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” All I can say is, Thank goodness I’m a Martian!

However, I never said I was going to be nice to narrow minded Windows bigots who pose as thought-leaders at the head of major technology news organizations. And so, with relish, let me dig in and deconstruct a writer whose ignorance, fear, and envy of Mac OS X have led him to write one of the most glaringly ridiculous and self-contradictory bits of Apple FUD I’ve read in months. The guy’s name is Peter Coffee, and you can tell by the photo that accompanies his latest opinion piece, Will Leopard Out-Vista Vista? that he’s bracing himself to be pounced on by guys like me on the Mac side of the fence. (By the way, it really is greener here, folks.)

MacDailyNews has already had a heaping helping of Coffee’s hide, but there’s plenty left for me.

Let me start by making quite clear my view of Windows-oriented technology writers like Coffee who presume to write about Mac OS X or to compare a Mac with a Windows PC: They shouldn’t. “And why the heck not?” You ask.

Well, here’s the thing. Guys like me who trash Windows for sport don’t do so out of ignorance of that operating system. After all, you can’t really turn 50 and be a professional techhie in this world without having had intimate knowledge of Windows over the course of its lifetime. Me, I started using Windows with version 2.0, and every employer I’ve worked for since then has made me use a Windows system. The only one I kind of liked was Windows NT 4.0, and that was only because it was so much better than the Windows 3.1 I had been using. So, you aren’t likely to find a technology writer who prefers the Mac who hasn’t also spent a lifetime working in Windows.

By contrast, guys like Coffee have no earthly idea what Mac OS X is all about. He thinks he knows about Macs by playing with the review copy he receives from the company, or from the few hours he spent back in 2001 with the first version of the operating system. Or from what he reads, or hears, from other technology writers like himself who have no idea what they’re talking about.

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I finally got around to watching all of the WWDC Keynote presentation from last week and culled a few movies from it that I thought others might enjoy. Like any long meeting—even one with Steve Jobs presiding—there are boring points or just moments of less importance than others. The five clips I’m including here are not necessarily the five most significant features of Tiger, but they’re the five I personally found most interesting.

If you’ve seen the QuickTime movies on Apple’s website, let me tell you… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Here’s a bit more up-close and personal look at some of the really cool things coming in Leopard. (Note: These videoclips are cut from Apple’s streaming video. What you see here is streaming directly from the Keynote video posted on apple.com. Another bit of QuickTime magic.)

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