Monday, November 01, 2004, 05:00 pm

Tiger: Safari to gain native PDF, Postscript support, Spotlight in dialogs (updated)

By Katie Marsal

With the latest pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger," Apple's Safari Web browser has gained support for additional file formats while the company's Spotlight technology continues to conquer new territory through the OS.

Apple Computer's forthcoming meta-based Spotlight search technology will be accessible through a wide range of Tiger applications in addition to the Mac OS X Finder, sources tell AppleInsider.

In the most recent builds of the forthcoming OS, Apple has revised its Navigation Services (open and save dialog boxes) to seamlessly incorporate the search technology. In addition to a built-in Spotlight search field, the dialogs sport a Spotlight location bar to further refine searches, effectively reducing the time and patience required to locate files in the file system.


Meanwhile, sources are reporting several other changes to Tiger since the first pre-release of the system, which was distributed in June. By default, screenshots are now saved in PNG format, as opposed to PDF. Additionally, an update to the Tiger's Safari Web browser will display PDF and Postscript documents without the need for a third party plug-in.

Sources have also noted the addition of multiple iChat accounts in the most recent builds of iChat 3.0, a forthcoming update to Apple's instant message software. iTunes integration also remains as an option in the application—albeit non-functional—but tabbed chats have yet to surface.

Apple this weekend seeded Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger build 8A294 to its general developer population, and followed up with a slightly modified release of the same build, which was delivered to employees and trusted third party affiliates on Monday.

Update: iTunes integration in the latest builds of iChat 3.0 does in fact function properly, but requires last week's release of iTunes 4.7.