A Safari-on-the-desktop wish

This will surprise no one, but Mobile Safari is not exactly like desktop Safari. Most of these differences are limitations, but one stands out in my mind as a feature.

Namely, that’s the ability to zoom out to get the big picture of a web page.

It’s true that this is a lot less necessary on the desktop due to the large screens on many systems, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary at all. On my PowerBook, a lot of things scroll. Even on this iMac I’m using write now, the “New Post” screen scrolls.

A large image is already zoomed out in desktop Safari, so why not a large web page? I should be able to hit, say, F7 and have the page fit my window and click to zoom in on a part of the page.

While Apple is at it, they can add some indication that you’ve been zoomed out to images.

Here’s an example of the current view, using Macworld’s website:

You see a bit of the page, and can scroll for the rest.

But here’s what the zoomed out look would look like:

(In reality, this might be zooming out too much.)

Now imagine that scrubbing with the mouse pointer shows the area in more detail:

We haven’t got an obvious win yet, but we’re well on the way to something useful. I bet Apple’s engineers could make this an obvious win.