First Look: Safari 3 Beta for Windows
After attending the keynote address of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference today, I downloaded the public beta of the Apple Safari 3 Web browser both for Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Windows XP. (It also runs on Vista.) It runs reasonably well, although its features aren't drastically different from what's already available with Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. If you run Safari on a Mac, however, this might be your preferred Web browsing solution.
I installed Safari 3 easily on both the Mac and the PC. Both versions of the browser look basically the same except for the Windows menus appear within the Safari browser window. On the Mac, they appear in the Mac OS X menu bar. Rob Griffiths of Macworld noticed one curious thing in his first look. Safari for Windows only lets you resize the window using the lower-right corner rather than any window edge; this he says is common of Mac applications.
As far as how sites look in the Windows version of Safari 3, I didn't notice a marked different in photo rendering; however, Safari's text looked darker and blurrier than the same text in Firefox and Internet Explorer.
In Safari 3 Beta:
In Firefox 2:
We also noticed that Bank of America's site, which requires you to confirm a SiteKey image for authentication, didn't display correctly in the Windows browser. On the Mac version of Safari 3, however, the SiteKey page appeared just fine.
Safari 3 automatically imports Internet Explorer 7 and "Netscape/Mozilla" bookmarks. I was also able to import bookmarks using Safari's Import Bookmarks command. As with Firefox, I could drag and drop folders of bookmarks in an easy-to-use bookmark manager. Weirdly, hitting Control-A didn't work for selecting all bookmarks. (Control-A did work to select all the contents of a Web page.)
Cool Search
While all of Safari is new for Windows users, on the Mac, Safari 3 is an upgrade from Safari 2. The most notable new feature is an improved Firefox-style way to search for text on a Web page. Hit Control-F, and an oval search box appears towards the top of the window. Type your search term, hit enter, and watch the page go gray with your search terms highlighted in white or bright orange (that's the selected result). Use the arrows to scroll through all the results.
I couldn't find a way to make the search bar permanent; going to a new Web page made it disappear. And its close placement under the actual built-in search field (the one where you browse the Web) sent me to another Web site a few times by accident. Other new features include tabbed browsing pages that you can drag to rearrange or open in a separate window.
Speed Claims
Apple says that the Windows version of Safari 3 is up to twice as fast as IE 7 and 1.6 times as fast as Firefox--according to Apple's data using third-party testing software. We haven't yet put Safari through its paces in our own page load tests to measure that claim, but we can say that in today's browsing world, factors like site design and the speed of your connection have a much greater effect on how long it will take a page to load than your choice of browser.
We did run some informal tests for memory usage, and here, Safari came in last. In our informal tests, we started each browser with a blank page and then loaded two specific sites. Safari used an average of 45MB of memory at the end of the tests, significantly more than other browsers. Opera 9 used only 27MB, while Firefox 2 used 31MB and Internet Explorer 7 used 34MB. On a PC using less memory, you may feel this pinch. I personally didn't.
Safari's Security
On the subject of security: Safari doesn't use Active X so avoids the spyware scares that plague Internet Explorer. However, it's not immune to other browser exploits the same way Firefox isn't immune. For now, Safari is probably under the radar, although a researcher claims to have already found a potential vulnerability.
In the end, Apple's announcement of a Safari that runs on Windows is big news with big potential for integrating with the PC versions of iTunes and QuickTime. It?s a working browser but with a few flaws, and it currently lacks the plug-in ecosystems that Firefox and Internet Explorer enjoy. However with a presence on the Mac, Windows and soon the iPhone, that may change.
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I hope you cover the OTHER side of the story: the massive numbers of botched installs, the fact it does not cleanly nor thoroughly uninstall, the number of crashes it precipitates even when you can install it, the font rendering, the lack of adherence to windows' protocols like resizing of windows, it's problems with javascript rendering (things like drop down nav bars, etc.) that are WIDELY being reported on sites like engadget and slashdot.
Safari for PC is really useful for webmasters to test how their sites will look like on a Mac
Jenny
http://www.spaml.com
It will be difficult to rely on Safari PC to test how sites will look on a Mac as currently the PC version does not always display sites properly.
I think Safari will have a tough time on Windows. Displacing a default is a hard and long road to hoe. I was GM of Netscape so have some experience in this matter.
I blogged about this in Jan when the first Safari for windows rumors surfaced. If you?re interested in reading more:
http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/safari-for-windows-and-the-power-of-the-default/
crescentdave,
It's still a beta. Bound to be issues and problems. It will get better, just as many beta software do.
You can adjust font smoothing from the preference menu that does help get rid of the bluriness
I hope the beta gets as polished as the google or yahoo betas. I can understand some glitches ... but this is pretty massively a work in progress.
I do agree this will be great for windows web developers to see how it looks. Right now, I can tell you the one windows machine that successfully took the beta is NOT displaying websites like my iMac. This is problematical ... :(
i'm wondering if i got the same beta version of Safari that others are discussing here. i had zero problems installing on WinXP, it automatically imported bookmarks from IE and Firefox. it is noticeably faster than IE. i've had no crashes. and so far it has been able to correctly display every website i've used it with. i'm not sure if it will gain market share but so far i find it much more impressive than IE
Microsoft should realize that the only way to beat apple's tactics of bundling safari with itunes is if they promote Firefox. Better they lose share to an open source software maker, than to apple.
I've had no problems at all with Safari. I'm using Windows Vista and its WAY better then IE and its a little better then Firefox. As soon as I started using the Safari beta, i noticed right away the page load different, Safari is WAY faster then my Firefox and IE. So far, I love Safari for PC, even though its only been out for a day, its the only browser I have used since it came out.
So far, the new Safari 3 for Windows has been a bad browser for me. When Steve Jobs released on Monday, June 11, I downloaded it. By the next day on the 12th, Safari had already crashed exactly three times. If your curious, I was running it on a computer with 512MB of RAM and Windows XP Pro. Another thing that I don't like is that it doesn't yet support the keyboard shortcuts that seem universal throughout Opera, Firefox, and IE, such as clicking on a tab with the scroll wheel to close it. Oh well, feels nice to use as least. =)
I installed the Beta on XP, and I am quite happy with it. I like the layout better then Firefox and Explorer. It is also does feel faster. Not bad for a Beta.
However, I find this article a bit silly. Sure, Broadband makes a big difference in speed, but I have tried every browser out there, and a well designed browser can be noticeable faster.
Moreover, I find it silly people trying to discredit Safari being more secure then Explorer. I hardly find a bunch of high paid security experts who know Safari inside and out coming up with exploits hardly credible since these never get released into the wild. Nobody is claiming Safari is unhackable.
PS
Webkit, Safari's browser engine, is open source.
Not a few people seem to forget that Safari 3 for Windows is in Beta format, so there are bound to be a few teething problems. I found Safari to be as fast as my Opera browser but not nearly as user friendly or convenient to use. I had no problem with text blurring, but it had a problem displaying text which I attempted to post on an Opera forum, and had to revert to Opera to get the job done. None the less, I like the interface very much and prefer it to Firefox or IE7, so perhaps in about a years time when the majority of security issues and bugs have been ironed out, Safari 3 may get a better press report than now. Steve Jobs claim that Safari 3 was secure from day one has been placed under pressure, perhaps it was an illvadvised claim to make for a Beta product.
I think you describe the Safari search process incorrectly. You wrote, "Type your search term, hit enter, and watch the page go gray with your search terms highlighted..." Unfortunately, there's no need to hit enter; it uses the same idiotic "live search" method Spotlight does. When you type a "c" it immediately goes to the first "c" on the page. When you add an "o" it goes to the first "co", etc... As in Spotlight, it's annoying, useless and stupid.
Actually, it's so distracting that' it's worse than that; It detracts from the functionality of the search.
Also, the search bar doesn't automatically go away - you have to click a small "done" box. A bonus annoyance.
Other than that, my impressions of Safari 3 are positive. It is noticeably quicker than Safari 2 on my ibook G4.
Maybe it's just on my system but I noticed the first page I load after opening Safari on XP is much slower than any of the other browsers on my system.
So far I don't see any reason to consider this as a viable option, especially with the poor history this browser has had on the Mac. How many Mac users do you know that use FireFox as their primary browser?
I downloaded the Safari browser on to my Win XP MCE 2005 P4 3.0ghz HP, 2.5gb ram, 256 mb graphic card, couldn't get it to do a thing. The browser opened, but with no graphics. there were little 'globes' which I clicked on, brought me to CNN, NY Times, different sites, couldn't type anything in to the address bar.
Don't know if HP is proprietary with their specs, or if it's MCE, but something's amiss here.
I'll uninstall it and try again.
When I look at my sites in Explorer/Firefox it kills me to see the beautiful GEORGIA type face looks all thin and distorted.
Finally Safari comes to the pc environment and people complain that the text looks blurry.
Check the nytimes.com in both Safari and anything else and tell me which shows more resemblance to the original typeface design.
And which shows type with actual curves rather than straight lines that resemble a spreadsheet?