Apple Unleashes Final Version of Safari Browser for Windows

Apple announced availability of the final release of a Windows version of its browser Safari 3.1. Apple touts speed improvements over Firefox and Internet Explorer claiming Safari loads Web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2.

The release of Safari 3.1 is available today for both Mac OS(R) X and Windows.

Steve Jobs announced that Safari would be available for the Windows platform in June at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. A public Safari beta for Windows has been available since June.

Core Features

Core features of Safari 3.1 are pretty much in parity with competing browsers and include: speedy performance, pop-up blocking, inline find, tabbed browsing, SnapBack (a way to instantly snap back up to search results or the top level of any website after browsing down one or more levels), automatic form filling, built-in RSS, resizable text fields, private browsing, and security. Also included is Google or Yahoo search capabilities integrated into the toolbar.

More importantly the Safari gains important support for a number of new Web standards namely HTML 5's latest audio and video tags, as well as CSS Animations.

Safari Hiccups

Apple's announcement of a version of Safari running on Windows is welcome news. I'm not sure what, if any, impact on the so-called IE and Firefox browser war it will have. I think none. But there is big potential for Safari and its integration with the PC versions of iTunes and QuickTime.

In my very limited test of the final release of Safari 3.1 I found a few flaws. It appears the browser currently lacks the plug-in ecosystems that Firefox and Internet Explorer enjoy.

In the image above you can see the error message "Hmm...your browser is not officially supported" Safari coughed up when I tried to check my Yahoo Mail account that relies heavily on Ajax.

Safari was first introduced exclusively for the Mac in 2003.

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