Safari for Windows

[AlexJ]

Just been trying out Apple's new Windows version of their Safari web browser. I think at present I'll definately be returning to Firefox.

Rendering

On this site alone, it's rendering of bold text looks awful and it manages to overlap/cutoff parts of vBulletin's 'Go Advanced' post editor.

Screenshots below (lossless PNG's, click to view full size)

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/88/casitesafarity5.png

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9550/caforumaf4.png

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/8761/caforum2qe1.png

Ease of Switching

IE,Firefox and Opera have all settled on using this symbol for RSS feeds http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Feed-icon.svg/16px-Feed-icon.svg.png. Many websites also use the icon and it has become effectively a standard icon to indicate feeds. Safari for some bizzare reason have decided instead to use http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/ShowRSSButton.png

In Firefox and IE (possibly Opera also) double-clicking on the tab-bar would open a new tab. This doesn't work in Safari.

Firefox2 and Opera9 both put the x to close a tab on the right-hand side of the tab. Internet Explorer7 and Firefox1 puts a single x on the far right of the screen. Safari on the other hand follows neither method preferring to put the x on the left-hand side of the tab. Those used to the FF2 method (like me) will probably end up closing the tab next to the one they want to a few times.

The single biggest issue I have though is that the backspace key doesn't take you back a page! I've got so used it as it's worked like that since I first started using the internet back when IE3 & Netscape were the norm.

Features
The 'snapback' feature allows you to return to a specific point in the tabs history (default set to the first page you visit). Nice idea, but I've got into the habit of opening a link in a new tab if I want to return to the original page.

Another slightly weird feature is that when you have two tabs open with the same word at the start of the page title, it'll remove that word. Have a look at the example below - the tabs are Safari's wikipedia page ["Safari (web browser) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"] and a Google search for Safari ["Safari - Google Search"]

It shows as follows:

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/4351/namecutoffsafariyd9.png

[Stephen Coates]

I don't think I've ever had much trouble with the MacOSX version of Safari rendering things. Not tried the Windows version.

I will be sticking with Opera for Windows because it does everything I want it to without problems.

I do however, find that IBrowse is fantastic when it comes to rendering pages. Sometimes it is a lot better than Opera/IE/Firefox.

[Harrison]

I hadn't realised a Windows version of Safari had been released. Always good news to see things finally going cross platform as it tends to improve their development over time.

The rendering of bold text definitely doesn't look nice. Other than that the screenshots seem to show it doesn't do a bad job of overall rendering, although I've read on many occasions that the Mac version of Safari isn't too great at sticking with xhtml and css conventions and can sometimes make a mess of interpreting style sheets correctly.

All browsers have their unique way of doing some things. Having the close button to the left of the tabs is obviously left over from the Mac where it still has the close button at the top left of all windows.


I do however, find that IBrowse is fantastic when it comes to rendering pages. Sometimes it is a lot better than Opera/IE/Firefox.

Another Steve quote to confuse and baffle us. :blink:

[Stephen Coates]

I don't see how that is confusing.

Opera etc can render some pages really well, but then some pages, even though it doesn't render them 'correctly', look much better in IBrowse.


Ease of Switching

IE,Firefox and Opera have all settled on using this symbol for RSS feeds . Many websites also use the icon and it has become effectively a standard icon to indicate feeds. Safari for some bizzare reason have decided instead to use

In Firefox and IE (possibly Opera also) double-clicking on the tab-bar would open a new tab. This doesn't work in Safari.

Firefox2 and Opera9 both put the x to close a tab on the right-hand side of the tab. Internet Explorer7 and Firefox1 puts a single x on the far right of the screen. Safari on the other hand follows neither method preferring to put the x on the left-hand side of the tab. Those used to the FF2 method (like me) will probably end up closing the tab next to the one they want to a few times.
I don;t see what difference the RSS logo makes. Safari's is much more meaningful to people who don't have a clue what RSS is.

As for close buttons, that is just a minor thing. All web browsers would be the same if everything was in the same location on each one, which would defeat the point in there being more than one web browser avaliable.

[TiredOfLife]

Only tested it on the works computer so far.
It's miserably slow.
I believe others have reported this.
Others have said it's faster than Firefox as per Apples claim.
Looks like there are still some bugs to iron out.
Will check on the peecee at home tonight.

[AlexJ]

Only tested it on the works computer so far.
It's miserably slow.
I believe others have reported this.
Others have said it's faster than Firefox as per Apples claim.
Looks like there are still some bugs to iron out.
Will check on the peecee at home tonight.

It's actually runs quite fast here, which is a surprise.

[Harrison]

...even though it doesn't render them 'correctly', look much better in IBrowse.

A great contradiction in that statement Steve! :lol:

If it doesn't render pages correctly then they do not look as intended by their developer/author. IBrowse has become too out of date to support current Web2 technology and so is not a viable web browser in most peoples view.


I don;t see what difference the RSS logo makes. Safari's is much more meaningful to people who don't have a clue what RSS is.

As for close buttons, that is just a minor thing. All web browsers would be the same if everything was in the same location on each one, which would defeat the point in there being more than one web browser available.

The whole point of a "standard" is that is remains standard on all sites that use it. The RSS logo is a standard used to represent RSS. Using a different one does seem rather strange. Maybe Safari have been excluded from being allowed to use the official one! ;)

I do however agree with your last statement Steve (which is rare for me ;)). The whole point of choice is to give the end user variety so they can choose what they like the most and what suits there way of working. No two people like exactly the same in life.

[AlexJ]

I don;t see what difference the RSS logo makes. Safari's is much more meaningful to people who don't have a clue what RSS is.

As for close buttons, that is just a minor thing. All web browsers would be the same if everything was in the same location on each one, which would defeat the point in there being more than one web browser available.

The whole point of a "standard" is that is remains standard on all sites that use it. The RSS logo is a standard used to represent RSS. Using a different one does seem rather strange. Maybe Safari have been excluded from being allowed to use the official one! ;)

Nope, Wikipedia says the RSS logo would be freely usable for Safari: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/feed-icon-guidelines/ The problem with the RSS logo Steve is not all feeds are RSS. Atom feeds are quite common.


I do however agree with your last statement Steve (which is rare for me ;)). The whole point of choice is to give the end user variety so they can choose what they like the most and what suits there way of working. No two people like exactly the same in life.

I can see what you're getting at but some degree of standardisation I feel is good. The main point of switching to Safari would be because it's got a better/faster rendering engine or features not available in other browsers. Because some things that are fairly standard design, are done differently to other browsers is not a reason for me.

[Stephen Coates]

...even though it doesn't render them 'correctly', look much better in IBrowse.

A great contradiction in that statement Steve! :lol:

If it doesn't render pages correctly then they do not look as intended by their developer/author. IBrowse has become too out of date to support current Web2 technology and so is not a viable web browser in most peoples view.


I don;t see what difference the RSS logo makes. Safari's is much more meaningful to people who don't have a clue what RSS is.

As for close buttons, that is just a minor thing. All web browsers would be the same if everything was in the same location on each one, which would defeat the point in there being more than one web browser available.

The whole point of a "standard" is that is remains standard on all sites that use it. The RSS logo is a standard used to represent RSS. Using a different one does seem rather strange. Maybe Safari have been excluded from being allowed to use the official one! ;)

I do however agree with your last statement Steve (which is rare for me ;)). The whole point of choice is to give the end user variety so they can choose what they like the most and what suits there way of working. No two people like exactly the same in life.

When I said it makes it look better, I was mostly refering to things like MySpace profiles and YouTube.

I know that the speed of the computer will probably determine how many minutes you have to wait for some myspace profiles to load, but some still look like a load of crap, and I'm sure you will aggree there. Infact, I even think that Harrison has done a better job of classicamiga.com than some people have done of myspace profiles. I have found that some of the crap on them just doesn't load at all in IBrowse. Better than having to wait for it to load, or have to wait for it to TRY and render some if it,

As for YouTube, the Amiga's lack of flash is the perfect excuse for not having to watch YouTube videos. And I think the the YouTube site can look a bit better in Ibrowse as well.

I havn't tried Safari for Windows yet. I will next time I get access to a Windows PC though. I don't think I'll be using it though because as I have already said, I am very happy with Opera. I do still like Safari for MacOSX. It's better than FireFox for OSX, although i can't compare it to the OSX version of Opera9 as I havn't used that yet.

[J T]

I use safari on the macs at work (right now, in fact).

It's....... OK. Does what I need it for, which is simple things, just browsing. I don't hate it, don't particularly like it - it's just there, and it works reasonably well.

Oh, and momentary hilarity ensued when I opened up Alex's pics and tried to close them by clicking on the wrong close button, the one in the picture, in fact :doh2:

[TiredOfLife]

There is some flash functonality in Ibrowse, but it's quite limited.
OS4.0 users can have Youtube stuff played using mime and Mplayer.
Not for us poor 3.9 users unfortunately.
Didn't have chance to try Safari at home tonight.
Maybe tomorrow (If I don't go out on the lash)

[Stephen Coates]

Lucky OS3.9 users more like.

I love not being able to watch YouTube videos!

I have only used it for about 3 minutes, but my first impressions of Safari for Windows are not good.

1. It is very inconsistant with the Windows UI. It shouldn't look exactly like MacOSX. Or should at least have the option of switching between MacOSX style and Windows styles.

2. The Apple website says it requires Windows XP or V*sta. It is working fine here on Windows 2000.

3. Has anti aliasing by default with no option to switch it off. At least IE7 has the option of switching it off. Although I do usually prefer MacOS/X's anti aliasing to that of Windows.

4. It is slow. Well, slower than Opera anyway. So I really don't think it is suitable for Apple to go round saying that it is the fastest browser when it clearly isn't.

I haven't really looked at many websites with it so I can't comment on it's rendering. From what I've heard I can't imagine I will find it better than anything else though.

Slightly unrelated, but has anyone seen Apple's new website. It's strange how the layout of it is more or less identicla to how it was back around 2000, just with the newer pictures, and the amount of CSS it uses? Apple's old site renders perfectly in IBrowse and looks great.

[Harrison]

That is a very good point you raise about the Safari UI Steve, but equally Apple are trying to inject their own identity, which the look of OSX is a big part of. Other Apple products such as Windows Quicktime has always looked a bit Mac like too. But I do think that anything, regardless of who it is from should be designed to integrate and use the host OS UI instead of the custom one from the developer.

This is the first release on Windows of the browser though so it may improve over time.


3. Has anti aliasing by default with no option to switch it off. At least IE7 has the option of switching it off. Although I do usually prefer MacOS/X's anti aliasing to that of Windows.

Windows Anti Aliasing? Do you mean for text?

[Stephen Coates]

Yes.

I hate anti aliased fonts.

Well, small fonts anyway. Big ones are OK.

[Harrison]

Windows directly supports Anti Aliasing of all fonts in XP and Vista using the ClearType feature built into the OS, therefore software such as browsers don't need to directly include their own form of font AA. It doesn't look so good when viewing something connected via VGA (CRT or LCD) but does look much better via a DVI connection to an LCD, or on most of the more recent laptop screens.

Some argue that the AA on Macs looks better than that on Windows, but it actually depends on the font being used. Also if you switch of font AA in both Windows and OSX and compare them side by side OSX looks horrible compared to Windows which is interesting.

[Stephen Coates]

I have used anti aliasing on both DVI monitors and CRTs, and I don't like it on either. Not for small fonts anyway.

Some fonts in MacOSX, like the Menu bar don't look that good without it, but with antialiasing still isn't very nice.

I have heard several people say that OSX doesn't display fonts very well, and I agree. Although to switch anti aliasing off in OSX you have to install TinkerTool, whereas in windows you have the option to switch it off :).

[Harrison]

I think you can also switch AA off in OSX via the command console.

[Stephen Coates]

You probably can. That is probably what Tinker tool does.

Although there is no option for it in the prefs.

[Harrison]

I've now installed and tested Safari and it isn't actually that bad. The latest version seems quite fast, although it is still noticeable slower than firefox. I did some tests loading the same pages from classicamiga in both browsers and Safari always took longer by at least a couple of seconds. And Opera is still the fastest of any!

The one thing I am impressed with is that it does at least seem to be fairly standards compliant and does render pretty much all xhtml tags and css properties correctly as intended. It at least does a much better job of this than any version of IE!

As mentioned from everyone it's Apple font smoothing technology is probably it's only main downfall. This cannot be switched off which is annoying as I would much prefer Microsoft's cleartype technology to handle the display of fonts. The Apple font smoothly makes all type darker than it should be, even when set to it's lowest "light" setting and I've noticed that for coloured text it doesn't retain the original colour as set by the page code, instead muting it and making the colour more muddy and darker. Something I definitely don't like. Just compare a page on classicamiga in Firefox and Safari side by side to see this with any of the red heading titles used on the site.

As for the actual UI of Safari, I don't mind it. It is typical of all Apple products. For me it is probably a bit too minimalistic and I definitely don't like the fact they are not using the standard Windows UI so it doesn't fit into the style of windows, and will look even worse if running within a heavily customised Windows environment. The Mac like aqua scroll bar especially look very out of place and I hate the rounded button styling on the bookmarks bar.

But as a browser it does seem to work ok and is better than IE. You will still not see me switching from Firefox as my main browser and Opera as the other I use a lot.

[AlexJ]

I installed it on my 2nd PC and it seems much better (it seems like a newer version). Still not everything is working perfect (my mouse back/forward buttons don't work) but nearly all websites seem to be rendering properly now (and if they don't, you click the spider/bug icon which will take a screenshot and send the URL to Apple to look into)

[TiredOfLife]

Still far to slow on the office computer.