Safari for Windows

[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)