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)







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.

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:

[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.

[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!

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!

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