Safari for Windows

alan4cult

At the 2007 WWDC Keynote, Steve Jobs announced Safari for Windows
It is available at www.apple.com/safari
It should be good.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Nice one, hadn't tried safari before.

alan4cult

Actually not working for me on my desktop. Currently installing on laptop to see.

8T8

A surprising move from Apple though if you think about it they need a way for Windows users to create/test web apps for the iPhone so that is probably the primary motivation.

Anyway gave it a spin it is fast though the interface takes a little getting used to especially bookmarks which must be placed within the sub "bookmark menu" in order to be visible in the actual bookmarks menu & not the root of the bookmarks manager.

The font smoothing is very aggressive and jarring to the eyes, tried changing fonts & the level but so far nothing looks right like it does in Firefox or even IE.

Interesting on some levels & more competition in browser space is good but from my experience so far with it's not enough to tear me away from Firefox even if it is slower.

(Also experiencing some weird delays when clicking on tool bar menus though it hung on one instance but I waited a minute and it came back)

Cabaal

Its nice to see competition

Bard

I downloaded the browser as soon as Jobs announced it was available for Windows and blogged about it, so I've now got IE7, Firefox 2.0.0.4, Firefox 3 Alpha Gran Paradiso and Safari 3 Public Beta installed and Safari is far and away the fastest of the lot... definitely seems to be as fast as they're claiming - almost twice as fast as Firefox 2 and more than twice as fast as IE7.

How DO they do it!?

Great to see it finally making it's way to Windows. Hope it stirs things up a bit!

culabula

Bard wrote:

I downloaded the browser as soon as Jobs announced it was available for Windows and blogged about it, so I've now got IE7, Firefox 2.0.0.4, Firefox 3 Alpha Gran Paradiso and Safari 3 Public Beta installed and Safari is far and away the fastest of the lot... definitely seems to be as fast as they're claiming - almost twice as fast as Firefox 2 and more than twice as fast as IE7.

How DO they do it!?

Great to see it finally making it's way to Windows. Hope it stirs things up a bit!

You should try it on a Mac.....never, ever used a faster browser than the new Safari 3.0 -and so good, I can now drag all the others to the trash!

faceman

culabula wrote:

You should try it on a Mac.....never, ever used a faster browser than the new Safari 3.0 -and so good, I can now drag all the others to the trash!

^ i second this. im goin to download it on the missus' windows laptop shortly to see how it performs

Bard

culabula wrote:

You should try it on a Mac.....never, ever used a faster browser than the new Safari 3.0 -and so good, I can now drag all the others to the trash!

I have tried it on a Mac (well, an earlier version, a few years ago) and I completely agree with you. Brilliant piece of software.

My only complaints (right now) though are that I cant resize it the way I'm used to (clicking and dragging the sides of the window - not the bottom right corner - that works fine...) and the quick post editing feature on boards doesn't seem to work properly in Safari...

Dont be at yourself

test.

Works fine on the mac version!

Bard

Click-scrolling with the scroll-wheel on the mouse doesn't seem to be supported by Safari either, but I'm sure as it's a public beta its one of the many things they're working on.

Brilliant how you can resize textarea's inline within the browser! Very smart!

Lots of discussion on it here and I, for one, won't be using it as my primary browser on Windows just yet - for most of the reasons mentioned there. It's fast, it's just not quite as functional as Firefox to be an adequate replacement for it. Yet.

jahalpin

I downloaded the beta of Safari a few minutes ago. I installed it onto Vista Home Premium with no problem, however haven't been able to much with since.

For a start it wont allow you to select the address bar to change the address, none of the menus are working, they just show up as blank menus., the apple site only half works on it.

Apple have a cheek to release this version to the public as a "beta" version, looks more like an Alpha.

I have installed numerous betas from Microsoft over the years and they have never released anything as bad as this onto the public, by the time a professional software company like Microsoft releases a public beta the only bit of the interface that is unfinished is normally the help system.

I used Safari on a mac when I was in the Apple shop in SF, free internet access!!, and I couldn't wait to get back to IE on a Windows PC

culabula

It IS Windows we're talking about. You need to give it three goes -and the usual rebooting of the PC that goes with it. Then it worked perfectly.

As a result, got bored with such nonsense, put the VAIO away to sulk and went back to fabulous computing on Safari 3.0 on my MacBook.

culabula

jahalpin wrote:

I have installed numerous betas from Microsoft over the years and they have released anything as bad as this onto the public,

Darn tootin'!

copacetic

working pretty much flawlessly on XP, first time install without a reboot, all menus etc working fine.
Only issue I'm having is that they have overdone the anti aliasing on text
so it looks a little too blurred imo.

Otherwise it is faster than IE7 or FF for me, so glad to have the option.

McSandwich

Tried it in XP earlier and it worked fine. I was impressed with its speed.

jahalpin

culabula wrote:

Darn tootin'!

Whoops, edited original post

culabula

jahalpin wrote:

Whoops, edited original post

:-)

Winters

Installed it onto my laptop ( XP MediaCenterEdition) and it wont work properly. All the text in the menus is just gone and you cant type anywhere. I will try a reinstall on it later.

Running it on my desktop however now problem. Posting from it here )

jessy

I just downloaded it and sweet jesus but its fast!!!!!!

alan4cult

Winters wrote:

Installed it onto my laptop ( XP MediaCenterEdition) and it wont work properly. All the text in the menus is just gone and you cant type anywhere. I will try a reinstall on it later.

Running it on my desktop however now problem. Posting from it here )

I've got the same problem. Let me know if you find a workaround.

SirLemonhead

Installed it earlier (and didn't reboot :rolleyes: )

Worked fine, blurry text as others have said. It is really fast but i'll stick with my IE 7 and Opera combo I gueess

AntiRip

tried it out and although it is very fast I would miss my extensions on Firefox. Speed wasn't the main reason I migrated to FF from IE it was the customization. I like having the adblocker & toolbars I have now with FF and is quick enough for me:)

martin84

Really is a lot faster alright.

fatherdougalmag

Doesn't seem to like LogMeIn. Even when trying to get it to use the Java method. It reverts to static HTML click and wait interaction.

seamus

It's borked!

Although we have a heavily modified image, so that's probably why it crashes on me. I'll reboot if I get a chance and see.

ZENER

It's quick ok and I don't find the text blurring an issue on a CRT screen.
What is happening though is when I try to change the home-page away from the default (apple.com) it crashes on XP but not on a Mac.

I agree with some who would miss the plugins from FF though. When using XP I tended to use FF all the time.

ZEN

bill_ashmount

Just downloaded it last night. Couldn't believe how fast it was
Haven't played around with it much yet, so not too sure what the overall package is like, but first impressions are great.

faceman

there are plugins for safari on the mac so assuming safari becomes a popular choice for window's users, im sure it wont be long before they start appearing

Peteee

It's pretty damn fast, but the fonts are horrible.

I'm sticking with Opera

seamus

Nope, it continually crashes for me.

Doesn't seem to be anywhere to give Beta feedback...

NutJob

Has a 0-Day security hole just posted on Full-Disclosure.

Exploits already published online.

Id uninstall for a while if i was ye.

jahalpin

Safari still wont work on Vista HP. Has anyone managed to get it working on Vista?

Think I'll stick with IE 7

rsynnott

Peteee wrote:

It's pretty damn fast, but the fonts are horrible.

I'm sticking with Opera

Bizarrely, it uses MacOS text anti-aliasing on Windows; that's why the fonts are weird-looking.

faceman

NutJob wrote:

Has a 0-Day security hole just posted on Full-Disclosure.

Exploits already published online.

Id uninstall for a while if i was ye.

no different than IE or FF so!

Thrill

Just downloaded it and its working fine though it took a while longer than ie7 to load ( i haven't rebooted yet though).

I doubt I'll give up FF for it though.

enda1

seamus wrote:

Nope, it continually crashes for me.

Doesn't seem to be anywhere to give Beta feedback...

The little 'bug' beside the address bar seems to be for submitting feedback.

Annoying the way you cant ctrl+enter to fill in the www. and .com bits.

8T8

rsynnott wrote:

Bizarrely, it uses MacOS text anti-aliasing on Windows; that's why the fonts are weird-looking.

Yeah that seems to be the problem they aren't using cleartype that Firefox/Opera/IE use.

It seems a straight port of the OSX version with no considerations for the Windows platform in terms of it's UI and is very buggy after trying it out now for an extended period on two different machines.

Again it looks pretty much like just a platform to spur iPhone web apps as the iPhone uses Safari which is why they have kept how it behaves on OSX the same as under Windows.

(For those wanting speed well Opera or CPU optimized builds of Firefox easily close the gap at least till Firefox 3 is ready)

rsynnott

8T8 wrote:

Yeah that seems to be the problem they aren't using cleartype that Firefox/Opera/IE use.

It seems a straight port of the OSX version with no considerations for the Windows platform in terms of it's UI

Which is suggestive. iTunes is the same. It's not entirely impossible that they might put out a multi-platform development tool.

By the way, many people prefer the Apple antialiasing.

8T8 wrote:

and is very buggy after trying it out now for an extended period on two different machines.

The Windows version is indeed apparently very buggy. Remember, though, that it's a beta.

8T8 wrote:

Again it looks pretty much like just a platform to spur iPhone web apps as the iPhone uses Safari which is why they have kept how it behaves on OSX the same as under Windows .

Oh, I think it's more than that. They have about four months to fix the current problems (before Leopard release), which shouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility. Once it's reliable, it'll be an attractive alternative to Firefox for some people, especially for heavily Javascript-dependent apps. Google recently announced that Google Gears would shortly be available for Safari, for instance.

8T8 wrote:

(For those wanting speed well Opera or CPU optimized builds of Firefox easily close the gap at least till Firefox 3 is ready)

I'd be incredibly surprised if processor-optimised builds of Firefox made any difference to anything except possibly executable size. The 'target a specific processor within an architecture' thing is generally a bit of a myth; modern compilers produce alternative execution paths for supported processors where beneficial.

copacetic

rsynnott wrote:

Which is suggestive. iTunes is the same. It's not entirely impossible that they might put out a multi-platform development tool.

By the way, many people prefer the Apple antialiasing.

I don't know how anyone could 'prefer' it. I turned it to 'light' and it sorted
out the body text like I am typing, however they still try to blur the edges on bold type like the thread tools above. So they look absolutely terrible.

rsynnott

copacetic wrote:

I don't know how anyone could 'prefer' it. I turned it to 'light' and it sorted
out the body text like I am typing, however they still try to blur the edges on bold type like the thread tools above. So they look absolutely terrible.

All down to preference and what you're used to, I suppose. I find Cleartype (the Windows one) hideous, but then I've been mostly using Linux and MacOS on the desktop since before Cleartype came in, so I never got used to it. (Linux and MacOS, of course, each have their own, different, anti-aliasing, but they're more similar to each other than to Cleartype).

copacetic

rsynnott wrote:

All down to preference and what you're used to, I suppose. I find Cleartype (the Windows one) hideous, but then I've been mostly using Linux and MacOS on the desktop since before Cleartype came in, so I never got used to it. (Linux and MacOS, of course, each have their own, different, anti-aliasing, but they're more similar to each other than to Cleartype).

hmm, we'll have to agree to disagree. i like my type to look readable. bold type looking nearly double its size and totally blurred is not what I am looking for!

alan4cult

Beta update today. Fixed my font problems.

rc28

I downloaded safari for windows yesterday just out of curiosity and i used it for a few hours and have come to the conclusion that it simply is crap. I usually use firefox and it is simply in a different league to safari. The amount of extensions for firefox is amazing and safari seems boring and pathetic in comparison. Btw why does safari make text slightly blurred in appearance?
I honestly havn't noticed much if any speed difference between ff and safari- i use the "fasterfox" extension. Also it crashed once but I suppose it's a beta so i'll forgive it that.

rc28

mmmm....:rolleyes:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/06/wired_news_benc.html

alan4cult

Speed is not just internet connection it is how fast it renders content eg. JS and that is what Safari is better at. I agree it is very "sheep-skin" but on a mac they have safari extensions and I'm sure they'll arrive to Windows soon.

Just downloaded the beta earlier, so far I quite like it. I can't stand Firefox, mainly due to the big-headedness of some of their userbase - blocking IE for example and bullying you into using it. Seems I may have found an alternative to IE that I'll like using.