Safari 3 does Windows

Submitted by ryantollefson on Thu, 06/14/2007 - 8:36am.

I was a bit surprised that Apple released its latest version of Safari for Windows. Safari 3 is now available for public beta for both the Mac and the PC. I used it for a little while on my XP machine and thought I'd share a few experiences I had with it.

Pros

Almost all websites seem to work without problems - even sites using Ajax & Flash seemed to work just fine for me.
Shortcuts for a new window (Ctrl+n) and new tab (Ctrl+t) work just as they do in IE 7 or Firefox.
Auto-filling of domains seems to work pretty well for many popular sites.
Dragging a tab to a new window is really cool - I really wish other browsers did this.

Cons

Java seemed slow to load and didn't work right for the java based FTP client I tried it on.
The font seems blurry even when smoothing is changed to "Light."
You can only resize a window using the lower right corner.
Forward and back buttons on the mouse don't work (at least by default).
You can't press "Ctrl+{Enter}" to have it fill in the "http://" and the ".com" - in fact, this seems to screw up the address line and you have to click it with your mouse to get it back.
If you maximize Safari on a secondary display it disappears.

Overall I think the browser seems pretty good, and Safari seems to work on most sites just fine (as it has done on the Mac side for a while now). I think the biggest problem with Safari is the interface of the program itself, just see my list of Cons above. I think the program has the potential to be very good, and I'm glad to see another browser enter the market as competion will help them all advance faster; however, Safari 3 on Windows still feels like a beta, and has some issues to work out before it is ready for everyday use.

For more checkout: http://www.apple.com/safari

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