Safari On Windows

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Interested in running Safari on Windows? Now you can. Outside the handful of people that have to use both a Mac and a PC, I don’t see Safari cutting too deep into Firefox or Microsoft’s market share. Still, this is pretty cool news for Safari fans.

In a bid to increase their market share in the browser world, Apple has announced the availability of their Safari Web Browser for Windows. Benchmarks by Apple claim that Safari on Windows is twice as fast as IE and 1.6 times as fast as Firefox!
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It's cool, and was completely unexpected to me...

But one has to ask... "Why?"

Honestly, Safari doesn't do much of anything exceedingly "better" than IE or FireFox.

Hopefully it's saving grace will be pure speed, and "security" (meaning not prone to normal IE Exploits)

Other than that, it's not much of anything.
 
Unless Safari can predict what sites I want to load or read my mind regarding navigation, I don't see any hope for it.
 
Well it certainly seems fast...

(And this is kind of wierd, actually)

edit: it apparently doesn't support the overlay menus like we have on [H] either... yet on OS X it does.

odd.
 
As a web developer, we don't need another browser. Firefox and IE are enough trouble and Safari is much worst.
 
It's kind of neat, another *toy* to play with. It indeed does appear faster, have to spend more time with it, but so far so good.
 
I can't get it to recognize the forward and back buttons on my mouse. It will not autoscroll when I press the scroll wheel. These are features I use everytime I surf the web. Unless they fix this issue I do not see a need for Safari.
 
1.6 times faster than firefox. maybe. but also 10.0 times suckier
 
Safari is a pretty good program on the mac. Should be interesting to play around with.
 
saintrobyn said:
I can't get it to recognize the forward and back buttons on my mouse. It will not autoscroll when I press the scroll wheel. These are features I use everytime I surf the web. Unless they fix this issue I do not see a need for Safari.
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I concur, I'm using it now and I'd have to say on the whole.. I like it so far.. it does load things faster.. But not being able to use back/forward buttons is crappy.. If they fix this.. I might continue to use it.. I'm sick of firefox's odd bugs with things i NEED to work. and IE's overall bloatedness.
 
A little question.

Does anyone know how to disable the font smoothing on the Safari windows beta completely?

Personally, I can't stand font smoothing, and I can't even give Safari a fair shake if I have to look at blurry text.
 
I downloaded safari, and now I have about 15 .swf downloads on my desktop. No idea how to install java/Flash onto Safari. Needless to say it will probably be uninstalled soon.
 
Diablo2K said:
I downloaded safari, and now I have about 15 .swf downloads on my desktop. No idea how to install java/Flash onto Safari. Needless to say it will probably be uninstalled soon.
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My installed plugins show it was installed by default...
 
[Previously posted in the apple forum]
Just downloaded the safari beta from apple.com/safari for both my PPC mac and my XP laptop.

strangly and rather disappointingly, the PPC one has been bloody unstable. crashed about 4 times within half an hour. and the XP one is fine. maybe apple got a bit too good at developing for windows....

another problem with the PPC one is that when you first load a page, it doesnt load. and then you gotta click refresh for it to load properly. so restored back to safari 2 until they've sorted the probs. gonna stick with the XP version though. loving a bit of apple on the windows

[replying to some people in here]
I think the point of putting safari on windows is to increase the awareness of it and also to help dev's make applications for the iPhone since all 3rd party stuff is gonna have to go through safari on the iphone. its a sensible move
 
JohnleMVP said:
As a web developer, we don't need another browser. Firefox and IE are enough trouble and Safari is much worst.
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Opera and Safari (and Konquerer, which uses the same rendering engine) support standards much better than any browser. If anything, it lets developers test out their sites without using a Mac. How is that a bad thing?
 
Weenis said:
I'm sick of firefox's odd bugs with things i NEED to work. and IE's overall bloatedness.
Click to expand...

You might wanna check how much memory Safari is using. I'm on 4 tabs and it's using 250MB of memory. I waited it to release the memory after I have closed the window and it's still at that level. It's also using up 6-8% of my cpu even when I'm not doing anything. Definitely not gonna use it when I'm on battery.
 
i think i will stick with opera... but definately good to have so i can preveiw my webpages on another browser...
 
kheldorin said:
You might wanna check how much memory Safari is using. I'm on 4 tabs and it's using 250MB of memory. I waited it to release the memory after I have closed the window and it's still at that level. It's also using up 6-8% of my cpu even when I'm not doing anything. Definitely not gonna use it when I'm on battery.
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Same thing here :(

Considering I am always kicking Apple fans in the nuts, I was hoping to have something good to say about it. Text is blurry and it is seriously hogging resources (Mem & CPU)
 
I use both IE and Firefox at work and installed Safari today. I launched Safari + IE and Safari + Firefox using 1 click shortcuts on the task bar and Safari came in 2nd everytime. (I even clicked the Safari link first/a few milliseconds sooner) I have all browsers set to the same homepage (Google). I'll admit the main window comes up lightning fast, but Firefox will have the entire page displayed and ready to go before Safari. My work system is an average system: 3G P4 (single core) with 2Gs of RAM.

Perhaps they were comparing to IE6 because I don't see anything here that make this the fastest browser. I'd also like to see someone do a thorough evaluation...
 
guys it is a beta also :rolleyes:
 
I posted some comments on it in this thread: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1200241

Hopefully it will use the same engine as the Mac version, but so far it looks like it might be different (if floating menus aren't working right on this site). Actually, it looks like the safari version is completely different.

Code: 
Safari
Register	FAQ	[H]ard|OCP	Search	Today's Posts	Mark Forums Read

IE
Register    FAQ    [H]ard|OCP    Today's Posts    Search

Safari has Mark Forums Read and doesn't have the search drop-down, but its search is also before "Today's Posts". So maybe its not a browser problem but something up with the forums safari/other browser code.

The fact that it uses thicker fonts also makes websites with small text hard to read because it becomes blurry or squished together.
 
B. W. said:
Opera and Safari (and Konquerer, which uses the same rendering engine) support standards much better than any browser. If anything, it lets developers test out their sites without using a Mac. How is that a bad thing?
Click to expand...
Very true. I hate asking people "Hey, how does this look on your Mac?". Now I can just see for myself.

I'll install it on my wifes comp :D, I don't want to deal with it on my work machine.
 
Spleeze said:
A little question.

Does anyone know how to disable the font smoothing on the Safari windows beta completely?

Personally, I can't stand font smoothing, and I can't even give Safari a fair shake if I have to look at blurry text.
Click to expand...

I'd be overjoyed if someone could figure this one out. The font-smoothing hurts my eyes so badly.
 
yeah, not a fan of the font smoothing. Do it without blurring it and that's great.
I'll give this one a fair shake as the betas are released, but at this point, Opera is still my browsing program of choice. Just too many things to give up.
 
That is a good news but I am not familiar with Safari. I just hope they would expand into other internet browsers.
 
So iTunes is now going to be bundled with Quicktime and Safari. Great, more crappy bundled software.
 
I honestly don't see the point. Unless, of course, they are going to get Microsoft to replace the copy of the firefox download utility that they include with every windows install with safari.
 
Well, it will be alot less work for me to preview my webpages now that I have all the browsers on one pc. I used to have to go to the mac lab at school to make sure my pages worked correctly. I always found Safari to be spot on in rendering my pages how I intended them to be.

And yeah, the font smoothing is messing with my eyes.
 
Ok, from the perspective of a person that isn't a pessimistic Windows Fanboy, me, a person who would gladly kick anyone in the nuts who says that Windows is a superior platform...

...IT'S A BETA! It's going to behave like a beta, bugs and all (kinda like how Windows Vista behaves right now, except the Safari beta is free...)

I'm using Safari Beta right now. On Windows, and on my Mac. It feels like what it was like using Safari Beta on Mac OS X was a few years ago. Hell, even the bug button is right next to the URL button. I already used it twice (one to log the fact that the forward and back buttons on my Logitech mouse don't function correctly, and I'm having issues highlighting text in a PHP related text window, like the one I am using to write this message with). It's faster than Firefox, and I refuse to open the plague that is IE (Lord have mercy on my wicked soul if I ever had to... Worst. Browser. Ever.), and I'm still waiting to find another browser that features the snap-back button and a quick RSS launcher that's contained within the browser (you can subscribe to a feed in Firefox, but in Safari, you just push the RSS button and it shows you the latest feeds right then and there). Also, I have found that there are certain secure sites that I can log into and print a page from that Firefox absolutely refuses to do that Safari doesn't give me any grief with what-so-ever.

Another thing to keep in mind is something that I have to remind myself of, being a Mac user who stopped using Safari 2 after a while: This is also a new version. Safari 2 wasn't a terribly exciting rev over version 1, and, as such, faded into the backgrounds of most Mac user's memories after being replaced with Firefox (some people still use it). Safari feels faster to me (it sure as hell loads my homepage faster than Firefox does, on both the Mac and the Window-box), and it has the simplicity I remember of the original version(I prefer my browsers, like many other communication services, sans ridiculous and wasteful add-ons), and you can pull tabs and make them separate windows and vice versa (something I don't see as a feature in either IE or Firefox).

P.S.: MH Knights and bbz Ghost, apparently you are new to computers and ill informed about Macs and the 'right click' thing. It's been there. For years. I know because I've used multi-button mice on Macs since the mid-1990's for Photoshop while you neanderthalic 'peecee' users were still fiddling around with the 'interweb' and 'discovering' folding (SETI@Home user since 1995, thank you). I'll chalk your comments up to plain ignorance or the fact I use my computers for something besides gaming and downloading porn...
 
It is very quick. But as a new beta it has a lot of problems. When they allow my back button on my mouse to work, I will take another look.
 
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