Gordon's WebLog

Yes folks. At long last the Safari browser by Apple is now available for the Windows operating system as well as for the Mac.

It's still in Beta stage, but is available for download at http://www.apple.com/safari.

The installation is quick and easy (including Quicktime) and once fired up the screen is very easy on the eye.

So, what do you get ? Well, as I haven't ever used a Mac I'm not sure whether there are any new features in the Windows version of Safari, but here is a short list of its capabilities.

1) Blazing performance. Faster than IE and Opera, yes, even faster than Firefox 2, and this applies to HTML pages, JavaScripts and also the actual application launch.
2) Very nice brushed steel user interface.
3) Easy bookmarking - including for the inbuilt RSS feeder, with importation from any (well almost) browser lists, and you can also set a bookmark for a set of tabs - very useful. You can just store the bookmarks, or drag them to you toolbar for quick access.
4) Of course there is pop-up blocking and other security facilities, including "Private browsing" where history etc is not stored.
5) Find details on any page via the small search box situated at the top of the page.
6) When opening a page from a search a snapback icon is displayed. Clicking this takes you back to the search results.
7) Auto fill of forms and resizeable text fields. Let Safari fill in your name, street address, city, zip code, email, and other information.
8) Of course, what browser is complete without tabbed browsing.

I have now used Safari for just a few days now, and have found it both easy to use and very stable. My only gripe is that it does not always display pages when links are clicked (nor sometimes when the back button is clicked), but a second try seems to work OK ! Apart from that I have had no problems with any site I have visited. Should you have problems there is an option in the help menu to report bugs to Apple and these can include a screen dump and page source

Of course it does not have the extensions and plugins that Firefox has, not even themes, but no doubt they will come in due course.

Should you try it ? Well, far be it for me to recommend, but of all the browsers I have installed (IE, Maxthon, Opera, Firefox and Safari) It certainly seems to be very quick and once you get used to the Apple buttons, scrollbars etc, you should find it a very worthwhile addition to your browsing armory

Pricing & Availability. The free public beta of Safari 3 is available immediately as a download at www.apple.com/safari, and is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. The final version of Safari 3 will be available as a feature in the upcoming Mac OS® X version 10.5 Leopard, and will be available as a free download to Mac OS X Tiger and Windows users in October 2007.

Go on. Give it a try.