
Safari on Windows - palish
http://www.apple.com/safari/
======
palish
This will be really useful for those of you who need to test your webapp on
Safari, but only run windows. Actually, I'm probably the only one who does
that.

Also, if you're going to develop a webapp for the iPhone, get it working on
Safari and it will just work on the iPhone. So says Steve..

Shawn

~~~
benhoyt
"Only run windows ... I'm probably the only one." -- nup, me too. :-) What I
was wondering, though, is whether the Windows version will have any quirks of
the Mac one? In other words, presumably it'll be a useful test of how pages
will look in Safari/Mac.

Must say, that resizable textbox feature is sweetness! I've seen that done
with JavaScript before, but built into the browser -- cool.

It seems to use its own font-smoothing algorithm rather than the Windows one.
Everything (including tiny fonts) are aliased, which at least on my laptop is
not as clear.

~~~
mdakin
I don't have access to the Windows version BUT you might be able to mitigate
the small-font problem with some configuration. In the Mac version of Safari
you can to to Preferences-Advanced and tell Safari to "Never use font sizes
smaller than X." And in OSX's System Preferences you can go to "Appearance"
and tell OSX to "Turn off text smoothing for font sizes X and smaller." Good
luck!

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plusbryan
Oh god, this is HORRIBLE news. I would have preferred something like "Apple
finally gives up on Safari"

~~~
pg
Is there some reason people use Safari instead of Firefox?

I personally can't use any browser except Firefox, because I can't stand the
web without adblocking.

~~~
schoudha
Safari does block the annoying and often superfluous pop up ads. You can a
third party plugin to block other ads at:

<http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/?c=Adblocking>

However, don't you think ads are a necessity to keep the web free? I've always
wondered what the users of adblocking software desire.

~~~
pg
I don't mind text ads, or low-key static images. What I can't stand are ads
that bounce around. By design, they distract you. When advertisers abuse the
user, I have no problem blocking them.

Curiously, there is a startup in the summer cycle that's working on the
problem of how to make tolerable ads.

~~~
maxklein
Curiously? No, not curiously! YOU picked them. OF COURSE there is a startup
doing something you feel there is a need for. YOU are the judge! :)

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tx
+1. Thank you for the link. Currently I use my rare visits to the Apple store
to test our pages on Safari :-) Besides, it is truly a speedy browser,
especially when connection is good.

Their page, however, along with their benchmarks is very misleading. It is
widely known that IE starts almost instantly because of of the DLLs it uses
have already been preloaded by Windows apps (regular file explorer in
particular).

Also their JavaScript performance of IE7 is also a suspect. In my own use (not
scientific in any way) IE7 outperformed FireFox by 30% but I was using alot of
regular expressions so it was mostly regex performance rather than pure JS
execution speed.

~~~
fnord123
"It is widely known that IE starts almost instantly because of of the DLLs it
uses have already been preloaded by Windows apps (regular file explorer in
particular)."

That's not my experience. It seems to lock the OS as it tries and grab some
system-wide resources (DirectX?). The cursor stops moving and mp3s stop
playing for a good half minute.

The same happens with Windows Explorer. Even Firefox comes up quicker than
Windows Explorer.

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rms
Is there anyway to turn off font smoothing? I like Windows standard (not
Cleartype) font smoothing over everything else.

~~~
especkman
You can turn it down, but not off, as far as I can tell. Actually, even
turning it down didn't make much difference. It looks a bit odd.

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socrates
beats running IE (IE 7 still doesn't run on windows 2000, safari does!) and
should make cross platform dev at least a little easier for windows web
programmers (is there still such a thing?).

~~~
plusbryan
I doubt it will take any market away from IE. Those who know anything use
firefox. Like the green party candidate that steals 5% of the vote and gets a
republican elected, I think all this will do is take a chunk out of firefox's
base.

~~~
martin
Right. I've always wondered about Apple's reasoning for releasing Safari to
begin with. If their goal was to decrease IE's market share, I'd think they
would've put their browser R&D; dollars into Firefox and helped to build a
single, truly great alternative browser. Plus, it seems that supporting a
cross-platform browser would be another way to win over Windows users to the
Mac: "You can run many of your favorite applications, like Microsoft Office,
and even Firefox, the world's most powerful web browser!"

Does anybody know more about why Apple took this route?

