Apple Introduces Safari Browser for Microsoft Windows

[Brett_Tabke]

[news.yahoo.com...]

Apple Inc. launched a version of its Safari Web browser for Windows-based PCs on Monday, pitting it against Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

"What we've got here is the most innovative browser in the world and the most powerful browser in the world," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs said during his keynote speech at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Safari, which was released a few years ago for Apple's Macintosh computers, has captured about 5 percent of the world's market share for Internet browsers with more than 18 million users, Jobs said.

[bcolflesh]

Hopefully this will solve testing issues for the Mac-less!

[Robin_reala]

The beta is up now on Apple's site.

[bcolflesh]

Impressive so far - extremely fast on my older work laptop and no obvious rendering issues yet...

[jbinbpt]

I'm not seeing much speed improvement. Has anyone done a side by side to see how it renders?

[Neo541]

Downloads fast! :) Let's see how it works...

[SuzyUK]

I'm getting blank** pages, have seen it reported but no reasons as yet, anyone else?

** Pages load with graphics and Layout but there is no text, also browser chrome buttons and menus are blank

[bcolflesh]

I don't see the blank page problem - any mainstream URL you can drop?

I do see failures on tons of crappy javascript menu scripts that work by detecting the browser version for positioning.

[zafile]

Cool!

[SuzyUK]

>>any mainstream URL you can drop?

as soon as it loads, which I presume is the Apple homepage, I can't type anything into the address bar (it won't accept input) to test anything else am going to reinstall to see if it helps

[Easy_Coder]

Well, it's official. This Browser has a bug... it is in beta though.

I tried posting in this thread twice with Safari and my message got lopped off at the first word both times. I was going to state how fast it was but losing POST data is a big concern.

[glitterball]

What percentage of Mac users actually use Safari?
(sorry, don't believe anything that Steve Jobs says).

Just checked my sites in this - only one (css) thing that wasn't working properly.

[bcolflesh]

This reply is from Safari 3.0 (522.11.3) on Windows XP.

<edit> Easy_Coder - works for me on the setup above... </edit>

[Easy_Coder]

It definitely lost my post data on two of my posts. Brett removed them quickly and I don't blame him either because they looked like this:

>This

and

>T

[Neo541]

This is a post with Safari...I miss my Firefox extensions though :( Not sure if it's even faster than Firefox at all. Plus, just not used to the bookmarking ideas.

[Neo541]

Back button on mouse doesn't work...Deal breaker right there!

[Easy_Coder]

It's probably related to the fact that I installed it on W2003 Server... I have vista running on a virtual so I'll try that. The speed is amazing.

I noticed the back button on the mouse too... don't like that or the fact that I can't double click the address bar to highlight the entire URL.

[Neo541]

You can "triple" click the address bar...

<edit>Uh...sometimes I guess</edit>

[edited by: Neo541 at 8:21 pm (utc) on June 11, 2007]

[Jon_King]

>>Hopefully this will solve testing issues for the Mac-less!

Yes indeed! I have found some real site blow-ups that need tweaks - divs not working as expected and char width/ max chars in form fields that are going nuts.... Just more compatibility issues to deal with :(

I do find it very interesting to experience 'the other side'. Sort of like a new toy...

[edited by: Jon_King at 8:25 pm (utc) on June 11, 2007]

[Neo541]

Other than the main Apple link, any "aftermarket" plugin sites for this yet? I know it's been out, what, half an hour, but just hopin'. Otherwise, it'll go in my closet until I can get some of the features I need!

[GaryK]

Does anyone know what the user agent string is for this new version of Safari? Thanks.

[SuzyUK]

K.. got the answer to the missing text via an Apple support thread..

The fix for others that might come across the same - it's to do with a missing font

1. install Safari
2. go to your programfiles/safari directory and open up the Safari.resources folder
3. copy the two Lucida Grande font files to the Windows>Fonts Directory
4. Rename the Safari.resources folder to anything else
5. try to open Safari, it won't open - dismiss the error message
6. go back and rename Safari.resources to it's original name
7. restart Safari and all should be there now!

[JAB Creations]

Looks like the 2GB of Corsair value ram and socket 939 heatsink I just purchased for the older AGP socket 939 system I was putting together for OSX cross-browser testing is going to be a little less necessary. Would have been nice if they announced this about two weeks ago.

- John

[bcolflesh]

Does anyone know what the user agent string is for this new version of Safari?

Mine is:

Mozilla 5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en) AppleWebKit/522.11.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Safari/522.11.3

[GaryK]

Thanks bcolflesh. :)

[zCat]

Messes up badly on one of the blogspot.com standard templates... On a wordpress.com blog I just get the message "Safari is missing important features and should be reinstalled".

[adfree]

Bookmark import crashes browser without importing here. Opening bookmarks as well. I would have expected a little less BETAish release :-(

[adfree]

[cm.my.yahoo.com...] (BETA) does not work on Safari.

[physics]

I doubt I'll use it much (my laptop is a Mac) but it's a good move. People should be able to choose browsers and also they should be availiable for web site compatibility testing. It's too bad that MS stopped supporting IE for the Mac ... maybe this will remind them that this is a good thing to do (especially since there are more and more mac users).

[ronin]

This is potentially an awesome step forward for cross-platform testing. Can anyone with a Mac as well as a PC confirm that Safari renders pretty much identically on both platforms?