Apple's WWDC '07 - Safari for Windows

[Bobblehead]

Outside of the exploding icon when you pull a link of the quickstart bar, it sounds like most other browsers.

I'll be interesting to see if the rendering is any quicker, although if there are rendering issues like arsenal mentioned it may have trouble getting traction.

And I see this Mac user asking why Windows users would use it when many Mac users won't. link

There's only one problem with that scenario -- Safari sucks. A lot of Mac users won't run the browser (I'm one of them), so why would anyone run it on Windows?

On my Mac, Safari is buggy and unreliable. It's always crashing, and it doesn't offer basic features like remembering all the tabs you have open after you quit (or more likely, after it crashes). Until now, it didn't even warn you before closing multiple tabs, although the new version of Safari fixes this.

[Juventus3]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Outside of the exploding icon when you pull a link of the quickstart bar, it sounds like most other browsers.

I'll be interesting to see if the rendering is any quicker, although if there are rendering issues like arsenal mentioned it may have trouble getting traction.

And I see this Mac user asking why Windows users would use it when many Mac users won't. link

I think Safari will take a fairly large percentage from the IE crowd. Apple is a name most casual computer users are aware of, unlike firefox or opera. I'm not sure it's better than those two, but it kicks the crap out of that piece of garbage MS put together.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Outside of the exploding icon when you pull a link of the quickstart bar, it sounds like most other browsers.

I'll be interesting to see if the rendering is any quicker, although if there are rendering issues like arsenal mentioned it may have trouble getting traction.

And I see this Mac user asking why Windows users would use it when many Mac users won't. link

Safari does crash sometimes on my Mac. Nowhere near as much as Firefox or Opera on my Windows PC. So far it's been flawless on my PC but I understand there are issues on localized copies of Windows.

It doesn't offer anything more interms of features when compared to Firefox but I much prefer the webkit rendering engine versus gecko or trident(?). I haven't experienced any pages it can't render where it's not the fault of crap coding.

[Bobblehead]

I've found Opera seemed a bit quicker than FF, but there were a few things I didn't like in it and a few things I missed about FF, so I went back. And the only issues I've had in FF are almost always caused by a bad plug-in/extension/add-on (what ever name they have given it this week).

Edit: and as far as rendering, I don't even have IEView installed anymore. Back in the 0.61 Firebird days I had to open IE sometimes, but I can't recall the last time I needed to do this.

[La Flames Fan]

Wow, Safari has been fantastic so far. No issues whatsoever. Really, really impressed. Granted I've used it before, but its been fast and reliable.

Very cool.

[REDVAN]

I can't get the exploding thing to work...

But I deleted all the little auto-bookmarks manually.

[kermitology]

Question:

Is Safari for Windows going to be as big a piece of crap as iTunes on Windows? I've never used a more frustrating piece of software as iTunes.

All the things that you've described about Safari sound like how my firefox runs. BTW how does one crash firefox? I haven't been able to do that in probably a year and a half.

Edit: First impressions..

Operation is very similar to Firefox to me. I found that CP loads slower in Safari. I loves my addons in Firefox like IETab, Download Statusbar, Adblock plus.. so does Safari have anything similar?

Download window is exactly like the firefox default. But one file I tried downloading wouldn't download in Safari until I clicked the little button to go to the root page or whatever it is.. What's with no tool-tips?

I also have to ask about the google search bar. In firefox it generates suggestions for you, and remembers past searches.

Lastly, Firefox does an OK job with Microsoft pages like exchange mail servers, but works best when you can switch rendering engines on the fly (IETab). But Safari made me log in to log out? WDF?

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by Tyler

Cool news about Safari.

Was basically the only way they could get Windows users to develop for the iphone. Smart idea.

Leopard will be nice, but it won't be quite on the same scale as Tiger I don't think.

Well all they had to do was tell people that they were running off of a browser and that applications are AJAX based. All of google's gmail experience is AJAX.

[Juventus3]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Question:

Is Safari for Windows going to be as big a piece of crap as iTunes on Windows? I've never used a more frustrating piece of software as iTunes.

All the things that you've described about Safari sound like how my firefox runs. BTW how does one crash firefox? I haven't been able to do that in probably a year and a half.

Edit: First impressions..

Operation is very similar to Firefox to me. I found that CP loads slower in Safari. I loves my addons in Firefox like IETab, Download Statusbar, Adblock plus.. so does Safari have anything similar?

Download window is exactly like the firefox default. But one file I tried downloading wouldn't download in Safari until I clicked the little button to go to the root page or whatever it is.. What's with no tool-tips?

I also have to ask about the google search bar. In firefox it generates suggestions for you, and remembers past searches.

Lastly, Firefox does an OK job with Microsoft pages like exchange mail servers, but works best when you can switch rendering engines on the fly (IETab). But Safari made me log in to log out? WDF?

"The most frustrating piece of software ever?"

Enter:
Windows ME (and dare I say vista)
Anything to do with Sony

iTunes is one of the most downloaded music managers in history...Can it really be that bad?

/apple fanboy.

But seriously..

A lot of you guys are saying this and that about how firefox offers the same stuff. Firefox is not a horrible webbrowser. Apple released this to let 3rd party apps for the iphone be created, and get a market share of the interent web browsers currently dominiated by another program that should be on the above fanboy list.

[Bobblehead]

Zero-day exploits were discovered within a couple hours after release.

"I downloaded and installed Safari for Windows 2 hours ago, when I started writing this," Larholm wrote, "and I now have a fully functional command execution vulnerability, triggered without user interaction simply by visiting a web site."

And there is no SDK for the iPhone?

[Barnes]

The SDK is AJAX. Devlopers are just pissed they can't port their apps right over. I don't think anyone has realized the power of khtml based applications.

I really can't think of any application that I would want to use on a phone that I haven't seen already in Web 2.0.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by Juventus3

"The most frustrating piece of software ever?"

Enter:
Windows ME (and dare I say vista)
Anything to do with Sony

iTunes is one of the most downloaded music managers in history...Can it really be that bad?

/apple fanboy.

But seriously..

A lot of you guys are saying this and that about how firefox offers the same stuff. Firefox is not a horrible webbrowser. Apple released this to let 3rd party apps for the iphone be created, and get a market share of the interent web browsers currently dominiated by another program that should be on the above fanboy list.

3rd party apps are going to be written in AJAX. So long as Safari supports it, then who cares if Safari is on Windows.

Second. iTunes is probably the most downloaded because of all the people who don't know any better for using with their iPod. iTunes on Windows is the biggest pile of crap. It's slow, it hogs system resources, it's a pain in the ass to use. When I begrudgingly bought an iPod (I'm not happy about giving money to Apple, or the fact that I bought a ty mp3 player, but it was cheaper than anything else) I immediately put sharepod on it so that I can transfer whatever mp3s I want from where ever without having to use iTunes.

Third. Windows ME is something I've never used, nor anything to do with Sony, so iTunes still ranks number 1 in terms of worst software I've ever used, and I've developed my own apps, so that says something.

[Bobblehead]

If Ajax is all that is needed to interface to the iPhone, the other browsers already do that fine.

I think Safari is a way for Apple to get mindshare of current Windows users, so when it is time to get a new system they will consider Apple. Seems like a good idea to me, but the early reviews I've read so far have been mixed at best.

Ars Technica

Although Safari offers slightly faster page loading, the beta is extremely unstable and suffers from interface deficiencies that make its value on the Windows platform questionable at best.

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen (he has 2 articles)
Article 1

Either way, I encourage you to download Safari and try it out. I'm not switching away from Firefox2 just yet, but speed is the #1 thing that'll make me switch. We will see.

Article 2 (comparing speed, very interesting)

You can check the video for yourself, but the nutshell conclusion for the non-Safari browsers is "it depends on the site," but on my computer, Safari on Windows is not slow. The question is, are you willing to put up with a Mac-like interface, wonky text anti-aliasing and some weird rendering, without your FireFox plugins? I'm going to give it a try and see how it goes. It's a lot to ask.

[VanCity Cowboy]

not sure if this is apple's or google's fault, but i find it really annoying that google docs aren't supported in safari.

and really, it does crash a lot on my mac.

but i find i use it way more than firefox, not really sure why.

[Barnes]

Google Docs works in the beta but I think you are right about Safari 2.X.

iTunes does suck on Windows but calling it the worst piece of software ever used is a bit of a stretch. Much of what makes up iTunes is not available on Windows in terms of technology like Core Audio, Core Graphics, Core Animation, Quartz, and so on. Emulating the Mac GUI using/not using Windows API's must have been quite an undertaking in both Safari and iTunes.

[Barnes]

Here is an example of an iPhone App created in AJAX. It's a simple shopping list app you can click through items to add to your list and then check off at the grocery store.

http://www.mrgan.com/onetrip/

Oh yeah, no worky in FF or IE.

[Bobblehead]

Is it looking at the UserAgent, need parts of WebKit, or something from the Cocoa API?

[Barnes]

The site/app is working on some Nokia phones so I would imagine it would be Webkit? Nokia's browser is Konqueror based.

I will look at the source later.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Barnes

The site/app is working on some Nokia phones so I would imagine it would be Webkit? Nokia's browser is Konqueror based.

I will look at the source later.

Yeah, I saw someone mentioned the Webkit.

No worries, I just hate evangelists that use the userAgent to artificially block their pages for no technical reason.

[STeeLy]

I installed Safari last night, gave it a quick shot.

Can't change the color scheme... and the sites are all Blurry (on ANY level font smoothing at that.)

I'll stick to FF for the time being.