“Designers and photographers—or just any users who want truly accurate colors in their browser images, will be pleased with [Apple’s Safari 3.1 for Windows] browser. For color correction, Safari honors Web images’ ICC profile. Font rendering also takes advantage of Apple’s design technology chops. You get a choice of four font-smoothing options, with suggestion for what works best on CRTs and flat panels. The fonts do, indeed, look nice and Mac-like,” Michael Muchmore reports for PC Magazine.
“Safari 3.1 passes the Acid2 browser test from the Web Standards Project with flying colors. The test evaluates compliance with HTML and CSS standards. In addition, the Windows and Mac versions both score a 75, the highest score I’ve seen, on Acid3, which tests DOM2, XHTML 1.0, and some CSS3 compliance. By comparison, Firefox 2 gets only a 53, while Internet Explorer 7 earns a measly 12 points. Sadly, the old standards leader, Opera, gets to about 40 and then promptly crashes—the only browser I’ve tested that crashes the test,” Muchmore reports.
“In a couple of days’ use of the new browser, I wasn’t able to crash it once. I ran it on Windows XP SP2, Vista, and Mac OS X Leopard without incident,” Muchmore reports.
“Safari’s Private Browsing option will appeal to many, and it’s a feature I haven’t seen in other browsers. When you activate it, nothing from your current session is saved—no cookies, cached pages, or form entries. This is much better than the choice other browsers make to delete all private data. It lets you keep cookies and form entries you want, like log-ins for other sites you use,” Muchmore reports.
“Safari doesn’t support ActiveX, saving you from the fear of downloading nasty code but preventing you from the pleasure of using sites that require it. Since the Mac can’t run ActiveX, it didn’t make sense for Apple to build support for it into the Windows browser. The company believes you shouldn’t need a Windows PC to use any Web site,” Muchmore reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Define “pleasure.” Imagine the unmitigated gall of believing that the Web shouldn’t be proprietary and require an inferior PC running a substandard browser!
“If you use a Mac at home but a PC at work, Safari for Windows offers a way for your at-work Web to feel more familiar and comfortable. The browser also boasts some industry-leading speed and standards support, and has a few clever browsing tricks up its sleeve as well. You’ll still need to keep old Firefox or Internet Explorer for the occasional site that doesn’t play well with the newcomer, but for most everyday browsing, Safari will get the job done elegantly and swiftly,” Muchmore reports.
Full review, 4 out of 5 stars, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Island Girl” for the heads up.]
Firefox has a wealth of plugins safari doesn’t though.
Anyway, anything that gets people to stop using internet explorer is good in my opinion.
Maybe Apple should have a plugin store for Safari, so developers can make 3rd party plugins for Safari, like they can with Firefox?
99% of Firefox’s plug-ins are amateurish shit and the remaining 1% mostly try (and fail) to replicate what Safari already offers.
A few of Firefox’s plug-ins are unique, but they hardly offer enough to deny myself the speed and elegance of Safari.
“If you use a Mac at home but a PC at work, Safari for Windows offers a way for your at-work Web to feel more familiar and comfortable.”
…and reprogram your brain to produce serotonin when your eyes see those sweet, soothing buttons and gradated silver bezel. After a time, when you launch Internet Explorer, you will feel the urge to loudly bark like a Rottweiler.
“feel the urge to loudly bark like a Rottweiler.”
I once had a girlfriend that did that sometimes.
Matter of fact, it was when she was on all fours…..
Plug-ins? I don’t need no stink’in plug-ins!
@ChrissyOne
Serotonin? Awww…I only got chocolate & jellybeans in my Easter Basket. 🙁
I’m slowly warming up to Safari after years of Opera use; never had much love for Firefox, though I’d take it in a heartbeat over IE. C1 makes Safari sound so sensual, so alluring…
I’ve never understood Opera. Who in the world in today’s age would pay for a browser? If it can do “Kristen”-like things to me, then I’ll plunk down the change, otherwise, meh.
I switched to Safari for the first time with this release. I don’t plan on going back to Firefox any time soon. Safari 3.1 is just plain freakin’ fast!
My biggest issue with Safari is that Citrix does not work right with it. I always get a error and something about Netscape. I have to use Firefox when I have remotely log in. I wish Apple and Citrix would fix that annoying problem.
“If you use a Mac at home but a PC at work, Safari for Windows offers a way for your at-work Web to feel more familiar and comfortable.” Unfortunately, if you work for an organization like the government agency I recently left, you won’t be *allowed* to run Safari, or indeed any browser other than IE, on your PC. I couldn’t even get sanction to run Firefox on Windows servers.
But I’m done with them. I run what I deem best.
MDN, yeah … “the pleasure of using sites that require it”. Just because you don’t like the proprietary nature of it and just because it could allow you to be infested with who knows what sort of nastiness, this doesn’t mean there are no “good”, “useful”, “valuable”, “enjoyable” sites out there that made the mistake of incorporating it. And, we don’t get to use them. A minor loss, for most, that will be rectified when IE usage drops below the 50% level and coders say “Oh, that could be a problem”.
The beta of the new version of Firefox is a lot faster than Safari
Name – Firefox has a wealth of plugins safari doesn’t though.
Check out http://www.pimpmysafari.com for a start.
I’ve been using my mac for nearly 4 years no and I’ve not noticed one single occasion when I’ve not been able to use a site because it needed ActiveX. Am I missing something? Is there a whole segment of the internet I’m missing out on? If I weren’t into technology and kept up on browsers then I wouldn’t even have a clue what ActiveX is.
@ Rich Apple person:
Please provide evidence.
@ M.X.N.T.4.1:
I agree. I spend all day surfin’ the net and haven’t ever run into a site (that was important to me) that was crippled by ActiveX.
@ M.X.N.T.4.1:
Don’t worry, all you’re missing out on is porn. You’re a better person for not knowing what you’re missing.
OK, everyone else, let’s have the devastating and very personal comeback. I’m ready for it (I think).
I can’t log into my .mac or gmail accounts behind my work proxy with Safari. Works just fine in Firefox.
After I enter my .mac or gmail username and password, Safari tells my I need to enter my proxy username and password.. when I do, Safari then says it can’t display the page.
Strange.
I like Safari a lot. Renders site beautifully and fonts looks great. The only problem I have so far is that animated gifs runs like slow motion. Flash keeps crashing it. Other than that, it works great.
I am running Max OSX Leopard on an iMac (2.8/4 MB’s RAM). I have ultra high speed internet connection (10 Mbs) via Airport and cable modem. Right now the beta of Firefox loads pages 40% faster than Safari.
I know of one business and one non-profit that use websites that just won’t work with Safari. It makes me crazy, but I got them to get one dedicated Mini with Parallels, and warned them to use the peecee side with Exploder only to access their required site. So far, so good.
JAYGEE said
“Maybe Apple should have a plugin store for Safari, so developers can make 3rd party plugins for Safari, like they can with Firefox?”
Apple needs to do this in my opinion. If I could find freeware plugins for safari to replace the functionality of all my firefox plugins then I would dump firefox (Unless 3.0 turns out to be really good).
J Allard said
“99% of Firefox’s plug-ins are very useful and unique and the remaining 1% replicate what Safari already offers perfectly.”
I fixed your statement for accuracy J Allard
Sarasota said
“Check out http://www.pimpmysafari.com for a start.”
I don’t like paying for stuff I can get for free though (half of those plugins are basically payware/shareware alternatives for firefox plugins).
Apple and Safari – making Windows more bearable…
Sorry, but can someone please tell me what all these plug-ins for Firefox are that are so indispensable?
And does ‘Rich’ sometimes equal a bit stupid?