Apple Safari 3.0 Beta - version for Windows
Safari - with a brand new Windows version! Sounds almost incredible, but it’s a fact…
I saw the news by accident - dropped a look to the new design of Apple (MacOS X Leopard, being the reason for the new design, I guess), and from there clicked the Download Apple Safari 3.0 Beta… for Windows! How can you resist not to click such a link! :-)
Internet Explorer won’t have a version for MacOS anymore (unless Microsoft change their mind at some point). The last version was IE 5.2/Mac and that was ages ago…
And now Apple releases a version of Safari for Windows!
I downloaded the beta [Safari version 3.0.1 (522.12.2), to be precise] — I was curious, of course — I do not have constant access to a Mac, so even only for testing of websites in Safari this version would be of great use for me:)
Three things make impression immediately:
- Safari on Windows looks like Safari on Mac;
- some Windows functions don’t work (for example, you cannot scroll the page when you press down the scroll (middle) button of the mouse);
- font rendering looks very different - Windows doesn’t have any influence on the rendering of the fonts - nor ClearType, nor any other way of anti-aliasing (font smoothing) works…
…So all fonts look bolder and like drawn with graphite pencil. Which is good - because websites, viewed with Safari 3.0/Win, will look like (at least in theory) exactly as they would look like on Safari 3.0/Mac… and bad - because I think ClearType on Windows is better technology for font smoothing from the one I saw in Safari 3.0 Beta/Win.
Check it yourself - here are two screenshots from 456 Berea Street (click on the thumbnails to see them in their original size):
To me, text is better legible in Firefox 1.5, than in Apple Safari 3.0. This is because Firefox uses ClearType of WindowsXP, and not its own way of anti-aliasing fonts.
On the other hand, as a CSS designer, I am only delighted by this fact — I will be able to see websites in Safari/Win in the same way as they are seen by the Safari/Mac users! :-)
I just wonder, is it just on Windows that font smoothing looks not so perfect, or this is just a bug in the new Safari browser for Windows? Maybe someone with Apple Mac will be able to shed some light on this question (and perhaps add a couple of screenshots, too;-)
Anyway, Safari 3.0 will be soon available for Windows users, and we, poor web designers, forced to take into account the weirdnesses in the rendering of webpages of so many browsers — IE 7.0, IE 6.0, Firefox 1.5/Firefox 2.0, Opera 9.x, Safari 2.0/Mac — will simply add one more browser to the list: Safari 3.0/Win:)
PS You can follow an interesting discussion on Safari 3.0/Win at Roger Johansson’s website: 1, 2:)
PPS I’ll write maybe a follow-up later, when I have more to say on Safari 3.0/Win:) For now, it keeps crashing on me… :-D
1 comment | View blog reactions
1 April 14th, 2008 at 15:31
It’s good news that Safari will now be available for Windows too! But personally I feel that firefox is far better than IE or Safari because firefox allows us to open different links with only one instance of firefox. Though there are some missing features like scrolling down sites on windows. But the sad part is that we as web developers will have to test our websites on yet another browser Safari 3.0/Windows apart from IE , Firefox, Opera and the list goes on!!