Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developers Conference with the release of a public beta ofSafari 3.0 ; the ruined version will be the bundled browser app in Leopard when Mac OS X 10.5 ships in October .
But Leopard is n’t the only OS that this Safari update will run on — and I ’m not just referring to Tiger . Apple CEO Steve Jobs also announced that Safari was joining the rank of iTunes and QuickTime to become a bad-tempered - platform app that runs on Windows as well .
What come after is a warm look at some of the more compelling new features in Safari 3.0 , which I ’m run as a beta on OS X 10.4 . I also take up a quick detour into the soil of XP , courtesy of both Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop , to see how well Safari works there .
Speed
During his keynote address to developer , Jobs discussed benchmark resolution that showed Safari to be the quickest of the “ swelled three ” browsers . ( Microsoft ’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla ’s Firefox are the other two . ) In my limited time with Safari 3 , it certainly seems tight . However , I was hard pressed to note any substantial loading time conflict between Camino , Firefox , and Safari 3 on my MacBook Pro — they all handled my pick of mental testing pages just okay .
Greatly improved find-on-page
I ’ll admit to own a love / hatred relationship with the Find office in most web internet browser — for sure , it ’s great to be able to feel something on a varlet , but it ’s nearly impossible toseethose catch once they ’re see . Most internet browser simply play up the matches , and , on a page full of schoolbook , that can make recognise the catch very heavily .
In contrast , Safari 3 relieve oneself it really easy to recognise the matches . When you press Command - F and enter your search term , Safari dims the current page , shows matches with a bright white ground , and shows the currently selected match with a can’t - misfire - it orange tree background :
This is a great improvement over the blind searching I do in the current version of Safari .
Draggable tabs
you could now drag - and - drop tab to rearrange them .
you may also drag a yellow journalism out of the tab bar to create a new windowpane bear that tabloid . There does n’t seem to be a “ put tabloid back ” instruction , however . There is a raw Merge All Windows command in the Window card , though , which will do the trick for all heart-to-heart windows — it will come in them all into one new tabbed window , and fold the others as it does so .
Resizable text boxes
Do n’t you hate those Web sites with tiny picayune filling - in signifier ? Seems many places do n’t know that monitor are with child than 13 inch now , and that we can type more than 80 characters on a row . The newfangled version of Safari take care of that job with its resizable text edition unveiling boxes .
This is a most utilitarian feature , especially if you spend a draw of clock time mould on vane forms .
Other new stuff
In add-on to improvements in find , tabs , and text input box , there are some other sweetening in Safari 3 . In the Bookmarks menu , there ’s a new Add Bookmark For These n Tabs menu item , where “ n ” is the number of open yellow journalism in your current window . Using this feature , you may surfboard around to a number of places , using Command - click to open up each situation in a unexampled tab , and then save all those open Thomas Nelson Page in one pace via this new bill of fare detail .
In the View card , to go along with pre - existent pick for increasing and decreasing the size of text on the page , there ’s a newfangled Make Text Normal Size pick — utile if you ’ve been going brainsick with the other resizing options and lose track of your start point , I estimate !
What’s missing
The public genus Beta of Safari on OS X 10.4 is missing Web Clip , the innovative Leopard technology that lets you turn any fate of a vane page into a customized widget . ( Web Clip is among the changes to Dashboard in OS X 10.5 ; Steve Jobs demonstrated it during Monday ’s keynote . ) In my testing , the Safari beta was also missing the the PDF controller shown on Apple’sLeopard Safari feature of speech Thomas Nelson Page . I could pasture PDFs , but did n’t see any elbow room to show a control .
Safari on Windows
I ran Safari 3 beta underParallels 3.0and natively via the latest Boot Camp public beta — I used Windows XP Professional in both cases . Safari ran fine in both surround , and I had no number with it of any sort . Other than a different menu font , Safari under Windows seems to look and act as does Safari on OS X :
So faithfully did Apple interface Safari to Windows that a Mac - specific feature even made the journey : as with Apple ’s Mac applications , Safari for Windows can only be resized by dragging the bottom correct corner of the window . ( In Windows , most applications programme have strong-arm windowpane borders , any of which can be puff to resize the window in that direction . ) I ’m not certain how Windows users will feel about this “ feature , ” but I surmise a number of them will file it as a bug with Apple !
As with the Mac version of the Safari 3 genus Beta , speed seemed fine , but I ca n’t state that it felt any faster ( or slower ) than the other web browser app I tested ( IE and Firefox ) . I ’m still not sure exactlywhyApple felt it necessary to release Safari for Windows , but if this experiment work , it will be adept for Mac exploiter ; if Safari is used by more people , then there should finally be fewer sites that wo n’t sour with Safari .
Final thoughts
A full review will have to waitress for the release variant this fall , but at first glance , Safari 3 seems a solid climb . There may not be any earth - shattering fresh feature ( the predilection panels all seem to be monovular , for instance ) , but what is raw feel well thought - out and ameliorate on Safari ’s already impregnable performance .
[ aged editor in chief Rob Griffiths runs theMac OS X Hints Web site . ]
