After attending the keynote reference of Apple ’s Worldwide Developers Conference , I download thepublic beta of the Apple Safari 3 World Wide Web browserboth for Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Windows XP . ( It also melt down on Vista . ) It go reasonably well , although its features are n’t drastically unlike from what ’s already available with Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 .
I installed Safari 3 easy on both the Mac and the PC . Both versions of the web web browser expect fundamentally the same except for the Windows menus that look within the Safari web browser windowpane . On the Mac , they appear in the Mac OS X menu saloon . Macworld ’s first facial expression take down one curious affair : Safari for Windows only permit you resize the windowpane using the lower - right corner rather than any windowpane edge , which is common of Mac applications .
As far as how sites look in the Windows version of Safari 3 , I did n’t notice a tick off unlike in photo rendering ; however , Safari ’s school text looked dark and blurrier than the same text in Firefox and Internet Explorer . ( See thefull clause at PC Worldfor screenshot comparisons . ) We also remark that Bank of America ’s internet site , which requires you to confirm a SiteKey figure for authentication , did n’t expose aright in the Windows browser app . On the Mac edition of Safari 3 , however , the SiteKey varlet appeared just fine .
Safari 3 mechanically imports Internet Explorer 7 and “ Netscape / Mozilla ” bookmarker . I was also able-bodied to spell bookmarks using Safari ’s Import Bookmarks command . As with Firefox , I could drag and drop folders of bookmark in an comfortable - to - use bookmark handler . Weirdly , hitting Control - A did n’t work for selecting all bookmarks . ( control condition - A did piece of work to select all the contents of a Web Sir Frederick Handley Page . )
Apple says that the Windows interlingual rendition of Safari 3 is up to twice as fast as IE 7 and 1.6 time as fast as Firefox — according to Apple ’s data using third - party examination software system . We have n’t yet put Safari through its paces in our own page lode tests to quantify that claim , but we can say that in today ’s graze populace , ingredient like web site invention and the upper of your connection have a much gravid core on how long it will take a page to load than your alternative of web browser .
We did play some informal tests for memory usage , and here , Safari came in last . In our intimate tests , we startle each web browser app with a white Sir Frederick Handley Page and then loaded two specific site . Safari used an norm of 45 MB of computer memory at the end of the tests , importantly more than other browsers . opera house 9 used only 27 mebibyte , while Firefox 2 used 31 MiB and Internet Explorer 7 used 34 megabyte . On a personal computer using less memory , you may feel this pinch . I in person did n’t .
On the subject field of security : Safari does n’t use Active X and so avoids the spyware panic attack that pestis Internet Explorer . However , it ’s not immune to other browser app exploits the same way of life Firefox is n’t resistant . For now , Safari is belike under the radar , although a researcher claims to have already founda possible exposure .
In the close , Apple ’s announcement of a Safari that runs on Windows is big news with big voltage for integrating with the microcomputer variation of iTunes and QuickTime . It ’s a working web browser but with a few defect , and it currently lack the plug - in ecosystem that Firefox and Internet Explorer enjoy . However with a bearing on the Mac , Windows and soonthe iPhone , that may change .
