Safari 3.0 Beta for Windows

June 15th, 2007

I must confess, I’ve been waiting for Apple to port Safari over to Windows for a long time. As soon as it was announced as I was watching the news feeds from Apple’s WWDC last week, I immediately downloaded and installed it. It was followed a day and a half later with a security update.

It’s a nimble little browser, nice and light, and I especially like the FreeType font rendering engine Apple chose to go with. Though, it doesn’t seem many Windows users appreciate it, given all the moaning they all seem to do about it. Another moan and groan I heard about Safari for Windows was the lack of ability to add extensions and skins. To me, this isn’t very important. Safari for Windows, in my opinion, isn’t meant to be someone’s primary browser. Instead, I think it’s tailor-made for people like me who want to test their sites on Safari to ensure their Mac users aren’t alienated, but don’t have access to a Macintosh. Also, I think it was released especially for developers given the coming of the iPhone.

There are some who bemoan the entry of the Safari web browser into the perceived fight of Internet Explorer 7 vs. Firefox 2.0, but I’m of the mind of more competition could only make things better. Firefox, while a great browser and one that I use daily, is starting to show signs of bloat. Though, I hear good things about the development of Firefox 3.0, and how they’re working to eliminate some of the bloat.

So would I use Safari as my everyday web browser? No. But it is handy to have around to test things out in. And it also makes some nice screenshots, too. Safari has won a spot on my hard drive.