Safari 3.1.1 for Windows
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in Reviews
April19th2008
Although Safari was released as a public beta on the 7th of January, 2003, it took Apple no less than 4 years to launch a Windows version, but I am sure this happened so late because the current status of the browsers market made it a better idea than before, and not because it wouldn't have been to create a Windows version back in 2003.Anyway, since the beta for Windows XP and Vista arrived on the 11th of June, 2007, and in the meantime we arrived to version 3.1.1, a stable and reliable one, I considered installing this browser on my computer, and after playing with it for a while, I decided to write a proper review for this new browser on the Windows platform, so here it goes...
Setup
First stop, the setup process... Well, it is my pleasure to inform you that installing Safari can be as easy as 1-2-3, especially if you already have QuickTime or iTunes. Why? Each of these programs comes with the Apple Software Update utility, a tool created first to help you keep your programs from Apple up to date. Recently, Apple decided to help those using its software on Windows get acquainted with Safari, and the easiest way to do it was to include Safari in the Apple Software Update tool.
Being given the above, you have two choices - you can either open the update tool and choose to install Safari, or simply go to the download page (check the link at the end of the article), get the setup package, and install the program (that's what you should do only if you don't have iTunes or QuickTime already, so the Apple Software Update tool is not available).
Since installing Safari should be very simple, no matter how you choose to do it, I guess the natural step to take now is to talk about the program's interface, so let's get moving, shall we?
Interface
When it comes to the interface, Safari is one of the best looking Web browsers when using only the default skin, without any additional skin or add-on. Anyway, there are no skins for the Windows version of Safari, as far as I know, and - at least for me - Safari doesn't really need any skins.
As you can see in the image above, Safari has a nice brushed metal texture all over, rounded edges, discrete, yet easy to spot and use buttons, so most people should be happy with it. Switching between the Web page and RSS Feed view modes is very simple, with a single mouse click, in most cases, but that is taking us to the features of the program, so let's move on and see why should you use Safari...
Features
Before saying anything else, I have to repeat what I said in every article related to the Windows version of Safari I wrote so far - Safari is very fast, and that doesn't need any benchmark to prove it. Simply open some pages with your old browser, trying to choose sites that load slow, and then let Safari handle them. I am sure the difference in speed is going to be noticeable without having to count the seconds - I am not paid by anyone to say this, it's just my computer user opinion, and nothing more.
First of all, we have tabbed browsing. Do I have to say more? Everyone tries to do as many things as possible at the same time, and save precious minutes to spend with the family, or maybe to play some games... One of the interesting tab-related features in Safari allows you to bookmark all the open tabs, but this is also available in Firefox. Anyway, Firefox won't allow you to move a tab to a new window (although this may only be useful to a handful of people).
Next, there's the built-in RSS Reader. If a page has a RSS Feed available, all you have to do is click the blue RSS button in the address bar, and Safari will take care of the rest. There's also a search feature available, and multiple choices for sorting and filtering articles. Nothing too fancy, or extremely advanced, but nicely integrated, and it gets the job done.
As a side note, I have to tell you that Safari managed to amaze me with one thing - while playing YouTube videos, CPU load was extremely low, most of the time below 5 percent. No, I don't have a quad-core, it's only a dual-core AMD processor, which sometimes gets loaded up to 90-100 percent in the same scenario, when using Opera or Firefox.
The long feature list of Safari's Windows version also includes a very good pop-up blocker, enabled by default, the SnapBack feature which allows you to return to where you started easier than in most other browsers, Forms AutoFill, resizable text areas, "private browsing" mode, a very handy feature for those of you that don't want anyone else to stick their noses into the History of your browser, and that's not all. Obviously, you need to taste it, so you can really appreciate it, so I'll leave you here, and move to the "final thoughts" part...
Final Thoughts
As soon as Safari appeared on Windows, I wasn't quite interested in it. I have been using Macs for a while, and back then, about one year and half ago, switching from Safari to Camino was one of the first software switches I made on the Mac. Today, I must confess that, in certain areas, Safari is the best Web browser for the Windows platform. Obviously, it's not "the best" yet, but I will use it from now on for at least some tasks, and that's no lie.
No matter if you like Apple or not, please give Safari a try, or at least share with the rest of us your opinion, and the reason you are still keeping the distance. After all, it can't get any worse than having to dump your favorite browser for it, right? ;)
Developer: Apple Inc.
Price: free
Full version download: Download
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15 Comments on Safari 3.1.1 for Windows
On 04/19/2008 at 10:02 pm Velvet said:
Doesn't have mouse gestures... so for me is firefox all the way
On 04/19/2008 at 10:29 pm dave said:
Firefox looks better and FF Beta 3 is faster than Safari.
On 04/19/2008 at 11:10 pm KodrutZ said:
Well, I am not crazy about mouse gestures, to be honest, but it's obvious Apple has still to work a lot on Safari to make it better in all aspects than its competitors.
Dave, I wasn't talking about Betas here. If you found any link with tests conducted on Safari and FF 3 Beta, please let us know, I am really curious about it!
Did any of you notice the YouTube issue I mentioned in Firefox, Opera or IE 7?
On 04/20/2008 at 8:31 pm Syed Tayyab Ali said:
Today, I installed safari 3.1. It gives me better experience in term of speed. It is more faster than fire fox 2.
Let see, what will be going on in fire fox development office? I think they will compete with safari, and it is big challenge for them. I dont know about IE. Because, it has no standard in browsing world.
On 04/20/2008 at 9:18 pm markux said:
I use FF3 for job and safari for pleasure!!
once that you have navigated with safari all others browser you will seem turtles!! (included FF3, even if it is however the much fastest one than FF2)
On 04/20/2008 at 9:26 pm KodrutZ said:
Syed, I am glad you enjoy Safari.
Markux, I don't think I would go that far in calling other browsers "turtles", but you surely got a point there (if it would have been only for speed, I wouldn't be using Opera most of the time).
On 04/21/2008 at 2:31 am james said:
Failed again to install on Vista. I tried it the first time it came out it failed to install and I tried it again and it did the same thing...
I live with firefox even with its memory leaks, it has better support for some of the ajax sites and it runs....
As a website developer I hope apple kills this product and just port the latest firefox over instead of this patch that is a pain to support for developers.
On 04/21/2008 at 4:54 am jericho said:
Safari is good but I like Opera2.7 better, its faster and lighter, compared to Safari and FF2. Well, it's my own observation though. I still use FF2 for my work and Opera for web surfing.
Had Safari a while back but ditched it in favor of the two other browsers.
Nice article though, looking forward to trying the next version of Safari...
On 04/21/2008 at 11:16 am KodrutZ said:
James, I have no idea abut any incompatibilities with Vista. What kind of errors did you get? Do you have UAC enabled? I guess it's pointless to ask you if you were trying to install from an administrator account, that should be an obvious thing to do...
Jericho, I think you were talking about Opera 9.27 there...do you want a screenshot with Opera 9 eating over 400MB of memory? I use it as my heavy duty browser too, but I am delighted about its speed or system resources taken up either! ;)
On 05/23/2008 at 8:46 pm Vijay said:
how much has apple paid u to write this review?
I have used the 3.1 beta versions of Safari for Windows and found it really awful.
It used to crash so many times when opening secured https sites.
I have a strong feeling to keep off from this shit ( atleast on windows)
So safari not going to make me move away from firefox 3.
On 05/23/2008 at 8:59 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Well, Vijai, that's why I avoided even trying to use the beta. Please try the final version, and if it keeps crashing, post here a list of sites that make it crash.
Maybe we can discover a bug together, what do you say?
On 05/23/2008 at 9:18 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Oh, just one more thing - Apple didn't pay anyone a single penny, this is just my experience with Safari 3.1 on Windows.
On Mac OS X, I considered Camino to be much better than Safari, and I didn't use it almost at all.
On 05/28/2008 at 8:46 am iPoo said:
I tested Safari 3.1 on my computer ( vista 32 bit ), its undoubtly the fastest browser I have ever used, even compared with FF3 RC1. it is also very stable. I didnt have any crash since 2 weeks. but there are 1 or 2 issues though
1.Sometimes I have graphic glitch ( where "file,edit,view etc2 ). sometimes have a very strange white lines, its like cracking. you have to maximize then minimize it again to get rid of it.
2.Memory leak. Most of the time I will use safari with 10 tabs opened, that contains Flash, video and normal html page, and task manager told me that safari uses about 300mb of ram, but when I close all of the tabs down to single google page, safari still hogs that 300mb ram, it doesnt shrink back .
3. copying address to the address bar is annoying sometimes, because it kept going back to the previous page if the previous page hasnt completely loads up.
but after all I like it, still im hoping that the final version of FF3 will beat safari3. always love FF because its a community thing, not a greedy company like apple or microsoft
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