Apple Safari to be released for the Windows Platform!

[GNRambo]

its taking up 78k with 0 tabs open :s

Guess i'll have to wait for the released version for me to fully test it out.

[ZonoBurk]

Oh rats. It's using 141MB of RAM with 3 tabs opened. No slow down - but that's just too much.

Thanks for those tweaks. :)

Edited June 12, 2007 by MchWalte

[Denis W. Veteran]

To be honest with you people, this beta wasn't as bad as the betas for QuickTime 7 for Windows. Some of those beta builds back then were atrociously slow.

EDIT: I tried loading Netvibes with Safari. Holy crap, Safari instantly loaded the page. Not bad.

EDIT 2: Annoying behaviour: CTRL+W on the last tab and Safari quits. There should be an option to keep the window open. The Mac behaviour of keeping programs open in the background doesn't cut it under Windows.

Edited June 12, 2007 by rm20010

[revvo]

If they can solve the RAM issue and keep it similar as the amounts used by Firefox and Opera, in the high 50-60's then I'm down with Safari because of its execution and rendering speed.

[DoubleThink]

It is using a lot of RAM, I have just two tabs opened and 320MB of RAM are used. But otherwise its a brilliantly fast browser.

[Jay Must Die]

I tried it, I tried really hard to like it.

But; I don't like it. I hate Firefox and I would use it over Safari. I'll try it again when it's further along in development for Windows, but until then.

[CoolCatBad]

You can use a custom Style Sheet, Edit/Preferences/Advanced. (think AnnoyanceBlock.css)

[G4M3R]

I will have to give this a try tonight.

[Jase]

I DID IT!

I finally made Safari on Windows more faster! the rendering speed is increased with a simple modification in here:

"C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources"

Make sure Safari is closed!

Open up Defaults.plist and add the following line:

<key>WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay</key>
<real>0.25</real>

This should make Safari Render faster :)

[Toology]

How hard would it be for Apple to have its Windows applications adapt to the native UI? At least Microsoft bothers to do so with its Office software and did so for its Mac versions of WMP and IE5. Instead we're stuck with sluggish (at least thus far) applications that look and feel out of place. Quicktime, iTunes and now Safari all look like b*stard children in Aero and Luna.

As for the browser experience, I would liken it to that of IE. Plain, nothing spectacular except for the load-up time and rendering time itself. However, it could be the fastest browser in the world but if I can't find a way to mimic features that I've come to appreciate in Firefox and its extensions then I won't be switching.

[Jase]

I am pretty sure it is possible.. just look at Itunes.. its somewhat themeable.. I also have an idea that might just work, let me go digging.

[revvo]

It's crazy how important looks is for people. No wonder Vista is successful among that group of people.

The look of Apple ain't bad. It's just that it doesn't blend with windows themes and they do lag more than native applications. However, considering that Safari executes and renders faster even with the apple UI, just imagine when they improve the performance and that this ain't beta no more? I don't know about you guys but I'm more concerned on the content and how well I can view it rather than the look of the browser. This doesn't mean that I could be happy with a browser that works great but looks like ass, but most will agree that Apple's interface doesn't look like ass. The problem is it doesn't blend with the rest of the look.

[bobbba]

working fine for me on vista 32bit and the rendering is very fast. I'm not sure I like the overall look but I will wait and see what happens as the product develops.

sites like neowin look pretty much the same as IE7.

[Redestium]

Cool news, being its first run on Windows I can forgive the problems it's having, and hope they shape it up. People have already said though that their track record for making their applications perform better under Windows is poor so time will tell. For me personally Firefox with its many extensions will be holding my attention as by moving browsers its a major give-up on functionality.

[velkymx]

OK - now where is IE8?

[Rahul]

hmm things cerainly look better , because of the font , but what i really need for myself is an Adblock for safari, then i might switch over from firefox

[red.]

i trying to try it at work but it keeps crashing when its starting up.

[Punio4]

Ok... My first impressions, and I tried liking it, I really did:

• It's as ugly as f*ck.
  
• The font rendering is horrible. Completely out-of place on windows, cleartype looks tons better. Looks like someone applied gaussian blur.
  
• Extreme startup time and memory usage.
  
• No autoscroll.
  
• No extension support. I can't imagine browsing without adblock plus and filterset.g updater.
  
• No right clicking on images? What the hell?
  
• Lack of icons in bookmarks. For one, I tend to recognize my bookmarks also by the icons.
  

Anyway, if this is the flagship browser for the Mac, I'd say those guys have some pretty low browsing standards.

[Echilon]

Very interesting. I'm going to give this a try. It seems like a devious way of getting people to convert though.

[+mrbester MVC]

(posting using it on XP)

What's good:

It's snappier than either IE 7 or Firefox 2.0.0.4 for rendering pages.

Memory usage doesn't seem too bad: 4 tabs (neowin, slashdot, BBC news, Google Maps); 113K working, 236K virtual. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones. However, there seems to be quite a lot of processor usage when I'm not doing anything in the window. In contrast, Firefox with the same 4 tabs open doesn't even flicker on the processor when the window is blurred.

So far, no rendering problems whatsoever. I've obviously got a system that doesn't have some unknown setting that gives you the gibberish text (or none at all).

Some eyecandy I quite like, such as pulsing buttons, but that's just me I suppose.

What sucks:

The UI. Windows apps should all behave the same. I know there are exceptions (apart from Apple products), but they're normally things like 3D Studio-style apps. Fortunately I use Safari on Macs so the layout isn't too much of a surprise, but mainstream Windows applications should all work the same otherwise it confuses and annoys users:

1. Windows apps can be resized on any border not by click-dragging some Marlett char in the bottom right-hand corner
   
2. Windows apps can be minimised / restored by clicking the entry in the taskbar. Currently right-clicking gives you greyed out options. Perhaps they're still working on that, but it is a fundamental behaviour of Windows apps
   
3. Windows apps remember their maximised state before minimisation and restore to that state
   

The font rendering is liable to give me a headache due to the blurring regardless of setting. Bold text is particularly nasty. I've got ClearType (and ClearType Tuner) and everything else is fine.

Niggles:

Preferences -> Advanced gives you the text "Option - Tab highlights each item" under the selectable tab through elements. Aside from the fact that that should be a default behaviour (as all other browsers do this, it's called an accessiblity feature and isn't switchable), what Windows user knows which key maps to the "Option" key unless they also use Macs? Potentially it has just been overlooked, but seeing as it is usually the Alt key, this is definitely wrong as Alt-Tab switches between open windows. They mean the Ctrl key in this instance.

No Apply / OK / Cancel buttons of preferences windows. This confuses Windows users as they are used to clicking something that actually applies the settings they've changed, rather than it being applied as soon as the option is changed.

Help buttons live in the title bar (for "What's this?" purposes) as well as the window. Context sensitive help would be nice as well, instead of opening the .chm (or whatever) at the index page.

As far as betas go, it isn't that shabby. YMMV but at least everyone is agreed that it needs a lot of work before it can go gold.

Edit: something weird happened there: I lost the second half of the post, had to go back and copy-paste bits into Notepad and then copy-paste back to get it to work...

Edited June 12, 2007 by mrbester

[cork1958]

I'm getting this when installing on Vista Ultimate. Most everything esle has installed correctly. Not in safe mode and I manually started the installer service too.

[XerXis]

Why is a company that is constantly making fun of microsoft and its alleged inconsistency when design is involved, ignoring every windows design guideline in the book? It looks fugly on my vista box, it looks out of place on my xp box.

Apart from that, rendering is horrible, 10% of the time text is left out or rendered incorrectly, everything is fuzzy, and some websites make the browser crash. It certainly has some gdi leaks which causes part of the high memory. And it has more bugs then any beta i have seen.

This should have been an alpha or internal beta release, not a public one.

[Malisk]

Ok... My first impressions, and I tried liking it, I really did:

• It's as ugly as f*ck.
  
• The font rendering is horrible. Completely out-of place on windows, cleartype looks tons better. Looks like someone applied gaussian blur.
  
• Extreme startup time and memory usage.
  
• No autoscroll.
  
• No extension support. I can't imagine browsing without adblock plus and filterset.g updater.
  
• No right clicking on images? What the hell?
  
• Lack of icons in bookmarks. For one, I tend to recognize my bookmarks also by the icons.
  

Anyway, if this is the flagship browser for the Mac, I'd say those guys have some pretty low browsing standards.

Haha, I agree, and this is a pretty poor excuse for a browser, even in beta. It leaves out text on lots of sites for me (even after I tried reinstalling), and crashed after 15 mins of usage. This has to be some kind of record as for flawed browsers. Sure, it's beta, but for Apple's own sake, I wouldn't release something like this if I were them. It will just cause a crapload of bad publicity.

Besides the bugs and resource usage (150 MB within minutes of browsing), it's really about time Apple discovers subpixel rendering for LCD's with their browser. ClearType looks like a godsend in comparison...

Basically the only thing I can say this browser has going for it is speed, once it's been loaded. It's pretty nice in that area for me, but pretty much everything else about it is bad after testing. It doesn't even follow the Windows interface guidelines.

[Malisk]

Why is my Safari's text looking all cheecha bee durta...jamona?!

The problem is that you aren't using Safari, you're using Crrng. :laugh:

Switch to Safari and try again. ;)

[Crazysah]

I agree with everything that has been said in this thread.

I took ages to load and then it is not even loading the apple startpage. At the momment there is no way I am going to be using it over Opera. Or even over IE 6! or IE 7!