Safari 3.0.4 Beta

[Unto Darkness]

I have been trying the latest release of the Safari Browser for Windows, and I must say, I am quite impressed. As you may have known, previous versions of this beta have been pretty buggy, and was not at all as fast as Apple promised it would be.

But the latest version changes all that. Time taken to render pages has increased dramatically and is on par [or even faster] than Firefox.

It starts up in a snap, loads pages quickly, renders flash properly and looks very tidy. The only grip I had with it is its high memory usage. When I opened around 3 tabs, it consumed around a 130 MB of memory. I hope Apple works on that.

Other than that, the browser is beautiful but it still has a long way to go to compete with giants like Opera and Firefox.

Please post your comments and what YOU fell about the browser, What I have stated was just MY opinion.

LINK

Edited February 8, 2008 by Unto Darkness

[User6060]

the font smoothing looks all wrong on windows, why can't they just use cleartype like everyone else.

it would also be nice if it had vista shadows on the window

[Unto Darkness]

the font smoothing looks all wrong on windows, why can't they just use cleartype like everyone else.

it would also be nice if it had vista shadows on the window

Yeah I noticed that too. And the close buttons on the tab should have ben on the right, as it is more convenient for me after using Firefox.

Plus, the double click shortcut to open a tab does not work in Safari. And I could do with some extensions!

[NightmarE D]

I tried it earlier and the font smoothing still gets on my nerves. The memory usage is crazy. Like what was said above I only had a few tabs open and my system started to crawl pretty bad.

Other than that it would be a decent browser on Windows if they'd just fix those two things along with small tweaks in appearance.

[Unto Darkness]

I tried it earlier and the font smoothing still gets on my nerves. The memory usage is crazy. Like what was said above I only had a few tabs open and my system started to crawl pretty bad.

Other than that it would be a decent browser on Windows if they'd just fix those two things along with small tweaks in appearance.

Agreed! But since I have a GB of memory, it does not affect me that badly.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

They added windows style font rendering in a nightly a while ago, 3.0.5 will probably have that code in it.

[Unto Darkness]

They added windows style font rendering in a nightly a while ago, 3.0.5 will probably have that code in it.

One down one more to go!

[iwod]

i heard 3.1 is coming out soon

[Calum Veteran]

One down one more to go!

Am I the only one who loved the way the fonts looked on the Windows Safari?? :s

[Black Hawk]

Am I the only one who loved the way the fonts looked on the Windows Safari?? :s

I love how it looks. Wikipedia looks better and a lot of other news sites. As for Safari, sometimes when I try to load a page it gives me an error until I refresh a few times but other than that I like it.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Am I the only one who loved the way the fonts looked on the Windows Safari?? :s

I enabled windows style rendering, and went straight back to the normal style, it's much better.

And it's still using sub-pixel anti-aliasing.

[Unto Darkness]

Am I the only one who loved the way the fonts looked on the Windows Safari?? :s

On Windows? :huh:

[Calum Veteran]

I agree, Wikipedia looks much better with the current Windows font.

Unto Darkness, I don't understand what you are trying to say? Lol. This is a thread about the Windows version of Safari and I said I love the way the fonts look on Windows...

Is it just that you are suprised that I like the font on Windows? :p lol

Edited February 9, 2008 by cJr.

[bloodrain]

I left firefox on all night, it used up over 2Gb :-/

[Unto Darkness]

I left firefox on all night, it used up over 2Gb :-/

:|

[jazzyfan]

I tried Safari 3.0.4 and went back to Firefox in 20 minutes. Couldn't stand it.

That's a new record.

[jamend]

It's pretty slick, but I don't really see any advantages compared to Firefox. For now I'll just appreciate being able to test my sites in Safari without needing a Mac.

[PricklyPoo]

Lol their performance charts are funny....since when did opera go from the fastest to the slowest?

[shockz]

I tried Safari 3.0.4 and went back to Firefox in 20 minutes. Couldn't stand it.

That's a new record.

Thanks for explaining what you couldn't stand about it...

[jamend]

Hmm I just tried it out again and the performance is impressive. After seeeing other Windows software from Apple (iTunes...), it's not what I expected.

It's actually taking advantage of multithreading (unlike FF, IE, or Opera), though the rendering is still a bit choppy (like Opera) for Javascript animation.

I just wish it were a bit more like a normal Windows app...

[ObiWanToby]

Safari needs to look native in Windows, or else it will never take off.

[giga Veteran]

Skip 3.04 and try out the latest webkit. Fastest browser ever.

http://nightly.webkit.org/

[Thaumbody]

Safari needs to look native in Windows, or else it will never take off.

Yeah, it'd be nice if Safari was a bit more Windows Native, and ported to Ubuntu or another major Linux Distribution. (Or at least a webkit using something or other).

The only gripe I really have about it is the bookmarking system. It is simply not easy to select one bookmark and open it in a new tab. You either have to open every one in the same folder, or overwrite the tab your using or Crtl+T and select a bookmarked website.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

There are already GTK and QT ports of WebKit (and WebKit and KHTML are "unforking")

And there's now 2 windows ports, one is Apple's (and uses their own graphics framework) and the other comes out of the GTK guys port and uses Cairo for graphics (like Gecko 1.9)

Safari is annoying and lacks some important features for me (single window mode like firefox has), but the engine is great.

Edit: I'd love for the Windows version to get native widgets though, the Mac version uses Mac widgets, GTK uses GTK widgets, QT uses QT widgets, Windows uses Mac widgets :(

Edited February 11, 2008 by The_Decryptor

[Thaumbody]

There are already GTK and QT ports of WebKit (and WebKit and KHTML are "unforking")

And there's now 2 windows ports, one is Apple's (and uses their own graphics framework) and the other comes out of the GTK guys port and uses Cairo for graphics (like Gecko 1.9)

Safari is annoying and lacks some important features for me (single window mode like firefox has), but the engine is great.

Thanks for the information, and yes, I agree a single window mode would be nice. Remembering Ctrl+Click to open in a new tab is not difficult, but it'd be nice not to have to remember that. :) As to the other windows port, are you talking about Swift?