Monday, June 11, 2007

Safari Browser for Windows

Google renders weird on Win Safari...

Apple today announced that their Mac Safari browser is now also available on Windows. Apple calls this “the world’s best browser,” though Ionut Alex. Chitu in the Steve Jobs keynote thread disagrees, warning that “Safari/Windows uses a lot of RAM and it’s extremely slow. It also crashes every 3 minutes.”

What’s interesting is that the Windows version has the look & feel of the Mac version even when it comes to elements which are traditionally left to the operating system (less interface surprises = better usability). For instance, when I maximize the browser window on Win XP, then move my mouse towards the far top right to click (this is usually the position of the close button “x”), the program currently behind Safari will be closed (apparently because there’s a tiny pixel not covered by the maximization; surprise!). As another example: I always set my Windows task bar to auto-collapse to the left-hand side; with Safari open, it won’t expand anymore, a barrier to switch between different program windows... another surprise.

Maybe this is all to be excused as the program is still in Beta. Then again, thanks to Google and others the word “Beta” pretty much lost its meaning these days...

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Safari Browser for Window ... by Philipp Lenssen

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