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Safari 3 Public Beta

Started by scuzzy, June 13, 2007, 16:10 hrs

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scuzzy

Safari 3 Public Beta is now available for Windows.

I installed it on my main system earlier today, and so far I'm impressed. Unfortunately from what I can gather the software is far from ready. I got some occassional glitches when clicking some links, and some shortcuts are glaringly missing. Safari also did not recognize my mouse's forward and back buttons.

I have no doubts that those issues will be resolved with upcoming builds, and I am very much looking forward to the completed version. Safari has a very nice tabbed interface, and I really like the Private Browsing feature. I was impressed when I dragged a tab onto the desktop, and the site automatically opened in a new window. Sweet. :) The browser also gave me about the fastest surfing speeds of any browser that I have tried.

I like that Safari does not have a status bar at the bottom. Safari frees up that space and instead uses the address bar to indicate progress. It makes me wonder why it took so long for anyone to come up with such a great idea. If only one tab is open, then the tab line is also freed up to maximize the page view. The rest of the browser sports a very clean, simple interface.

Assuming that Apple fixes the glitches, I can see myself using Safari as my default browser.
Antec Performance TX640B Case | WinXP Pro SP3 & Win7 64-bit | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale LGA 775 3.16GHz Dual-Core | 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 G-Skill RAM | eVGA 7600GT 256MB PCI-E | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 16MB Cache | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 8MB Cache | 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 16MB Cache | External 640GB WD Caviar SATA 32MB Cache | Sony DRU-V200S DVD/RW | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W | Samsung SyncMaster 2494 (24") LCD Monitor | LG Flatron W2361V (23") LCD Monitor

Chandler

I tried it and I found it to have its fair share of positives and negatives.  I'll list them below (of course a lot are down to personal preference).

Pros

  • Fast startup even on my old laptop
  • Fast page rendering (irrespective of whether Steve Jobs rigged tests in his favour)
  • Pages don't "jump" around when loading like Firefox
  • Flash consumes very little CPU resources unlike Firefox
  • Interface is nice
  • Font rendering is attractive even if it's not native to Windows.  No noticeable speed loss though
  • Very visible focus indicator (e.g. around textboxes)

Cons

  • No (apparent) way to force single-window behaviour.  Links for new window events open a new window.  In Firefox you can force new window links to open a new tab.
  • When maximised, top right pixel is unused.  On Windows apps it should be the close button so you can move the cursor to the top right without much accuracy and hit the close button.

scuzzy

To avoid a new window, just hold down the Ctrl key when clicking on the link. Or click on the link using the mouse wheel. That will force Safari to open the link in a new tab.
Antec Performance TX640B Case | WinXP Pro SP3 & Win7 64-bit | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale LGA 775 3.16GHz Dual-Core | 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 G-Skill RAM | eVGA 7600GT 256MB PCI-E | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 16MB Cache | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 8MB Cache | 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 16MB Cache | External 640GB WD Caviar SATA 32MB Cache | Sony DRU-V200S DVD/RW | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W | Samsung SyncMaster 2494 (24") LCD Monitor | LG Flatron W2361V (23") LCD Monitor

scuzzy

Also...

Click "Edit" from the menu and select Preferences. In the Tabs sectioin, make sure "Ctrl-Click opens a link in a new tab" is selected.

In the General section, under "Open links from applications" I also checked "in a new tab in the current window".
Antec Performance TX640B Case | WinXP Pro SP3 & Win7 64-bit | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale LGA 775 3.16GHz Dual-Core | 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 G-Skill RAM | eVGA 7600GT 256MB PCI-E | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 16MB Cache | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 8MB Cache | 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 16MB Cache | External 640GB WD Caviar SATA 32MB Cache | Sony DRU-V200S DVD/RW | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W | Samsung SyncMaster 2494 (24") LCD Monitor | LG Flatron W2361V (23") LCD Monitor

scuzzy

Version 3.0.3 is now available.
Antec Performance TX640B Case | WinXP Pro SP3 & Win7 64-bit | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale LGA 775 3.16GHz Dual-Core | 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 G-Skill RAM | eVGA 7600GT 256MB PCI-E | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 16MB Cache | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 8MB Cache | 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 16MB Cache | External 640GB WD Caviar SATA 32MB Cache | Sony DRU-V200S DVD/RW | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W | Samsung SyncMaster 2494 (24") LCD Monitor | LG Flatron W2361V (23") LCD Monitor