Safari For windows

Apart from a few hiccups in the initial phasing of the Apple safari, it is indeed a nifty browser and for many reasons: It looks great; it is reported to have great browsing speeds and has features that haven’t been explored by many users until now.

The good thing about the browser is that it looks neat; very well laid out; doesn’t come with too many packages – just enough to give you an experience.

We are all too familiar with the ‘back” button on our browsers aren’t we? Safari is now equipped with a snap back button that helps you get back to right where you started from. If you were searching for something and click on one of those search results, you could get lost in the tide of web pages. Thankfully, if you didn’t find what you were looking for, you could just get back to the search results.
There are actually many more features that could be awesome when you put them to use. I haven’t really explored much yet, but here is a little thing that I noticed. The way the sites look on the safari is way different from the others – the brightness, the rendition etc is all just different. My gmail inbox looks way too different here and the sites are easier on your eyes. You get this lovely blue-grayish aura while you look at the screen.

A little bit of time and I am sure there is going to be a lot coming out of the closet. For now, download the safari and enjoy.

[ Pic Courtesy : jimwarholic.com ]

A feeling of frustration is one thing and the right to access something is another – When a website doesn’t load on a web browser or doesn’t display properly, you have frustration welling up within you. However, if that site belongs to the government and the information contained therein is actually made accessible for the public to view, we then have a problem here simply because the browsers inadequacy is now causing a denial to the right to information for the web surfer. Some of the sites are just “optimized” for certain kinds of old browsers like the Internet Explorer and now even the government is answerable for this gaucherie.

Apparently, the feeling we get here is not browsers being compatible or not – it sis more an issue of websites not being toned up for flexibility no matter which browser is used. Just like you can’t force someone to marry, you couldn’t be forcing someone to use a particular browser to make information available. The government sites, especially, have to be made fluid, flexible and adaptive no any web browser and the people responsible tp put out that information have to ensure that this happens. Agreed that only about 6 % of the web surfers might use the firefox and safari, but it is still worthy of a chin-up.

Apple’s Mac and the Safari are both steadily increasing their market share and are poised as respectable competition to the other browsers in the technology market. However, are Safari users able to get access to more Web sites now? What about those government sites which had blocked a safari and firefox user earlier? If a user can’t see a website, whose problem is it – Apple’s, Mozilla’s or the government website developers?

[Pictures Courtesy of: www.siliconvalleycsa.com and www.neowin.net]

As the Internet explorer is being dumped more and more and as folks are rushing to adopt to alternative browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari, you would have thought that things are happening for good. Well, they are. But there is another problem here. More and more reports come in everyday about hackers shifting their attention from the Internet explorer to these new browsers ( simply because people are camping here now). As if that wasn’t enough, the new browser Apple Safari is still struggling with some security and vulnerability issues.

For instance, According to http://www.frsirt.com

“Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in Apple Safari, which could be exploited by remote attackers to spoof arbitrary web sites or cause a denial of service.

The first issue is caused by an input validation error when handling URLs containing a specially crafted string before the “@” character, which could be exploited by malicious web sites to conduct phishing attacks by spoofing the URL displayed via the address bar.

The second issue is caused by an error when handling malformed “file:” URIs, which could be exploited to crash an affected browser by tricking a user into clicking a specially crafted link.

The third weakness is caused by an error when handling a large number of “document.write()” calls with an overly long argument, which could be exploited to crash an affected browser or exhaust all available memory resources via a specially crafted web page “

So what is the solution? Well, for now, it really depends. If the lack of security alarms you, perhaps it is best to stick to firefox or some other open-source browser for the simple fact that the patches are laid out instantly and the response is awesome. There is a community feeling when it comes to open-source and there are a lot of people you can reach out to.

Ads are everywhere and it is indeed tiresome to see some of them popping just at the time you wanted to settle down for a nice, pleasurable read. How about putting a stop to this menace if you are using the All new Apple’s Browser — Safari? Provided therein in your menu are tools to help you do just that. Just do the following:

1. Open Safari.
2. Choose Block Pop-Up Windows from the Safari menu

It can’t get easier than this. Apple’s Safari is known for its sleek, neat and functional design and it would have been unfair if you expected anything more complicated than this.
So get out there and surf to your heart’s content, never to be badgered by those pesky, pushy advertisements and annoying pop-ups. You will have them only when you need them.

You often stumble on sites and you find them to be cool, informative or engaging. Well, it could be that you might want to avoid some sites altogether. Either ways, you wouldn’t want to forget the names of these sites, would you? Safari has an easy way for you to handle this situation by helping you bookmark your favorite ( or most hated and hence to be avoided sites ) by adding the book mark feature — now, every browser has this feature, but we are talking about Safari which is famed for its simplicity and sheer functionality apart from the mind boggling speeds.

You could now save time and easily head straight to the sites you want to go by creative bookmarks as mentioned below:

1. Type in the address of the ‘Bookmark able” site and head there.
2. Click on the + sign in the Safari toolbar.
3. In the Sheet that drops down, type “My favorite Site” (or whatever name you’d like to use for the site), choose or create a folder with an appropriate name and click the Add button.

Voila. If you want to head over to your favorite site next time, find your folder on the bookmark tool bar found on the browser and simply click on the site name displayed there.

Imagine what would have happened if pay pal suddenly decided not allow users to log-in to their pay pal accounts if they happened to use Apple’s Safari Browser (inlcuding the one on the Pink iPhone) – absolute mayhem. Thankfully, Pay pal has issued an official release stating that it has no intention to block any users of any browser whatsoever and the unrest was unwarranted.

Pay Pal does have a policy (for enhanced security) not to allow users logging into their systems through out-dated or unsafe browsers.

According to computerworld.com, “PayPal was reacting to reports of a research paper released the week before by Michael Barrett, the firm’s chief information security officer, said that the payment service would ban browsers that lacked a way to block known or suspected phishing sites, and didn’t support Extended Validation (EV) certificates”
Further more “Safari does not have an anti-fraud blocker and does not support EVs, the relatively new digital certificates meant to reassure consumers that the site has been vetted and is legitimate”

Since no one was available to comment about who is going to do what, the show must go on.

“Blazing performance”, “Tabbed Browsing”, “built in RSS” and a lot of other features sometimes get on to the fading clouds given that the number of negatives race to dim the light on the positives. The recent headline grabber safari V.3.1 is said to have a couple of software vulnerability issues and a lot of other quirky bugs seemed to have surfaced preceding and following the launch of the browser. One such vulnerability was the fact that the files on a windows machine (especially the long named ones) can be exploited to cause a memory corruption which is made possible using these loopholes by a savvy attacker.

Another such loophole that was reported was that attackers or hacker scan stream feed their own content on the recipient’s browser without changing or redirecting the URL – think of it as browser spamming. We have only scratched the surface of the mounting number of complaints being found the Safari’s “Support Forum”.

There have been various other problems being recorded at the support forum like “The downloaded file not being found”; “The pages are fast enough but the scroll takes a long time, which is very irritating”: “It has no security features and doesn’t even have ad-blocking capabilities”.

Apple is reportedly working feverishly on these bugs which are now a staple exercise following any major software launch.

Things seem to be heating up now ever since the launch of Apple’s Safari V 3.1. Mozilla seems to be at logger heads with Apple when it apparently set off a war of sorts when Mozilla’s chief had stated that “Apple coerces people to download software that isn’t really required”. I don’t know where that one came from since, as far I know almost every other software (including Mozilla’s Firefox) feeds on other software to render its applicability.

An excerpt from the site www.nzherald.co.nz goes like this

Mozilla CEO John Lilly has blasted Apple for including the Safari browser for Windows in its software update.
He says it tricks Windows users into downloading the new browser by bundling it with updates for iTunes and QuickTime.

Here’s more of it, from the same source:

“What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong,” said Lilly in his blog.
“It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad - not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole web.”

Is this a harbinger of things to come? Are Mozilla and Apple going to be in the ring wrestling each other out with the other big wigs like Opera and the all-mighty Internet Explorer joining in later? In my opinion – this is a non-issue being made into a raging tornado.

I second the opinion of one of the commentators there which goes like this:

“This is the biggest NON-ISSUE yet &45; and anyone using a computer that can’t use that screen and make a good decision should go back to a typewriter.”

I would say we should leave it to the users to decide who’s who and what’s what!

This Post is a sequel to Safari – a host of neat touches underneath the hood: Part 1
We are taking a rather drawn on, critical look at what is underneath the hood of the newly launched Safari V 3.1 Browser (now also made available for windows users). One of the nifty options provided within the browser was the “Snap-back”. Click once and you are back to the original results page or the original page where you started browsing – you’ll appreciate this one because I would spend a good 3-5 minutes just hitting on the back button to reach the place where I started from. Add ‘private browsing’ and for once you can escape the watchful eyes and hyper sharp ears of the Internet.

Guess what? You still need to have software installed to chat on Gmail; not all pages are view-worthy when displayed on the Safari and there seem to be a lot of work left for the Safari Teams from Apple to get back to work on.

The glitches are still being reported and that should be a given since it is still new (although it shouldn’t be happening after the beta label is off!)

Apart from a few unsubstantiated rumors about the recently “off-beta (ized)” function version of Safari V 3.1, there seems to be more euphoria about a host of snazzy functions Safari claims to have brought to the table. The bugs that have been reported were during the “beta’ time and it is still uncertain whether they have been rectified or not. However, there are reasons under the safari’s hood that might win every sane browser’s heart.

Apple’s Safari V3.1 does throw its weight around given that it is hefty 18.63 MB – almost like a sumo wrestler when compared to the “fire fox”. It has some intuitive properties like handling its own installation and can also use the plugins you’d have downloaded for fire fox obviating the need to have them downloaded all over again. It has to be admitted that the speed is indeed awesome and the page downloads happen like a breeze. Internet Explorer would be a joke compared to the speeds we are talking about here and it also leaves fire fox panting for breath.

Cool features like fluid-flow graphics instead the standard “download in progress” types found on the other browsers is indeed telling. I didn’t understand why the entire page has to dim out while simultaneously leaving the highlighted search keyword highlighted — I would have wanted to read the anchor text with which the keyword tags along. If I am searching for “Business Opportunities” I am not looking for this keyword per se, but everything else that might follow it or precede it. No comments on this search option on Safari, though!

Safari – a host of neat touches underneath the hood: Part 2