Posts Tagged ‘safari on windows’

Apple Safari has gone through lots of criticisms since its launch. Most of the time the browser was disgraced because of its security loopholes. Safari 4, the latest version of Safari browser claims to be much more secured and reliable than its predecessors. The new iteration of the Apple Safari breaks all the obstructions and now provides more functionality and improved user interaction by supporting HTML 5 codes.

We all know that HTML is the basic language that works behind any web portal. The HTML 5 is the latest version of Hyper Text Markup Language and offers enhanced functionality and improved presentation. It offers support for audio and video tags which makes it easy for the developers to integrate the audiovisuals with the website core code easily. Safari 4 promises to support such codes along with the next-generation web standards. This means the fourth version of the browser will the best to unleash the next level of sophistication and user interaction that Web 2.0 offers.

Safari 4 offers an enhanced way of experiencing the dynamic web content such as flash animations, audio, video and much more. Of course, just like earlier versions of Safari, Safari 4 can be run on any Windows PC, be it the Samsung NC10 netbook, or the Dell Latitude XT tablet PC. Safari 4 also supports Cascading Style Sheets 3 (CSS 3) to offer a stupendous web site presentation. You will now experience new gradients and reflections along with some other visual elements. Apart from Apple, Mozilla has also decided to include support for HTML 5 in the future releases of Firefox.

Picture: Apple

Recently there have been reports that the new Firefox 3.0 beta 5 is faster than Safari 3.1, which Apple claims to be the fastest browser around. While the methods used to arrive to the previous conclusion have since proven slightly problematic, Firefox 3.0 Beta remains a major challenger and rival for Safari 3.1 on Windows. Internet Explorer does not enter the discussion, even though over 50% of all internet users are using some version it. But how do the two cutting edge browsers, namely, Safari and Firefox, and their two newest versions Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3.0 beta 5, respectively, stack up against each other so far? Not just in terms of speed, where we looked at a comparison earlier, but in terms of the interface, usage, and convenience as well. One reviewer gives us his on hand impressions.

Perhaps the largest advantage the reviewer found with Safari 3.1 was the interface and design. Many people have grown fond of it, so that a Firefox application was even designed earlier to mimic it. Nonetheless, even with these copy applications, Safari 3.1 retains a lead on Firefox in the appearance department. While the reviewer is conducting his review from a Mac perspective, many of his points hold for windows users too. For example, Firefox doesn’t support the useful system wide dictionary, which pops up the definition of any word after clicking on it with a certain shortcut key. Safari also displays more information regarding surfing history directly from the browser without having to open up a new window like in Firefox. The reviewer lists Firefox’s memory management as one of its main strengths and claims it is much more efficient than Safari’s. Of course, we know from our previous article that Safari is “faster” when it comes to Java processing and the iBench tests. Firefox remains a worthy competitor to Safari, and especially Firefox 3.0 beta 5, but both browsers will need to develop further before a real judgement can be made.

Picture: Arts Technica

Sluggish internet surfing can be especially frustrating and speed, as always, is king. Everyone who uses Safari is impressed by its fast page loading, but is it the fastest as Apple claims? The answer depends both on who you ask, and on what tests you use to determine browser speed. According to the industry standard iBench tests, Safari on Windows is more than double the speed of Internet Explorer 7 and at least 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. This remains unchanged, but there is a new challenger on the horizon in the form of Firefox 3.0 Beta who is reportedly faster than the current champion Safari, according to results from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. The key word here is “reportedly”, because as a closer look by Arts Technical confirms, Safari remains the faster browser.

Firstly, the test in which Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 outpaced Safari compared the stable and official version of Safari 3.1 to a still in development test version of Firefox 3.0. Clearly that is an unfair match up. The people at Arts Technica took it upon themselves to use the latest webkit version of Safari 3.1 to compare against Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 and they threw in the official version for good measure as well. In the results using the same SunSpider Javascript Benchmark, the webkit build fast outperforms Firefox 3b5, as does the official version. However, rather than stopping at only testing Javascript performance as the only benchmark of a browser’s speed as Kingsley Hughes did, the people at Art Technica ran multiple other tests. The results: Safari 3.1 remains the best overall performer and it is clear that Apple’s claims were not dubious marketing tactics, but rather the truth.

Picture: CyberNet

Safari 3.1 for windows is still in its infancy and was only released in middle of March, so we should not expect any major increases in usage yet. Nevertheless, the percentage of internet users using Safari in March posted a positive increase from 5.70% in February to 5.82% in March.

Of course, Safari 3.1 came out of beta too late in the month for us to truly determine the impact the new version had in the browser market. April’s statistics will likely be a better judge of the direction the Safari browser is headed in. Among the Safari users, the amount of people using Safari 3.1, at the expense of other versions, obviously posted the greatest increase. Clearly, Safari is still gaining a foothold in the market, but the statistics do offer some interesting insights. As Safari on Windows becomes more established we can only expect the Safari browser share to increase, because Windows users represent the vast majority of the internet community.

Picture: The Mac Observer

Rather than keeping an infinite number of windows open while browsing, many people simply choose to open up a new tab to avoid the clutter. Safari 3.1 includes multiple and very intuitive ways to use this valuable feature more effectively. Instead of using the Command-T keyboard short cut to create a new tab, you can simply double click on the tab bar. Safari then produces the new tab and makes its your active browser window automatically.

There is also another handy trick for those tab aficionados who would like every link to open in a new tab, rather that in a new window. Simply open the Terminal from the Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs

-bool true

Now every link will open in a new tab. To reverse the code simply enter the following in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs

-bool false

These are just some examples of the many useful features inherent in Safari 3.1 on Windows, and we will no doubt be reporting on many more to come.

Picture: Apple

Safari 3.1 on Windows is finally out of beta and ready for testing and use. The update was released on March 17th and now the first software impressions and evaluations have already come in. The updated version promises to increase site compatibility, improve application stability, and improve back/forward performance, among many other features mentioned here. But how well does the first version of the new revolutionary browser actually stack up?

Apple claims that Safari on Windows is hands down the fastest browser. Indeed, the reviewers at Ars Technica found the browser’s ultra fast speed to be one of its strong points, though they claim it is not remarkably faster than competition, namely, IE and Firefox. In terms of standard compliance, the Safari on Windows browser also ranks above its competitors, and the reviewer notes how Safari handles memory usage more efficiently than Firefox. The overall conclusion: Safari needs to be polished around the edges, and some points need to be fixed, but it is clearly a very serious contender. You can read the review for yourself here.