Safari for Windows: A Brief Review

Yesterday, June 11th, 2007, Apple released a version of it’s prized internet browser, Safari, for the Windows platform. I decided I wanted to get in on the action and take it for a spin. After all, I am a webmaster. Inevitably I will have people visiting my websites using this new browser/platform combination and I should get to know how it works (and also make sure that all my current websites check).

Naturally, I will not be able to cover every minute detail about Safari here, nor will I try. But this browser is distinct enough that you don’t have to look very hard to find things you like or dislike about it. And that is how I am going to base this review – my likes and dislikes about Safari. I am also aware that Safari for Windows is still in beta. Obviously, Apple intends to do more work on it, but I shall review it in its current state nonetheless. I should also say that this is not a comparison of Safari for Mac vs. Safari for Windows as I have never used the Mac version. Let it be known that I am an avid Firefox user (and that I find IE7 more and more repulsive every time I open it). So you may see this review as being part “Safari vs. Firefox” and part “Safari vs. Itself.” If any browser is going to move me away from Firefox, it had better be pretty good.

So without any further ado, here’s a two-cents rundown of my likes and dislikes of Safari for Windows. Unfortunately for Safari, the “dislikes” outnumber the “likes.” But lets start with the good news first…

Likes

1. The loading indicator in the URL bar

This really makes sense and it helps clean up the status bar at the bottom.

2. Bookmarks made simple
Adding a bookmark is really quite simple with Safari. And the Add Bookmark button comes conveniently by default on the toolbar. As a side note, the small GUI effects of the drop down windows are sure to impress some people, but that’s really trivial to me.

3. RSS comes standard

The nice AJAX support in the RSS window makes it very user friendly. I like the ability to select the length of the article and quickly sort by date, source, etc. RSS really needs a helping hand in order to reach the Joe Blow general populous. This is very nice.

4. Slight difference in speed
I’m not sure this should be a major selling point for Safari… but Apple claims that it loads pages and Javascript 2x faster than IE and 1.6x faster than Firefox. To me, this difference is very slight, but I can detect it somewhat. It’s a bit more apparant with JavaScript. This might make all the pretty little Web 2.0 AJAX thingymabobs function with slightly enhanced efficiency.

Dislikes

It is unknown to me whether some of these dislikes are bugs or valid complaints. In either case, here’s a few things I’ve noticed that tick me off starting with the absolutely inexcusable and moving on to the smaller, i-can-probably-deal-with-this sort of things.

1. Window resizing without my consent
Here’s the scenario. I maximize the browsing window to full size, then minimize it. Every time I click the taskbar to open it back up, Safari brings the window back up un-maximized. This means that every time I minimize the browsing window, I have to re-maximize it every time I want to use it again. That’s dumb. It might not be a problem for some computers, but my maximum resolution on my 12″ IBM Thinkpad X40 is 1024×768 which means that I can’t view any website decently unless I either maximize the window or manually resize it.

2. No drop-down on the Back button

From time to time, I like to click the drop-down arrow on Firefox to back up multiple pages at once instead of backing up through multiple sites. The Safari Back button doesn’t give me this functionality.

3. What happened to Google Suggest?
This comes standard with Firefox. I have gotten quite used to seeing Google-suggested search results avail themselves to me time after time. Suffice it to say that Safari would do well to have this.

4. Textarea resizing
Ok. This could be handy, but to me it seems more ridiculous than anything. Especially since you can drag the box to be as big as you want. This destroys the layout of some pages if you resize it too much. As a webmaster, I design my textareas to be as big as I know they need to be without anyone needing to resize it for me. Another thing with textareas…

5. No spell-checker
Yeah, I like this feature in Firefox very much.

6. Scrolling Hindered
This almost makes me mutter under my breath every time it happens. Maybe it’s just a thing with my laptop, but I am unable to scroll the window with my TrackPoint (sorry, gotta take a side track – IBM’s TrackPoint has got to be the best invention for the laptop since the power plug. I love it so much more than a track pad. TrackPoint lets me move the mouse and type without having to move my hand…. soooo nice.). Anyways, now I have to manually drag the side scroll bar. That annoys me greatly.

7. No ad blocker
Firefox treats you right with the AdBlock Plus extension. No ads never… Safari doesn’t have this on the other hand. Which brings up another dislike….

8. No extensions/add-ons/themes/etc.
One reason why I love Firefox so much is the ability to extend its functionality with a broad array of extensions (or add-ons, or whatever you call them now). Safari comes up empty handed here, too, unfortunately.

9. I like the status bar, thank you…
I was thrown for a loop for a brief moment when I first started testing Safari. Perhaps it is just because I am a webmaster, but, I like to see where links take me before I click on them (don’t you?). I admit I must do this subconsciously most of the time. I had to manually add the Status Bar in Safari before I went any farther.

So in conclusion, I would say that although Safari has some very good things going for it, in the long run I am definitely staying with Firefox. I should also note that several vulnerabilities were found on the Windows version within hours of it being released.

Those are my thoughts. I’m interested to hear what others of you think about Safari whether you use it exclusively on a Mac, or have just started using it on your PC.