Safari Browser now on Windows PC

Windows users now get to use Apple's Safari Web Browser on their PCs.

The browser currently comes in the form of a public beta, and is freely available on the apple website (The file size is around 14-15MB).

Apple claim that their browser is the fastest out there, with a few charts comparing it against Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera. The figures certainly look nice, but how does it really compare in use? Well, I decided to download it and check it out.

After a very smooth and simple installation I was presented with a very nice looking browser. Sure, it looks a little out of place in the windows world, but I like variety, and it looks very clean. I'm not quite sure how my screen resolution holds up against everyone else's setup, but I'm confident in saying that it's pretty damn good.

My first port of call was my own website. Two things about the site were instantly noticable:

1. The images look cleaner and sharper than ever before. I have no idea why.
2. The bold fonts look blurry. Ew.

From here I went to various other websites, including many popular ones such as digg, google, and the bbc. Again, I noticed that the bold fonts looked blurry, and the images look noticably better.

As for speed, I must say that the pages did load very quickly. This is pretty good as they tend to anyway on my 8MB connection. I wonder if anyone on a slower connection has witnessed any more noticable improvements in speed? You will have to comment.

For now I am quite impressed, and this should hopefully help in developing websites (if this browser renders websites the same as for its Macintosh users). As of yet I have not witnessed any bugs. Although it is worth noting that it seems to display JavaScripted elements a little differently to IE and Firefox. But, this is still the Beta phase, so maybe they will clean that up (or we need to clean up our code, lol!).

The privacy feature is also nice for those who worry about such things as logged sessions and cookies. It keeps all details nicely hidden which aids for safer browsing of dodgy websites.

I highly recommend you try out Safari, it's always nice to have alternatives. Definately download it if you do any sort of website development, as it's good to see how well scripted your CSS is.

I'm looking forward to the final release.

PS. If you have used this browser and come accross any of your own bugs, problems, or even improvements, please post them up here as I am interested in seeing how this goes. Thankyou.

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