Categories: Apple, Microsoft, Software

First Look: Safari 3 for Windows/Mac

While the announcements at the WWDC 2007 (Worldwide Developers Conference) in my opinion, lacked some things (e.g., new hardware announcements), the information about the up coming Leopard OS (due in October ’07) did have me drooling a bit. And, Apple has started to extend its reach into the Windows arena similar to how they did with QuickTime and then iTunes. There is now a public beta of Safari 3, the next iteration of the Apple browser.

I must say that the PC version of Safari does move pretty quickly. It is consistent with the previous Mac-only versions with very little on-the-surface changes. The website does tout the 12 reasons that Safari is “good”: speed, interface, bookmarking, pop-up blocking, inline find, tabs, SnapBack, Autofill forms, built-in RSS, resizable text fields, private browsing,Â and security.

I think that many of these items do exist (some better than others) in the other prominent browsers out there (Firefox, IE, Opera). However there are a couple that are new or somewhat unique to Safari (and new to Safari 3) that warrant a tiny bit more detail.

Blazing Performance – yes, I do have to agree. This version of Safari is a lot faster at rendering pages. (Safari – 7 seconds for MSNBC, Firefox – 13 seconds and IE – 15 seconds) Note: this are quick and dirty tests. Firefox has a bunch of ad-blocking and other processing that is uses on my system. Safari was fast and clean with the rendering though…it did WIN.
Inline Find – this is probably the most elegant treatment that I have seen in any browser. The keyword that you are searching for is highlighted in a very Web2.0 way. All of the other parts of the screen are gray-ed out. Take a look at the screenshot at the bottom of this post for a more detailed view.
Resizable Text Fields – at first I could not figure this out for the life of me. I kept trying to drag single line text fields. This is NOT the type of field that can be resized. It is the multi-line text boxes that can be resized. Once I figured that out, it made a lot of sense.

Those, in my opinion, are the biggest differences between Safari 2 (on the Mac) and against other Windows Browsers out there. I’m sure that if I play with it more, I will uncover more. I still do love the built-in RSS feed reader too!

Here is the “Inline Find” screenshot where I searched for “computer”.

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Michael Sheehan (“HighTechDad”) is an avid technologist, writer, journalist, content marketer, blogger, tech influencer, social media pundit, loving husband and father of 3 beautiful girls living in the San Francisco Bay Area. This site covers technology, consumer electronics, Parent Tech, SmartHomes, cloud computing, gadgets, software, hardware, parenting “hacks,” and other tips & tricks.