Safari for Windows 3.1.1

Safari for Windows is a new browser on the market launched by Apple in order to compete with Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. At, least, that's the intention.

Safari is built on top of an open-source Web browser engine called WebKit, whose developers announced on their blog this morning that the first nightly build of the Windows version of WebKit will be released on June the 14th, 2007.

At a first glance, the browser appears to be a competitive one. That is, depending on your needs. The usual features are included, such as tabbed browsing, downloader, Autofill feature, RSS reader, customizable toolbar, spell-checker, pre-installed plug-ins. In my opinion, browsing the Web using Safari is not as fast as advertised by Apple, but the browser is fast enough to comply with my needs. There are two search engines included, Google and Yahoo!, but you can't customize the list by adding or removing search engines.

The program comes with pre-installed plugins: Windows Media Player plugin, Quicktime plugin, Adobe Acrobat, Shockwave Flash, Apple Java plugin, Microsoft DRM, etc. This means that you don't need to download and install all the plugins needed for a complete Web experience.

The Interface is the classical OS X; however, it's too dark and there are no colors in the default skin, which makes it pretty confusing.

Pluses: I like the pop-up killer and especially the feature called private browsing: when it's turned on, browsing data won't be cached on the disk granting you a higher degree of privacy.

Drawbacks / flaws: The new Yahoo! Mail Beta hasn't been tested on your browser. The AutoFill feature appears to be not working properly. The lower margin of the browser's window looks a little bit odd, like it's been unfinished. You can't resize the window vertically or horizontally. You can only resize diagonally (dragging it from the right lower corner).

In conclusion: This Beta release is so and so. There's a long way until it will turn into a real competitor for Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera.

version reviewed: 3.0.1 Beta