Sunday, June 17, 2007

Safari 3.0 brings the 'tardedness to the rest of them

So, I am a tiny little bit too late to report that Apple has released Safari beta for Windows (v 3.0). Let's just say that this jet lag from my return trip from Korea is not helping keeping this blog as agile and responsive as its normal self (tongue-in-cheek).

My first reaction to Safari on Windows was that of pleasement, because of the easy and fast installation. Almost no questions were asked and I was there on the internet. Secondly, I felt the chills because the titlebar and toolbar were so shady and dark, sharply constrasting with the happy, bright colors of Firefox and Opera. What's this, Apple turning Emo?

I will completely understand the couple of crashes in a single day of light browsing (hey, I have a demanding job and I only reload engadget every 2 hours or so), because this is just a beta. If Apple keeps their stellar bug slaying record, I can bet you that it will be less crashy than IE and FF by 2008.

Toward the end of my browser test, however, I felt VERY VERY pleased about a new Safari feature that's going to make it my #1 Windows browser starting Monday. This is the Text Find feature. If you haven't tried it, it will blow your dirty socks away. While other browsers don't realize that Ctrl-F and Ctrl-G keep their users hunting for the highlighted text for longer than it takes to find Waldo, Safari uses a better, bolder and fatter word highlighting that truly calls your attention. A big three thumbs up!

Aleluya!

As we speak, IE and FF developers are copying this feature. Expect it in your non-Safari browser by September.

As for speed, Safari is at least as fast as FF and IE. Let's hope it keeps up :) After all, this incursion of Apple into the Windows world has no other purpose than to make PC web-dev's into iPhone developers. Don't let Steve fool you into believing that they want a bite of the IE merkeshare pie. More likely, it will drive down the number of active FF browsers running, as the IE marketshare (my grandma included) are people who are completely satisfied with IE.