Evaluating Apple Safari Web Browser for Windows

    Testing and evaluating Apple Safari (Beta) as a viable web browser on Windows XP

    A few days ago, Apple Computer, or Apple Inc. as it may want to be identified released the Safari Web browser for the Windows PC platform. I do not know how other Windows users may have received the news, but for me it was a welcome new opportunity to not only test Web Development projects on the popular (mainly) Apple Macintosh web browser, but I like the idea of stiff competition between vendors because it results in better and more accessible products. Anyone can attest to that be comparing the relatively active development that we had during the initial Netscape/Microsoft browser wars, and the current Firefox/Microsoft struggle to see who has the best and most popular and secure web browsing agent.

    The Safari Experience on Windows XP (Media Center Edition)

    Anyone who has used an Apple Inc. product can attest that Apple products are very intuitive to use, nicely styled, high in usability, and do not unnecessarily provide the user with confusing settings and options. The Safari Web Browser for Windows lives up-to this reality that we as Windows users rarely want to admit. The installation process was smooth, quick and simple.

    1. The installer did not have to ask me if I wanted to migrate my browser settings, history and bookmarks from Internet Explorer 7, or Firefox because it was able to detect that Firefox is my default browser, and it efficiently and nicely copies not only my settings and bookmarks, but it also imported my saved passwords and browsing history so that when I opened Safari and started browsing, the transition was seamless
    2. I was not asked to make any complicated an unnecessary choices such as what features or options I wanted to install; I assume that Apple keeps the application lean enough so that I only install the necessary base-items with the option of expanding upon it with options and extensions if I find it necessary.

    Using Apple Safari on Windows

    Using the Apple Safari Web browser is a pleasant experience because of the minimal user interface and the overall good feeling that a common PC/Windows user like me gets feeling that he is half-way to becoming am Mac user.

    Advantages

    1. The application is built with economy in mind; so it does not have any unnecessary menus and moving images... such are painfully characteristic of Netscape Navigator in these days when it is optionally bloated with AOL "things".
    2. You have to install and experience it to know some of the small but really important features in Apple Safari

     

    Disadvantages

    1. There is no status-bar by default, and so you have to guess where a link will take you unless you want to use the context menu to see the link options (I am guessing that it has a context menu like all Windows applications). As a Firefox and IE7 user, I did not know where/how to turn it on because the thing is always turned on.
    2. Apple seems to have ignored the fact that even if many may consider their UI superior to others (justifiably or not), they should consider the learning curve for Windows users and not force-feed us the classic Apple theme/skin with their browser. They should have been modest and provided the option to switch toa look & feel and menu arrangement that is similar to that on a classic Windows application.
    3. Apple Safari web browser became unstable after leaving it running for a few hours and whenever I selected it from the task-bar, it would take a long time to become active, and sometimes it would fail to fet a page in time before time-out, or it would appear to be waiting for the server for a long time (I was only patient for 10 minutes). Restarting the browser without rebooting the PC did not rectify the problem.
    4. One day after installing it, and shortly after the browser started becoming irresponsive, I had two instances of the "Windows Blue Screen of Death" causing windows to give the dreaded warning and them automatically proceeding to restart. Both times, this was triggered by me attempting to open an FTP folder using HTML-Kit tools for Windows. My guess is that since HTML-Kit Tools for Windows depends on Internet Explorer to browser folders, Safari may have positioned itself in a manner that it got invoked to perform a process that was previously assigned to IE or Windows Explorer thereby causing a fatal failure in Windows.

     

    Conclusion

    I was slowly loosing confidence in the stability of Safari, and the coincidental or otherwise related occurrence of Windows XP failures has made me uninstall the web browser. To make sure that I did not get rid of the browser and keep the problems, I conveniently used the Windows XP system recovery feature to roll-back my system and applications to the day before I installed Apple Safari (System Recovery also creates a milestone/restore point every time an application is installed).

    I will probably install Safari on a PC at a later date once they have a stable and well-tested release-candidate. Although being that I already ordered a Mac Book Pro to replace my HP Media Center laptop as my carry-around PC, I will not have the need to install Safari on a PC unless it is for the purpose of evaluating it.

    If you have had the opportunity to install and test Apple Safari on Windows XP or other Windows platform, please take a moment to write a comment about your experience with the Apple Safari Browser on Windows .