Safari may be Apple’s default web browser, and it may have been announced simultaneously with the new features in Leopard, but strangely enough, it actually isn’t a Leopard-specific feature. Safari 3 has been available in a Public Beta for Tiger users since early June, however it wasn’t in a perfect state and did cause some compatibility problems with other applications because of the new version of WebKit that it installed. However, shortly after Leopard was out, a final version of Safari 3 was also delivered for Tiger users.

And of course, Safari is one of the few Mac applications that is available on other platforms, most specifically (and most controversially) the Windows platform. Larry and I had a 30 minute-long debate about this on PreviewCast #035. Safari 3 is still in a public beta for the Windows platform, unlike both the Tiger and Leopard versions which are now fully stable releases. The lagging of the Windows side could possibly be attributed to the fact that despite Safari’s “focus on security from day one,” the Windows Safari was ripped to shreds by hackers on day two. Oh, and Safari also exists, probably most famously, on the iPhone and iPod touch.

But I’ve upgraded to Leopard, and for me, the guy who threw out Safari Public Beta on day three because of how much it messed up my other apps at the time, Safari 3 is a new feature in Leopard, and so I’m going to review it from a Safari 2 on Tiger to Safari 3 in Leopard point of view. Things that I talk about in this Leopard Feature Presentation may not necessarily reflect your Safari 3 experience on Tiger or on Windows, and most definitely will not reflect your Safari experience on the iPhone/iPod touch. Nevertheless, despite my previous heartfelt love for Camino, I’ve spent the last few weeks giving Safari a whirl, and I’m ready to give it its review.
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Tags: beta, blocking, bookmarks, features, forms, innovation, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, review, Safari, tabs, web browser, WebKit

People who have been following me for awhile know that until recent months, I was notorious for always moving all over the place, particularly in the realm of chat clients and web browsers. I’ve already viewed the chat client that I’ve settled on, and for this review, I want to focus on my web browser selection.

Now, web browsers are no easy topic to talk about. Essentially, web browsers are like politics. Just like most everyone has their own political beliefs, most everyone has their own favorite web browser. And of course there’s the group that just doesn’t like any of the politics but still picks a side for the heck of it, just like there’s the group that just doesn’t like any of the web browser selections out there but still picks a side for the heck of it. Either way, it’s a debate that can pit even the closest of friends up against each other.

For the longest time, I’ve been one of the latter group: someone who had something to complain about for every web browser, which is why I kept changing browsers every few months. Now, my colleagues Robert and Larry on PreviewCast are die-hard Safari fans, which has prompted some of our infamous browser wars on the show, and which also prompted a web browser bet around the 2006 Tour de Peninsula ride that I managed to survive. I’ve tried all the web browsers, haven given a few months of my life each to Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb, and also a few minutes each to Flock and Opera, until settling a few months ago with Camino, which I am still using today.
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Tags: browsers, Gecko, open source, review, Software, web browsing, WebKit