Safari For Windows - A Good Thing?
If you go to apple.com/safari/ you'll see that Safari is now in the beta stage of version 3. You'll also notice that, what they claim is not only the fastest, but also "the world's best" browser, is now on Windows too.
Is this a good thing though? I'm not sure myself. It's only really a good thing if it's "engine" is exactly the same in every single way to it's Mac counterpart.
If it turns out there are differences then that means it's bound to introduce new bugs and that, in effect, make it's a new browser — something us web developers really don't need.
If it's as I expect and exactly the same, warts 'n' all, then I guess that makes it a good thing. Mainly because it's a lot easier for us developers to offer support for it as a browser. No longer will it involve shelling out on a Mac as you can now test from within Windows. However, that means that, if you're a web developer without a Mac then you've now lost your excuse for buying one.
So, download and start testing your sites in Safari. Be warned though — you're likely to find problems. Safari is the Netscape Navigator of its generation and a thorn in the side of the web developer. That said, it's got a growing market share and is only like to grow even more now. No excuses from now on!
What annoys me about it all is that Apple have tried their damnedest to make it look like Mac software. When Microsoft released IE5 for Mac they did it in line with what Mac apps look like. If Microsoft released a new IE7 for Mac that went out of its way to look exactly like its Windows equivalent the Mac crowd just wouldn't have it.
Preference dialogs on the Mac work like Notes property boxes. The effect is instant and there's no need for an Ok/Cancel button. For this reason there are no buttons on Safari/Win's Edit Preferences dialog. The only way out is the tiny close button on the title bar. This is going to confuse the hell out of Joe User.
Apple software looks great on the Mac, but stupid on Windows. Going against the design methodologies of the platform you're developing for is just wrong. Apple should know better!
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The last thing any web developer needs is another browser and its unique quirks to have to design around. Especially a browser that will probably never exceed 10% of the market. That said, the current version of Safari seems to be pretty good in terms of css compliance. I finally removed my browser detect/alert script telling them to use Firefox.
I downloaded the Windows version and have been impressed by the rendering speed. I agree that the Mac toolbar is going to confuse Windows users. I would file this one under wait and see.
Ed, Browser detection alone is evil enough (if anavoidable at times), but an alert script telling users to surf some other site with their shitty current browser? Can't believe you did that.
Furthermore I tend to think, that a (supposed) market share of 10% makes for a hell of a lot of potential customers (or not).
And while I'm in the mood: Calling a browser the "Netscape Navigator of its time" could be misunderstood, Jake. :-) Remember IE3 or 4? Huh!
They certainly have some work to do - when I installed Safari on my primary PC I get no menus (well, they are there but have only randomly placed hypens), no text shows up on the address bar, and it locks up after a few minutes.
At home it's another story - runs just fine. I still prefer not having any buttons to having an OK and APPLY (not that the apply is needed).
Today I'm more convinced than yesterday that Steve Job's move is wrong. Since I have verified that all my questions are the same in the rest of the people.... Designers don't need another browser to develop for; the look & feel sux in windows, and I agree with your opinion, is a disruptive menace for the Windows users.
May be Jobs is thinking "Now those Windoze users will know what are they missing by switching to Vista instead of Mac".
And finally in my opinion, Apple don't need to spread to PCs to win the battle against MS.
Vista is the worst decision when evaluating a brand new Personal Computer, so, Why porting my "so-cool" applications to that OS?
Just don't get it!
.::AleX::.
PS: I installed it yesterday in my ThinkPad with Windows XP SP2. And it looks like crap! IBM sites doesn't render properly and a notorious % of content is misplaced in a lot of web pages. BTW, domino HTTP login dialog make it crash ALWAYS. Forms makes it crash as well.
Well maybe controversial, but I think it is a great move by apple. The market to come is in the mobile computing market / applications running a web client and currently these applications tend not to be designed with Mac compatibility in mind. In addition there is limited software for Mac clients compared to the PC.
Having more compatible software (or even designed for Mac) with Mac clients (then think of adding safari equivalents to Active X which manage your iPod / iPhone / iLife so much better than an IE browser could do) will help them maintain and grow their share of the OS/ Browser market. It looks like a longer term plan to a achieve sustainable growth.
The reason why they haven't window-fied the interface is precisely for that reason... because they can show you another way... it's a long term conversion exercise... why would you buy a pc over a mac when all your applications are delivered via a browser spreadsheets/e-mail/ web browsing) and a mac is easier to use, looks a millions times nicer (ok maybe not the development crowd... as we want more flexibility) but they are interested in the home end-user... windows for work, apple for home.
I'm seeing "we don't need another browser to develop for"...
Um, guys, it's 2007. The 90's called - they'd like their HTML back.
I welcome this, because it means you can check your websites to see how they'll appear on a Mac without having to use a Mac. That's more convenient, not to mention cheaper, than the obvious alternative.
But if your attitude is "we don't need another browser to develop for", then you're being dumb.
You're probably the guy who wrote the website for a camera store I've used - I wanted to check when they opened/closed, but trying to use their website on my phone was awful because it was very badly written.
Or maybe you're the guy who ballsed up a certain large fast food chain's website - apparently, after an intensive session playing on my Wii, I'd never want to order food from them on it. That would be dumb - the whole world uses IE only, right?
Or a cinema chain that, for quite some time, I couldn't visit because I couldn't check when the films were on.
If you're developing for intranets, then you have the luxury of only one browser. Maybe even only one version of that browser. Lucky you.
Otherwise, you're writing poor websites that lose your customer/employer potential custom.
And you're not writing for all browsers. Just for the standards. Because standards compliance in Opera, Mozilla/Firefox, Safari and others is quite high. You'll probably find that IE is the one that causes you most trouble if you write for standards.
Yet IE isn't on phones. (Mobile IE is, but that's a whole different ugly little beast anyway). It's not on many devices. And those are all areas of potential custom you're excluding with an attitude of "not another browser to write for!".
One final note: Apple's iPhone is due out soon. If it's good, then all the movers and shakers will have one pretty quickly. And it uses the Safari engine. How happy do you think they'll be with YOUR work, when that most other things are fine but something you wrote is broken on the iPhone? What kind of buzz will that generate for your employer?
Apple have given you a means to test for the iPhone without buying a Mac or an iPhone. Surely that's a good thing?
Not a great start - ran safari - Dialog Box came up for Proxy name and password - click login - CRASHED!! 3 tries and out - Uninstalled!
"Safari is the Netscape Navigator of its generation and a thorn in the side of the web developer."
Didn't think I'd hear you say something like that Jake!
Develop to the standards and it's just one more browser to test. I've had no problems with it whatsoever building sites, including ones that provide Ajax functionality through XMLHTTPRequest.
If you're supporting Firefox I really don't see a problem supporting Safari too, they're quite similar really.
Ok, maybe it was a bit of an over-the-top statement to make.
I do develop to standards!
What I am trying to say is, out of all the current browsers Safari is the one I have the most problems with when it comes to testing my developed-to-the-letter-of-the-standards websites.
All I know is we need windows to be more Apple'esque. One more app...? so be it...
I bought my macintel a few months ago and its simply the best machine and operating system around. I wish 25% of people used apple. It would make people productive.
Chaps
No use whinging, Safari on the PC will be here to stay so we have to take it on board.
These days I tend to write XHTML Strict, strict CSS, and unobtrusive JS, usually with a slack handfull of AJAX.
For me the nigger in the current woodpile is IE - at least upto 6
It has so many bugs especially around CSS floats that you can deliver 100% correct CSS and XHTML and IE6 WILL NOT render it even remotely correctly.
That's not to say that the rest are perfect (:-)
These days I'm a MAC user (as of a few months ago). Why didn't I do that years ago ?? Even do much of my Domino development under Parallels, not that that's perfect either but it's bloody impressive technoogy.
When my aged parent needed a PC to do email / digital camera stuff I decided that there was no way I could let Uncle Bill loose on her so bought her a second hand iBook. Magic. Best move I ever made, caused me to switch within a month.
There was NO WAY that I was EVER going to do Vista ...
Compared with all that Safari on the PC is a non issue for me.
Keep up the good work Jake.
Regards
@Ron Yuen "For me the nigger in the current woodpile is IE - at least upto 6"
WTF! I nearly spat my coke out when I read that.
My first reaction was to delete the comment. Not sure why I didn't. Must have got sidetracked.
Who said Safari on Windows would be a good test of Safari on Mac rendering? IE 5 on Mac had a couple of minor differences from IE 5 on windows, if I recall.
I have to agree with some of the sentiment that it's here and we likely have one more set of tests to run. But to be honest, if you use basic CSS and avoid getting really crazy, you are probably pretty cross-browser to begin with.
But, Safari for Windows... what market share will that draw from? Mac users - don't they know better already than to use windows? Windows users? Why? they have Firefox, Opera and IE (and netscape) to choose from - and FF has plug ins up the wazu that do the fancy bits you can get with safari. Not seeing much more than 3% adoption rate.
Sorry if I inadvertently caused offence !
You'll have to forgive an old codger of mixed blood (Chinese) but it's a very common saying for my generation and I failed my Political Correction exams.
I did my first programming course long before Jake was born and old habits die hard.
Ron Yuen
AKA Tan Hsiao Chin to my Chinese friends
Jerry, IE5 on Mac was actually a whole different browser, developed by a completely different team (if I recall correctly). So, you could rather say, that they had a couple of minor similarities (like the name) ... :-)
And I strongly second your approach on compatibility: If you develop for an environment where multiple browsers must be taken into account, choose a simple approach and don't get too funky with your features.
@All,
Ever think it's all about the iPhone and the connectivity that iTunes has to the iPhone?
@ Jerry:--
"If you use basic CSS and don't get too crazy..."
Ah, there's the rub. Really, truly, "basic" CSS means you either wind up with a site that only Jakob Nielsen could love, or your (X)HTML is going to have to be unclean (unless the site itself is really, truly basic and doesn't get too crazy).
Yeah, we all want to make a site that is visually eye-popping (or at least unoffensive), but we've also got to think about machine readability. Once we step outside the world of the intranet, we have to worry about things like discoverability. Oh, yeah -- and there's that little "branding" thing to worry about as well. Our (X)HTML needs to be as basic as it can be while maintaining semantics and basic usability/accessibility. Almost by necessity, that means that the raw HTML is going to result in tall, skinny pages. Turning that into something that doesn't cause revulsion and cold sweats in the user community means a lot of positioning, image-replacement, content generation, width-setting and floating -- all things which have been sore points in cross-browser CSS. And now that we've finally gotten down to a set of browsers we know well (and a rag-tag bunch that we can safely turn our noses up at), up pops a new one that could potentially grab a significant, and therefore unignorable, segment of the market. If the "gold" version is standards-compliant, no probs, but if it has its own set of quirks... let's say it uses text-indent on lists instead of margin (Mozilla) or padding (IE). How long will we have to play with our CSS before someone accidentally discovers a way to break link lists (clean HTML) into menus (visual representation)? Will it do floats in the correct clearance order?
My current project is a severe rewrite of a successful open source product (osCommerce), a product that is wonderfully functional from a catalog/e-commerce point of view, but which uses HTML that would make a lazy Domino (er, Notess-on-the-web) developer gag. In making the pages meaningful, usable and discoverable, I've managed to reduce the HTML output by an average of 65% per page (approximately 85% if you ignore the actual content and stick to the markup). Unstyled, it makes useit.com look like boo (remember boo?). Styled, you can't tell that I've done anything (except that the thumbnails aren't distorted anymore) -- but Google and Yahoo! can, screen readers can, and so can cellphone browsers.
THAT's why we worry about things like this.
IMHO, Safari interface is very poor. I dont think it will take off just yet.
I already found an incompatibility in Safari Windows. A site I'm currently working on has a JS image slideshow, and in Safari Windows it doesn't display a single image. Works fine on the mac, and in every other browser. Embedded google maps on the same pages work fine, so its something to do with timed events I suspect, but as Safari windows appears to have zero debug facilities, I have no idea whatsoever is stopping it working.