Safari 3.01 Beta for Windows

How does Apple's Windows browser stack up against the reigning rivals?

The technological convergence between Apple and PC draws closer with each passing day. Sometimes it’s in big ways - Apples ditching of PowerPC architecture in favour of the cheaper and arguably better Intel Core2 Duo solution – and sometimes in smaller ways, like the June 11 release of a Beta version (3.01) of the staple Apple web browser ‘Safari’ not just for Mac but Windows too.

Safari has come a long way on the Mac platform since its inception in 2003, but heads into a market already crowded with the likes of Opera, Internet Explorer and Mozilla. While firing it up on a sweetly sophisticated iMac or Powerbook is a relatively joyous experience, can the same be said for Safari on Windows?

Apple claims over a million downloads of the beta in the first 48 hours so there’s a good chance at least a couple of people are interested.

While bearing in mind the constant factor that this is a Beta release, let’s take a look at how it stacks up.

The Interface

Safari brings to the Windows desktop that unmistakable Apple style largely responsibility for a chunk of Apple purchases. Brushed aluminum is the flavour of the day, and Safari delivers the Apple look and feel to Windows expertly. Everything feels soft and uncluttered; load progress for pages is indicated by an aqua bubble bar that flows – left to right – through the address bar, while clicking menu buttons to add bookmarks or perform other functions produces a very OS X ‘blob’ effect as dialog boxes come into view.

Ok – ‘blob’ effect isn’t a terribly accurate description of what happens, but seriously, you try explaining it! It just looks cool and blob-like. Apple users would understand.

The success of Safari in emulating the smooth Apple UI is both its strength and its weakness. Reducing command buttons along the top to ambiguous symbols that produce no hover text when you sit the mouse on them can leave you with only the option of just mashing the bugger to find out what it does. That’s how we learned where to add a bookmark or submit a bug report, although closer scrutiny of the ‘bug report’ button does reveal a vague resemblance to an arachnid of some description.

Where Safari differs wildly from all other Windows browsers is in font rendering. Apples roots have always been in the graphic design marketplace and as such the font rendering on your standard Mac is reflective of how text might appear in hard copy print. Smooth rounded characters litter the Safari UI and any webpage you view through it, while other browsers follow the rigid ‘pixel aligned’ method of Windows. It boils down to Safari producing text which – while looking smoother and more natural actually ends up being less readable than the more rigid typeface used in other Windows browsers. There’s an appearance setting you can use to tweak the anti-aliasing effect on text, but with only three settings to choose from and depending on your monitor you might still have a hankering for sharper fonts.

A constant underlying bulkiness haunts Safari as far as UI responsiveness goes. It’s the same feeling you get from iTunes for Windows, or skinning WinXP to look like Mac OS X. While all the fancy effects, flying dialog boxes and liquid progress bars are effortlessly stylish on a Mac, for some reason they get clunky – like a kid trying to run in Gumboots – when in Windows.

Safari uses a Mac OS X anti-aliasing system for font rendering, rather than Windows native ClearType. This produces ultra smooth text, but if users rely on ClearType tuning to customise font anti-aliasing for their particular displays they could be in trouble.