Safari on Windows

In Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the WWDC, he announced that there is a free beta version of Safari available for XP and Vista at Apple downloads. Safari commands a decent 5% of the browser market share and a Windows version will significantly increase this figure.

Not one to complain at being able to play with some free software, I downloaded the beta and had a look around. There’s nothing ground breaking, but I guess Mac users knew that already, the standard multi-tabbed browsing, a funky snapback facility and the usual bookmark, history functionality we’ve all come to expect from a half-decent browser.

However, the main push of Safari for Windows is based on its speed. According to the Safari download page it out strips the other three main browsers in HTML & JS performance and on launch speed. I’m not too sure if that’ll play a major factor in whether the average Windows internet user picks Safari as their browser of choice but more competition has certainly got to be good.

As a web developer I wouldn’t use it that much as I’ve got too many plugins hooked up to Firefox but obviously testing my sites in Safari has now become a whole lot easier!