Death to IE?

June 11, 2007 12:01 PM

Death to IE? If Firefox wasn't enough to ween you off Internet Explorer on Windows, perhaps Safari for Windows will be.
posted by aletheia (172 comments total)

Hm. The important thing left unstated in the post is that Safari is now available to, and free for, Windows users.

(I wonder what the Konquerer people think about this?)
posted by JHarris at 12:05 PM on June 11, 2007

Argh, my mistake, there it is, "perhaps Safari for Windows will be," duh. Still, when the title of "Death to IE?", I think I could perhaps be forgiven for missing that.
posted by JHarris at 12:07 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm using it right now!

(But so far I have not seen any compelling reason to switch from FireFox - either on my Mac or my XP machine).
posted by jazon at 12:08 PM on June 11, 2007

I am loving this. I've been using WebKit Nightly builds for over a year, and they are constantly making progress. I use the latest Leopard builds as my main laptop, this new build released today looks to make significant changes.

I love the snark they made in the keynote: "How will we distribute this? Firefox has 500,000 downloads a day, iTunes has 1,000,000 per day."

Here's to hoping the Windows build runs in Wine on Linux. I'm trying that now...
posted by blasdelf at 12:10 PM on June 11, 2007

First impression: meh.
Metafilter: first impression: meh.

The font smoothing looks quite nice, set to light on my laptop screen.

But I can't use extensions like in Firefox. I'd miss the great del.icio.us extension which completely replaces browser bookmarks.

It's not noticeably faster than Firefox. Scrolling is a bit slow. It uses 68 Mb (!) of memory at startup and 90 Mb after visiting two pages.

The RSS interface is pretty. I can't use proxies at all — the proxy button is greyed out and the whole help system doesn't contain the word 'proxy'.

Being able to test websites on Safari without buying a Mac will be great, but web developers aside, who is the market for this? What major things does Safari do that Firefox (on a PC) doesn't do better?
posted by Aloysius Bear at 12:15 PM on June 11, 2007

Internet Explorer was enough to "ween" me off IE.

It's easily the worst fucking browser ever shat onto the chest of the Internet.

Here's to hoping the Windows build runs in Wine on Linux. I'm trying that now...

Why not just use Konquerer for Linux? (or Firefox?) Wine still kind of blows.
posted by quarter waters and a bag of chips at 12:15 PM on June 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

WINE STILL BLOWS AND VMWARE STILL SUCKS BUT VIRTUALBOX DOES IT RIGHT
posted by quonsar at 12:17 PM on June 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

Ouch! The default font settings make my eyes hurt for some reason. Setting the smoothing to "light" helps a little. Doesn't seem any quicker than Firefox either. Chalk me up as another "meh".
posted by NeonSurge at 12:18 PM on June 11, 2007

I do most of my surfing at work, where I am now on a Mac running Camino 1.5. It's better than anything else I've used. And I really didn't like Safari. I also began to hate Firefux on Windows. It ended up feeling just as laggy and bloated as IE was.
posted by ninjew at 12:19 PM on June 11, 2007

Hordes of trapped cubicle workers on windows domains will use IE because they have to.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:20 PM on June 11, 2007

This'll also certainly chap the asses of the Qt 4 people -- one of their big goals was to have a lot of people using Konqueror on Windows (I guess they'll have to settle for Amarok).

jazon:
The only compelling reason I see to use Firefox is the extensions. That's it. It's works 'best' on Windows -- on Linux it 's less stable, and on OS X it feels really ugly and is considerably slower. On Linux I've started using Epiphany instead (typing this in it right now).

The Mozilla organization can clearly do better, especially now that they have 75+ employees and a Google-fueled yearly budget of $50M+.

IE7 ain't so bad at all. I use IE6 in Wine to use Outlook Web Access because their ActiveX-based version is so much better.

Konqueror feels like a pice of shit to me. I'm sure it'll improve significantly with Qt4, but I really don't want my web browser to be a file browser. I'd much rather use Firefox than it.
posted by blasdelf at 12:20 PM on June 11, 2007

Dude - all those commercial browsers are for mainstream tools. Anyone who's not terminally lame is rendering their own internets through custom warez hacked together from the TI99 OS kernel and a pimped-out punch-card reader.
posted by MaxVonCretin at 12:21 PM on June 11, 2007 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I don't quite get it. Firefox works perfectly, although I suppose it will be nice for web developers. I find the interface kind of ugly and bland.

Maybe apple is thinking of porting more of their iLife suite to windows, and their putting their toes in the water here.

If you think about it, it doesn't make too much sense for apple to tie their products to the Mac. The iPod never would have taken off as it did if it wasn't for a windows port of iTunes. And the apple TV won't get as much traction without a windows port of whatever software that uses. I don't think they want to end up like Sony, where their attempts at proprietary lockin (minidiscs, memory sticks, etc) end up locking them down as well.
posted by delmoi at 12:22 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Camino is also fantastic, I've been using it + Webkit Nightlies as my primary browsers on OS X.

People also tend to forget that way back in the late nineties, Internet Explorer was fucking awesome. It was leagues better than NN4.7. IE 5 on the Mac back in the day was quite innovative, it had the strongest CSS implementation for quite some time. Then they let it all die on the vine when they won the war.
posted by blasdelf at 12:23 PM on June 11, 2007 [5 favorites]

Safari on the Mac makes sense because IE Mac sucks. If you're not one to be downloading browsers, it's nice having the default browser be mostly compliant with modern standards. But if you've installed Firefox (or Camino), Safari seems woefully inadequate.

Given Firefox's marketshare on Windows, why would anyone expect it to make significant inroads?
posted by tommasz at 12:25 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wait, so the deal here is Microsoft might lose more market share for its browser because a competing company is releasing a version of their browser for free?

Does the I in IE stand for irony?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 12:25 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

IE7 with IE7Pro seems to be good enough for most people. Firefox isn't as compelling as it was a couple of years ago. Safari? Meh, maybe a little OS integration would be nice.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:27 PM on June 11, 2007

It's easily the worst fucking browser ever shat onto the chest of the Internet.

Are you kidding?
posted by delmoi at 12:28 PM on June 11, 2007 [2 favorites]

If they get cash from Google for the built in search in the same way as Firefox does then this could be very profitable for them.
posted by Olli at 12:30 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Firefox is the next IE. Grabs a pitch fork and storms off to the castle. While storming realizes that he is alone and that his angry mob is imaginary. Goes home and cooks a pizza.
posted by 517 at 12:30 PM on June 11, 2007

Camino makes me go meh. I'm actually going to uninstall it when I get home tonight.¹ I've been using it for about a week, and it just doesn't have the Apple-like polish I want, or the Firefox power and extension compatibility. I've also tried Flock, and that failed to impress, as well.

¹I'm trying Safari 3 Beta on my iBook in a cafe. I've only been playing with browsers on my desktop.
posted by SansPoint at 12:31 PM on June 11, 2007

Another thing that will be quite interesting is that the Safari UI (at least on OS X) is written as nearly pure Objective-C + Cocoa. It'll be interesting to see whether they rewrote the UI for Windows in Carbonish C/C++ (like iTunes and Quicktime are on both platforms), or whether they ported the runtime to Windows. If that's so, it'll be fascinating if Input Manager Hacks are possible (as they are on OS X, but newly frowned upon in Leopard).
posted by blasdelf at 12:31 PM on June 11, 2007

Are you kidding?

No, IE was, at the time, even worse than Netscape.
posted by quarter waters and a bag of chips at 12:32 PM on June 11, 2007

Interesting that they didn't say anything about Opera, which consistently tops the charts in speed tests for browsing, DOM operations, javascript performance, etc, etc, etc.
posted by boo_radley at 12:32 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I think that there are valid comparisons to make between FF (w/ extensions) and Safari's feature sets. Though Safari does have a neat "inspector" in debug mode (dunno if that's available on Windows). But for the casual browser Safari is so much faster than FF in my experience (and for all those who complain about FF's bloat) that a comparison can barely be attempted. The issue of which is more important to you aside, in the larger context of web development I think Safari-on-Windows is a big win simply because any pro-standards browser that cuts into IE's marketshare is a good thing.
posted by aletheia at 12:32 PM on June 11, 2007

Olli: They do get cash from Google.. Probably also from Yahoo too now that that is a built in option.

And oh god are Flock and Songbird awful, along with whatever 'social' XUL app they shit out next.
posted by blasdelf at 12:34 PM on June 11, 2007

I use Safari 90% of the time and Firefox 10% of the time. IE is way too slow and ham-fisted. The beauty of Safari is you can delete your history, cookies, cache, passwords, etc, at the same time with a single click of your mouse.
posted by disgruntled at 12:35 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm going to install it on my Win machine at work, but I don't think regular internet browser users are the target market for this - the real target is iPhone developers. Safari is the iPhone API, and by putting Safari on Windows, Apple just made sure that everyone who wants to develop for the iPhone has a full dev environment.

Everything else is gravy, I suspect.
posted by mikel at 12:37 PM on June 11, 2007 [8 favorites]

Wow -- on Safari 3/Mac and seeing the styled "Post Comment" button for the first time!
posted by neustile at 12:38 PM on June 11, 2007

IE7Pro? Do "most people" use that addon? They have a fairly low alexa rank, and the grammar on their front page is off.

Adds the inline search bar like firefox has, finds as you type, use the F3 and Enter Key to cycle between multiple results, highlight all results.

Real "professional".

Whether or not IE7 is "good enough" isn't the question, it now has to be good enough to switch too from Firefox.
posted by delmoi at 12:39 PM on June 11, 2007

Safari is great. I find Firefox out of place on the Mac, and it doesn't seem to be the lean mean browser it used to be when it first came out.
posted by chunking express at 12:41 PM on June 11, 2007

"The only compelling reason I see to use Firefox is the extensions."

That's like saying the only compelling reason to masturbate is to have orgasms.

The Mozilla programmers made the right decision to rewrite the browser not as a program that renders web pages, but as a meta-rendering-engine that renders a web browser interface. It's like a virtual machine that creates a browser interface. That's why so many of the free extensions are so kickass, like FireFTP, Foxyproxy and the completely awesome web developer toolbar.

It has become the exact hybrid of online tool and application platform that had Microsoft shitting its pants in the 90s. Maybe it'll supplant AJAX someday.
posted by fleetmouse at 12:42 PM on June 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

More than anything else, this strikes me as Apple making a point. The implied comparison I saw was Safari for Windows against IE for OSX (the worst browser in the history of forever). Perhaps that's the point they're trying to make.

At a broader level, it seems to me that Apple wants to position itself in such a way that it's on parity with Microsoft -- doing everything that Microsoft does, only better. iPod v. Zune. OSX v. Windows. iTunes v., um, nevermind. iWork v. Office. Mail and iCal v. Outlook. Quicktime v. Windows Media Player. AppleTV x. XBox (which Microsoft kinda-sorta tried to pitch as a home-entertainment center).

Apple's market position seems to be "Microsoft if they didn't suck." Like a Honda v. a Kia -- and if you need something slightly nicer, there's products upstream as well (PowerMac or Acura?). Come to think of it, Honda and Apple strike me as having similar design philosophies, but that's a topic for another day.
posted by spiderwire at 12:42 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm running whatever browser runs on a Mac and blocks advertising best. Right now, that's AdBlock Plus (wrapped in something called FireFox).

The advantages of Safari are there, and every now and then I try Safari, and it's indeed faster, and pretty smooth in all it does. The 3.0 version will be even more so.

And then, a few clicks later, I get so fed up with the advertisements I switch back to AdBlock Plus.
posted by DreamerFi at 12:42 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

That said, I use Safari on OSX, and I've come to enjoy it. I used FF for a while, but its Flash support was miserable -- one flash banner on a page would slow everything to a crawl. I understand they cleaned it up a bit in later versions, but the OSX Firefox has always lagged behind the other OSes.
posted by spiderwire at 12:42 PM on June 11, 2007

Safari is the iPhone API

I did think it was kind of a shame that they decided not to allow 3rd party apps.

That Jobs then had to try to sell the ability to view web pages with the phone as an innovative alternative was just silly.
posted by Olli at 12:43 PM on June 11, 2007

Just trying this out on XP. Biggest gotcha so far: no status bar or other device allowing me to see the URL when I mouseover a link. That's a deal-breaker. Am I missing something or is Safari for the trash?

Other annoyances: Can't resize the window by dragging one side at a time - got to target that tiny handle at the bottom right. Can't middle-click anywhere on a tab to close it, like I can in FireFox, got to target a little x icon. Haven't Apple heard of Fitts' Law?

Otherwise, I like the general simplicity of the UI.
posted by normy at 12:46 PM on June 11, 2007

Safari seems to have its own font rendering engine - which is interesting, since the one thing that catches my eye when I use Macs is that they handle font smoothing better than Windows. But it's hard to tell if things look better in Safari because it has crashed three times already.
posted by Termite at 12:48 PM on June 11, 2007

Ooh, Safari 3 beta for OS X, too! Resizable text boxes! Highlighted search! I am resizing this text box right now!
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:49 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm still unclear as to why Safari will knock the socks off of Windows users, as opposed to the already freely available Firefox.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:49 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm using it now on my Mac at work, which was a nice machine when I got it (PPC 2.3 GHz 2.5 GB RAM), but Safari is running kinda slowly. Being able to resize this text field is nice as is being able to move the tabs around. Hopefully it'll run better under Leopard.

Wow -- on Safari 3/Mac and seeing the styled "Post Comment" button for the first time!

Yeah, I never knew what I was missing. Heh.

Interesting that they didn't say anything about Opera, which consistently tops the charts in speed tests for browsing, DOM operations, javascript performance, etc, etc, etc.

I was just looking at Apple's preview of Leopard and the Safari page had stat charts that compared it to FF and Opera.
posted by effwerd at 12:50 PM on June 11, 2007

Interesting that they didn't say anything about Opera, which consistently tops the charts in speed tests for browsing, DOM operations, javascript performance, etc, etc, etc.
Their homepage shows it as faster than Opera on all three tests they did, but not by much.

Safari wins for me because it has inquisitor, which kicks all other search boxes out the park.
posted by bonaldi at 12:50 PM on June 11, 2007

One thing missed from this posting is that Mac users now have a beta of Safari 3 to play with (current version is 2.x).

I'm playing with it now on my MacBook.

Text scrolling seems somehow smoother than previously. Maybe I'm imagining that. Browsing is as fast as it's always been and is better than Firefox, although only by a negligible amount.

New features that I've found: You can click and drag to reorder tabs, and move tabs from window to window. The history menu now lets you reopen a previously closed window. You can now merge all Safari windows into one (quite cool because the page doesn't have to reload once integrated—it just hops across). Other than that, I can't see anything major. They seem to have fixed that annoying 'feature' whereby video in a background window is jerky (I read about that on one of the developer's blogs).

I'd hoped to see that "use a webpage as a widget" thing that's supposed to be coming in Leopard, but I guess that I will actually have to wait for Leopard.
posted by humblepigeon at 12:51 PM on June 11, 2007

normy, just turn on the status bar. It's an option in the view menu I think? Or type cmd-\. Or ctrl-\ perhaps?
posted by chunking express at 12:51 PM on June 11, 2007

If you think about it, it doesn't make too much sense for apple to tie their products to the Mac.

Bingo. It seems like their strategy is to make their software cross-platform but to keep very close control of their OS and platform. From a developer's perspective, this is brilliant. It ups the incentive to develop in the OSX environment, because you can use all the app hooks (to say nothing of the UNIX base, XCode, etc), which in turn will lead to more native OSX apps, which is OSX's most major weakness right now.

Keeping control of the OS-platform tie has been so critical to Apple, too; it avoids a whole ton of the problems that Windows has, especially with driver compatibility and legacy support. I'd bet that makes all the difference for turnaround times in OS development.

It's ironic that Microsoft's business was built on kicking IBM's proprietary system out from under them, and that lack of control over the hardware has turned into a massive liability that Apple (who, with IBM, suffered most from from the flood of PC clones Microsoft enabled) is exploiting that vulnerability to the hilt.
posted by spiderwire at 12:52 PM on June 11, 2007

Normy: surprised to hear that. On the OSX version you can right click on the tabs to get a bunch of options. Also, there is a toggle (menu item) to show/hide the status bar on the OSX version. Sure you haven't missed these?
posted by aletheia at 12:53 PM on June 11, 2007

You can turn the status bar on by going to View > Status Bar.

You can't, however, scroll pages by middle-clicking and moving the mouse up and down. Unlike IE, Firefox, and every single Windows application developed since the dark ages.
posted by Aloysius Bear at 12:54 PM on June 11, 2007

I did think it was kind of a shame that they decided not to allow 3rd party apps.

But porting safari to windows does let them make a much stronger case that to develop third party apps for the iPhone, you just develop them for Safari. Because now, your app work on windows, mac, and the phone. In theory, when you have signal, certain limitations apply, etc. If there was a google-gears style safari plugin for the phone that would be happier.

I use a mac with firefox. What keeps me from going to safari is firefox's in-page search. However, it sounds like the next version of safari will hand tabs the "right" way (tear off, join together, rearrange), which might win me over.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 12:55 PM on June 11, 2007

So the right click will do nothing?

Still, I'm in. Firefox has been so damned slow and buggy lately and Opera is just weird. I'll still use Firefox here though for the glories of MondoMeta, which I have trained to protect me from anything that conflicts with my world view.
posted by LarryC at 12:55 PM on June 11, 2007

fleetmouse writes "
--'The only compelling reason I see to use Firefox is the extensions.'

--That's like saying the only compelling reason to masturbate is to have orgasms."

Well said, sir.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:56 PM on June 11, 2007

These Premises:
The find-find-as-you-type in page search in Safari 3, at least on Leopard, is fucking awesome. Fully animated, using the graphics card's processor. You can probably find a video of it on Apple's Leopard site.
posted by blasdelf at 12:58 PM on June 11, 2007

So the right click will do nothing?

Is this a joke? I'm starting to think that the major mistake Apple made with the one-button mouse wasn't the usability problems, but the myth they created that the OS had no right-button utility at all.

Your right click will work pretty much like you always expected it to, LarryC. Apple just got it into their heads a while back that since people don't right click as much, they'd make their factory-standard mice one-button and have people Control-click, so as not to confuse their newbie users..... or something. OSX is very much a two-button OS.
posted by spiderwire at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2007

But porting safari to windows does let them make a much stronger case that to develop third party apps for the iPhone, you just develop them for Safari.

Bing. It makes sense now. Good call, TPAA.

This move lets them leverage iPhone + Safari to force standardizing around Safari in the browser market. Wow. Very smart.
posted by spiderwire at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2007

Dear Apple,

When there are Adblock Plus, NoScript, Auto Copy, Firebug, Greasemonkey, Linkification, IE Tab, PDF Download, Platypus, and Web Developer extensions for this, then we'll talk.

XXX OOO, a power user.
posted by moonbiter at 1:03 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

It took me forever to trade in my Safari for some Firefox. I'm happy, but there are things that annoy the shit out of me.

Tabs. Hate em.
The weird way Firefox cycles through tabs.
The weird way Firefox cycles through fields in a particular page.
Some noticeable slowdown.
Slightly ugly interface.

Then I found this little bugger of an extension - DownloadHelper - and I haven't looked back.
posted by phaedon at 1:04 PM on June 11, 2007

Is there any way to make Firefox or Safari on the mac act like firefox on Windows with regard to sending mail on gmail? On Windows, you can hit tab-enter from the compose field. With the mac, I have to Use The Mouse!
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:07 PM on June 11, 2007

Actually, I think this is why they did it:

Apps can be written for the iPhone on Safari. Windows people can write iPhone apps. Apps written by Mac developers can drive iPhone sales. Right now, at my job, we're going to be building a way for our sales people to connect to our db, we're bringing in somebody outside who can write for windows mobile and he can hook that up. But if we didn't have him...I could write it for the iPhone and we'd all get them.
posted by Brainy at 1:09 PM on June 11, 2007

On the mac, the only time I use Safari is when I want to get the absolute latest version of a page and Firefox is still throwing up the cached version. On my PC, between opera and firefox, I have no interest in even trying out Safari. Then again, it does seem like Firefox has gotten a little more buggy lately.

Also, when Browser-based apps become the standard, the os wars will seem a quaint memory. Maybe Apple is trying to position itself away from Mac-based things because in the future browser-age, few will care about the OS.
posted by drezdn at 1:10 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm very unimpressed that the status bar is still off by default, and they even highlight it as a "feature" on the website (gives you more browsing space).
posted by simonw at 1:11 PM on June 11, 2007

Someone on Slashdot figured out how to add the debug menu to the Windows version of Safari:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238141&cid=19468947
posted by aletheia at 1:13 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm with DreamerFi -- any browser that works ok while allowing strong blocking of advertisements gets my support. I've gotten so used to having ad-blocking on Firefox that I am startled to see what "regular" web browsing looks like when I use another browser, or borrow someone else's computer.
posted by Forktine at 1:14 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yup, Firefox is pretty hard to beat. Safari does javascript/xslt weird.... kinda in a smiley MAC way, where it looks like it should work, but doesn't.

28mb download? Why does Apple feel the need to ram quicktime down our throats at every opportunity?

No Adblock? Means I'll play with it, but won't use it.
posted by mattoxic at 1:20 PM on June 11, 2007

Interesting that they didn't say anything about Opera, which consistently tops the charts in speed tests for browsing, DOM operations, javascript performance, etc, etc, etc.

Who? Oh that thing that costs money? Well, the big problem with all the vocal anti-MS people is that theyre also very vocally broke and/or cheap. Thus the wonderful marriage of cheap angry windows users and OSS. Superior software like Opera gets the shaft. And you know, you like, fight the man using Firefox. There's no billion dollar datamining corp behind those guys.

/yes sometimes i just like to complain.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:20 PM on June 11, 2007

My problem with the Windows version of Safari (or the idea of one, rather, since I've not tried the beta yet) is something I'm not sure I'd ever expect Apple to change.

When Windows developers port stuff to the Mac, if the port doesn't behave like a Mac app, they catch flack for it.

Apple creates a little island of Mac UI widgets, UI conventions, etc, etc. on Windows and no one bats an eye. Even when it's really ugly, like the menubar stuff tacked into the corner of the iTunes window.
posted by sparkletone at 1:21 PM on June 11, 2007

Hmmmm... Safari 3 on my MacBook (1.83 Core Duo) seems to make it quite hot.

Previously the fan would only make a noise on very Flash-heavy sites (YouTube, or the old Sky news site), or when playing video.

Now the fan seems to be kicking-in when I have two Safari windows open with just basic content.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:23 PM on June 11, 2007

Dear Apple,

When there are Adblock Plus, NoScript, Auto Copy, Firebug, Greasemonkey, Linkification, IE Tab, PDF Download, Platypus, and Web Developer extensions for this, then we'll talk.

XXX OOO, a power user.

As someone who use to be a windows user and spent countless hours tweaking firefox and every other aspect of the OS before moving on to a mac I enjoy the simplicity of Safari (as well as the entire OS).

Your wasting your time with your letter. You're not a power user. You're a windows user (not that there's anything wrong with that).
posted by justgary at 1:24 PM on June 11, 2007

Great! Now Safari can hang out with Opera on single digit usership island.
posted by Artw at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Apple creates a little island of Mac UI widgets, UI conventions, etc, etc. on Windows and no one bats an eye. Even when it's really ugly, like the menubar stuff tacked into the corner of the iTunes window.

Yeh, cos Windows is this oasis of OS uniformity that needs protecting. It was one good bit of the keynote today, showing them touting a uniform UI. Shame it's all a bit too late, as the web's multiple UIs are taking off.
posted by bonaldi at 1:26 PM on June 11, 2007

Why does Apple feel the need to ram quicktime down our throats at every opportunity?

Well, I guess it's a way of getting Quicktime without iTunes. NO, APPLE, I DO NOT WANT ITUNES!
posted by Artw at 1:27 PM on June 11, 2007

So the webbrowser that runs on the iPhone will also run on both Mac and Windows? That's very interesting.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:27 PM on June 11, 2007

Wow, the in-page search in Safari 3 (on the mac) does rule the school. Maybe I'll switch. I used to use adblock on Firefox but it would always slowly consume all available RAM.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:30 PM on June 11, 2007

To block all ads on Safari, use a combo of Saft, Pithhelmet and the adblocker css. Easy. And I get to enable plugins on a site by site basis. Perfect.

Then AcidSearch makes the google-box super-functional.

The only thing I hate about Safari is its memory-hogging-ness, and the slowness. That could be the combination of plugins above, though. Six month old Macbook Pro: Safari holds down a clear gig of Ram. Restart and when Saft opens the same windows again, it's down to 100mb. Crappy. But better than Firefox.
posted by imperium at 1:38 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Opera is free now, at least for Windows/Mac/Linux users (versus phones and whatnot.)
posted by davejay at 1:39 PM on June 11, 2007

Apple creates a little island of Mac UI widgets, UI conventions, etc, etc. on Windows and no one bats an eye. Even when it's really ugly, like the menubar stuff tacked into the corner of the iTunes window.

That's because it's the digital equivalent of taking a dump in a landfill.


Using Safari 3 right now -- seems pretty much the same, maybe even a bit more responsive. CPU load is not noticeably different -- watching GeekTool on the screen before and after the install, on this same page.

Or at least, it seemed the same 'til I saw the styled submit button. Yipes! That's ugly, Matt.
posted by spiderwire at 1:39 PM on June 11, 2007

PithHelmet is a kickass content blocker for Safari.

So the webbrowser that runs on the iPhone will also run on both Mac and Windows? That's very interesting.


Yeah, I think that's the key. Has anyone actually seen the iPhone SDK? I suspect it's going to be based largely on Dashcode, which is the SDK for Dashboard, which renders via Webkit (e.g. Safari). A widget is about the right size to fit in the iPhone's window, and HTML + SOAP is the perfect delivery mechanism for a mobile device.
posted by mkultra at 1:53 PM on June 11, 2007

Why does Apple feel the need to ram quicktime down our throats at every opportunity?

That just killed any interest I have in even looking at the download page, much less trying the browser.

Macs and OSX aren't why I hate Apple. QuickTime, and the rude, hacky way in which it tries to replace every other app that might possibly play a sound or display an image, are why I hate Apple.

Grrrr.
posted by Foosnark at 2:00 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

moonbiter++
posted by nihlton at 2:23 PM on June 11, 2007

Just downloaded, installed and run..
Um. It's all crapped up. Can't type in any of the inputs; doesn't render pages properly; blank, invisible tabs (with blank histories attached!); blank menus

I suppose this is beta code. Maybe I just got a bad apple.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 2:24 PM on June 11, 2007

Gah, that's not supposed to be a pun! Somebody clean it off me, please.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2007

There are two download options right next to each other - Safari with Quicktime, and Safari standalone. ffs people: read.
posted by influx at 2:27 PM on June 11, 2007

sparkletone writes "Apple creates a little island of Mac UI widgets, UI conventions, etc, etc. on Windows and no one bats an eye."

Quicktime's braindead user interface on windows is what originally drove me to MPC.
posted by Mitheral at 2:41 PM on June 11, 2007

imperium:
Your memory hogging problems are mostly Saft's fault. It does a shit-ton of cacheing that it tends to wallow in. I don't have a need for it with Safari 3 in the Leopard Builds I've been using because of the session saving that's now built in. The built in session restore doesn't store the downloaded pages like Saft does (just the URLs), but I consider that a feature in the long run.
posted by blasdelf at 2:46 PM on June 11, 2007

I read today that Apple is beginning to really let it's grip loosen on traditional user interfaces, now preferring the more intuitive and responsive to the traditional, however this may not be their objective.
XP, standalone Safari, not installed with Bonjour or Apple Update, not installed in c:\Program Files

I'll just put this back in the box for a while.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 2:46 PM on June 11, 2007

IM IN UR WINDOZE GOING ON A SAFARI
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:17 PM on June 11, 2007

Apple also redid their Leopard site with movies of all the new features. I already hate the translucent reflecting new Dock. The new Finder is basically iTunes.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:30 PM on June 11, 2007

It's very Vista...
posted by Artw at 3:33 PM on June 11, 2007

"Yeh, cos Windows is this oasis of OS uniformity that needs protecting."

But if it used Windows' widgets, WindowBlinds could reskin it so it looked nice, rather than... well... grey.
posted by Auz at 3:37 PM on June 11, 2007

crash then crash then crash

yeah it's Beta for sure
posted by zouhair at 4:11 PM on June 11, 2007

It's awfully kind of Apple to save me from buying a Mac to test sites in Safari. Thank you!
posted by juiceCake at 4:28 PM on June 11, 2007

No Greasemonkey extensions, no sale. Sorry Apple.
posted by Quiplash at 4:28 PM on June 11, 2007

OK, I just scanned through everything above . . . and I just don't get it. Would anyone who understands Firefox can do possibly adopt Safari under any circumstances?
posted by gum at 4:30 PM on June 11, 2007

So much for the backgrounds on my pages. Anyone for white?
posted by priyatam at 5:03 PM on June 11, 2007

Would anyone who understands Firefox can do possibly adopt Safari under any circumstances?

Performance, memory, safety? Extensions aren't everything.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:08 PM on June 11, 2007

OK, I just scanned through everything above . . . and I just don't get it. Would anyone who understands Firefox can do possibly adopt Safari under any circumstances?

Some people (me) prefer a Mac-like user experience, versus a Windows-like user experience, even on Windows. Plus, I find Firefox slow and it's a crapshoot whether an extension will be buggy/slowdown Firefox, so I don't use them.
posted by gyc at 5:09 PM on June 11, 2007

. . . Performance, memory, safety? . . .

. . . a Mac-like user experience . . .

OK, got it. Nobody who understands Firefox would possibly adopt Safari under any circumstances.
posted by gum at 5:12 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Would anyone who understands Firefox can do possibly adopt Safari under any circumstances?

I'll adopt it for testing but nothing more (at least presently, applications change and evolve.)

But different people like, care about, and value different things (and features or lack thereof), so just imagine something you prefer and someone you know who doesn't share that preference and vice-versa. It's like that.
posted by juiceCake at 5:12 PM on June 11, 2007

Isn't the IE userbase pretty much the "I have no idea what a web browser is, let alone how or why I might need a different one" community?

On the other hand, though, I'd probably buy GarageBand if they did a Windows port.
posted by arto at 5:23 PM on June 11, 2007

Hey, WebKit works great on my E62 (and worked great on my E61). I don't think it's possible to cram Gecko into that small a space. That's got to count for something.
posted by wierdo at 5:24 PM on June 11, 2007

But different people like, care about, and value different things (and features or lack thereof), so just imagine something you prefer and someone you know who doesn't share that preference and vice-versa. It's like that.

It is so NOT like that. Browsers other than Firefox cause caustic skin-scarring insanely-itching insect bite exposure to advertisements and capital-punishable implementations of Flash. Ignorance, not preference, is the only possible explanation.
posted by gum at 5:26 PM on June 11, 2007

What's wrong with having options?

Especially fast, standards compliant, open source options?

For all you whiners and complainers: Is there no benefit to having more competition in the browser market?

I for one, am happy to have more rendering engines around. More diversity in the browser market will make standards compliance essential. I tried picking up CSS (having not made a webpage since before the Star Wars re-releases around 1997) and was astounded at how seriously fucked the different browsers' CSS implementations are.

Web developers would probably lose business. Who needs to pay much bucks when you can code to the standard and have predictable results? Safari on Windows, even if it is snuck in with every iPod/iTunes download, will be a good thing. And an incredibly brilliant business move, this whole iPhone/Safari thing.

If enough people complain and ask for it now, maybe we can get a well-documented, functional plugin interface in Safari 4?

(and I wouldn't expect too much of Apple's software to make its way to Windows, unless they release a Nouveau YellowBox. Apple wouldn't sell half the Mac Pros they do if FCP, etc. were available on Windows, and I suspect GarageBand has a similar effect on iMac/MacBook sales)
posted by polyhedron at 5:26 PM on June 11, 2007

I can't seem to get the Safari PC build to work on any of my PC's yet. It crashed my test PC at work, and now no fonts show up on on desktop PC at home. I'll try it on my laptop after dinner.

I'm a web developer. Have been for 10+ years. I'll install this for testing purposes, but in my opinion, the world just doesn't need any more web-browsers. We have enough, thanks.
posted by punkrockrat at 5:31 PM on June 11, 2007

They're only distributing it because you'll need it to develop doo-dads and gew-gaws for the iPhone.
posted by furtive at 5:32 PM on June 11, 2007

It is so NOT like that. Browsers other than Firefox cause caustic skin-scarring insanely-itching insect bite exposure to advertisements and capital-punishable implementations of Flash. Ignorance, not preference, is the only possible explanation.

Some people couldn't care less about the ads or Flash. I know some. They are intelligent people. They are fully aware of what Firefox does for them. They don't care.

And an incredibly brilliant business move...

Agreed. Now I don't need to buy a Mac. They've saved my business some cash.
posted by juiceCake at 5:35 PM on June 11, 2007

What's wrong with having options?

Especially fast, standards compliant, open source options?

We DON'T have options to a world where 9 out of 10 Internet users use Internet Explorer and don't even realize there's a choice. That's the world we live in, and that's the world that's shaping Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 and Web 4.0.

I'm all for options when we're not living in a fucking monopoly.

Firefox is a platform that allows you, me, or anyone to write or use extensions that slap down assholes who are messing up the Web. It's already wildly successful at slapping down those assholes. Why would you possibly jump in with Safari -- a browser developed by a company that wants to advertise to us and annoy us as much as Microsoft does -- when you could support the Robin Hood browser?
posted by gum at 5:38 PM on June 11, 2007

IE7 with IE7Pro seems to be good enough for most people. Firefox isn't as compelling as it was a couple of years ago. Safari? Meh, maybe a little OS integration would be nice.

Err, no thanks. IE turned me off OS integration for good.

A browser should be completely "stand-alone" and isolated from the OS. I like using netbanking without the fear that a 14 year old hacker might be joining in the fun.
posted by mattoxic at 5:38 PM on June 11, 2007

Your favorite browser sucks.
posted by pruner at 5:47 PM on June 11, 2007

I don't think anyone would, all things being equal, convert to Safari from Firefox (or even the latest IE incarnation). As stated above it would appeal mainly to Mac users that must use Windows occasionally and developers for iPhone related apps. It is a very developer and fanboy application.

But, I do see this as a small step towards Apple moving away from being a packaged experience. With the adoption of Intel and the emergence of dual boot on the Mac, they are where they should have arguably been twenty years ago. Whether Macs are better in an objective sense or not is really irrelevant, they are perceived as the cooler, bohemian choice. The OS and GUI are very foreign to Windows users and require a commitment that many, well most people are unwilling to learn. Why would I want to pay twice as much for a Mac, and spend more time learning on it just for the cool factor? I wouldn't. With casual, incidental adoption of Macintosh software on Windows and an emergence of Windows OS on a Mac, well we might start to see people picking up Mac as a luxury brand. If the Mac executives had any sense, they'd be the Porsche (which has consistently produced per car profit margins way above competitors).

Think of it this way, you may have to boot your luxury Mac into Windows for your office job, but you gradually realize that the seamless boot interface (which does its best to restore a Windows session in a Mac environment) just seems to work more. And you find yourself booting to it more and more during nights spent Internet browsing.

Sorry, from a product point of view Macintosh has held a cachet as the cool brand to have for a long time. This is something, as any MS exec will tell you, you cannot buy.

Anyway, there stock prices have doubled in the last year. I would guess that this has to do with the anticipation that the iPhone will be the next iPod and every suburban money manager wants to make sure they get in on it so their Vice President clients won't come in bitching about how "even their kids" knew it was a hit product. If anything, it demonstrates how little the shareholders have for the regard of the companies main product line and the insistence that the company turn out hip accessories.
posted by geoff. at 5:49 PM on June 11, 2007

Browsers other than Firefox cause caustic skin-scarring insanely-itching insect bite exposure to advertisements and capital-punishable implementations of Flash.

gum, may I introduce you to Pith Helmet?
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:49 PM on June 11, 2007

a browser developed by a company that wants to advertise to us and annoy us as much as Microsoft does -- when you could support the Robin Hood browser?

So what you're really curious is why somebody might not have your politics? Or view browser choice as an important political move?

I care about SVG at the moment, and Firefox is slow and buggy with that. It's Opera or Webkit (and now Safari beta) all the way for me.
posted by Llama-Lime at 5:51 PM on June 11, 2007

Why would you possibly jump in with Safari -- a browser developed by a company that wants to advertise to us and annoy us as much as Microsoft does -- when you could support the Robin Hood browser?

Because Firefox fans are never annoying and promote it out of the goodness of their hearts and in no way as part of some petty Microsoft vs open source wang-waving competition.
posted by cillit bang at 5:51 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

gum: because One Browser to Rule Them All is a BAD MODEL. Your reply reeks of cognitive dissonance.

A lot, and I do mean a LOT, of people don't know what Firefox can offer them. It may surprise you but they don't care either.

Safari is an ideal browser for that market. And it's standards compliant -- which means that you're developing for one platform if Firefox is implemented correctly. The onus is on Mozilla and Microsoft to adopt standards to prevent the monobrowser locked in content managed future you fear.

IE's fatal flaw wasn't incompetent programmers, it was its dominance. Without competition, everyone loses. You realize gum, but your vehement hatred of Apple is preventing you from acknowledging it.
posted by polyhedron at 5:59 PM on June 11, 2007

So what you're really curious is why somebody might not have your politics? Or view browser choice as an important political move?

Yeah, that's political. Does not getting punched in the nose strike you as a stance in favor of the No-Nose-Punching Party?


gum, may I introduce you to Pith Helmet?


Oh, nice! May I introduce you Pith Helmet times ten thousand?

We're not choosing microbrews or lip balms here. It's people who want the Internet to be a place for free expression and development versus people who want to make money on the Internet. Firefox is the browser of the first group. Internet Explorer is the browser of the second group. Safari is irrelevent except insofar as people don't understand Microsoft and think it's "a choice."
posted by gum at 6:01 PM on June 11, 2007

A lot, and I do mean a LOT, of people don't know what Firefox can offer them. It may surprise you but they don't care either.

Safari is an ideal browser for that market.

Sorry, absolutely not -- Internet Explorer has that market sewn up.
posted by gum at 6:03 PM on June 11, 2007

And, for the record, khtml is at least as Robin Hood if not more than Gecko. AOL and Google have both invested huge sums of money into Firefox. They are at least as evil as Apple. Don't forget it.
posted by polyhedron at 6:03 PM on June 11, 2007

And, for the record, khtml is at least as Robin Hood if not more than Gecko. AOL and Google have both invested huge sums of money into Firefox. They are at least as evil as Apple. Don't forget it.

Firefox has left absolutely wide open the possibility to unfuck the Internet through the writing and use of extensions. KDE could follow that path, but they haven't . . . and even if they did, they'd be four years and thousands of extensions behind Firefox. And minus the Mac and Windows platforms, because Safari isn't KDE -- it's Apple.
posted by gum at 6:07 PM on June 11, 2007

IE's fatal flaw wasn't incompetent programmers, it was its dominance.

Dunno about that., half right in my opinion. IE is a fine application, and a very good browser.

But as I pointed out above, a security nightmare. It's OS integration, replete with those nasty little browser helper objects have literally millions of casual net users thinking that some domain squatter's page is the default home.

MS's security model is terrible, and runs along the lines of, "OK, we're warning you, check this box to agree, and.... it's your bad luck if anything bad happens"
posted by mattoxic at 6:10 PM on June 11, 2007

Because Firefox fans are never annoying and promote it out of the goodness of their hearts and in no way as part of some petty Microsoft vs open source wang-waving competition.


This is a joke, right?
posted by punkrockrat at 6:12 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm in a cantankerous mood so I'll feed you a little more. You do realize you're being an obnoxious, obstinate troll, right?

Your whole point is that OMGFIREFOXEXTESNIONS*spoog*

Safari IS an excellent alternative for the every day user. To say that IE has that market all sewed up is to ignore the reality that Safari wasn't available on Windows PCs until today.

Firefox can and will be used to fuck the internet. Yes, you can use it to unfuck the internet, but 90% of the other people out there can't. Their brains don't work right.

I'm not telling you to use Safari. But I am making that point that Safari will play an important role in the future of standards compliant web browsing. The iPhone and bundling Safari with iTunes are likely to create a large market. Accept it, and get some glycerin suppositories so you can have a bowel movement. You seem to need it.
posted by polyhedron at 6:16 PM on June 11, 2007

Dunno about that., half right in my opinion. IE is a fine application, and a very good browser.

But as I pointed out above, a security nightmare. It's OS integration, replete with those nasty little browser helper objects have literally millions of casual net users thinking that some domain squatter's page is the default home.

MS's security model is terrible, and runs along the lines of, "OK, we're warning you, check this box to agree, and.... it's your bad luck if anything bad happens"

While I can tell we already agree, I don't think IE would have ever been compromised to the extent it has been over the years if it didn't have complete market dominance. Bad programming may have allowed it to happen, but IE's dominance made it so.
posted by polyhedron at 6:18 PM on June 11, 2007

lemme guess polyhedron, you use a MAC right? Why is that when MACs are being criticised people take it as an affront?
posted by mattoxic at 6:23 PM on June 11, 2007

I'm not telling you to use Safari. But I am making that point that Safari will play an important role in the future of standards compliant web browsing.

No, standards-compliant web design will play an important role in the future of standards-compliant web browsing.

Which project Safari hurts by distracting ITunes fashion victims from Firefox.
posted by gum at 6:23 PM on June 11, 2007

This is a joke, right?

I don't even know anymore.
posted by cillit bang at 6:27 PM on June 11, 2007

Yeah, that's political. Does not getting punched in the nose strike you as a stance in favor of the No-Nose-Punching Party?

Friend, time to go back on the meds. Besides being delusional about the importance of extensions, I think you just threatened light violence over the internet.
posted by Llama-Lime at 6:31 PM on June 11, 2007

mattoxic: I use many MACs. The computer I'm using right now has two! Truth be told I prefer Linux, adore the Mac (they have a nice design philosophy and I sincerely believe that the company, today, is only as evil as the market demands. Steve did a lot of acid), and loathe Windows. Win2k3 is pretty nice, actually, but most people don't use it.

gum: That's a tautology. The point I initially made was that with more standards compliant browsers, web development will adopt standards compliance out of convenience, just as nonstandard, hacky web development was adopted when IE took over the web. Firefox is not without its rendering flaws, and its standards compliance is far from complete. Without selective pressure, today's minor flaws in Firefox will fester. It's inevitable. Safari can, and I hope will, provide the competition necessary to foster a healthy web browser market.
posted by polyhedron at 6:31 PM on June 11, 2007

Besides being delusional about the importance of extensions, I think you just threatened light violence over the internet.

Nice reading comprehension.

Look, folks, there is exactly ONE cross-platform, noncorporate Internet browser project with even a hint of viability. That's Firefox.

Safari is an alternative browser like McCain is an alternative to Bush.

If you want the Internet to develop toward a close resemblance to a network TV channel, celebrate your diversity with Safari. If you want to fight the bastards who are likely to destroy the Internet in the next ten years (who knows? If we fight together, we might win), use Firefox.
posted by gum at 6:38 PM on June 11, 2007

polyhedron, will be interesting if the fabled google OS/google browser is ever launched- then we'll see some real browser/OS integration, as well as shear market dominance.
posted by mattoxic at 6:39 PM on June 11, 2007

gum: that battle is already lost. The internet is WAY MORE than your web browser. get on the darknet already!

Seriously, if you think you have a chance of changing the world by using Firefox, you're delusional. This is a browser funded by Netscape, Time Warner, AOL, and Google. This is a browser backed by the very industry you despise.

Apple is riding the thin line between content production and media hegemony. They clearly are aware that the future of the internet is user created content -- not corporation created content. The problem is that taking the radical, but logical point of view that you espouse would destroy Apple as a company. They have to make money, but they are also positioning themselves in a place of power.

The question is whether or not Apple will use their influence to break down the barriers for user created and distributed content, or if they will strengthen them. I believe, and I think there is evidence to support my point of view, that Apple is already using its influence to remove these barriers. It will be a slow process, however, and I don't think we can predict where the industry will be in a decade.
posted by polyhedron at 6:48 PM on June 11, 2007

Look, folks, there is exactly ONE cross-platform, noncorporate Internet browser project with even a hint of viability. That's Firefox.

Firefox is corporate. Mozilla has upwards of 70 employees and a yearly budget of over $70M and growing fast, funded almost entirely by Google royalty payments. They are the Gorrila now. The paid Safari team is at most a third that size. Before the Windows port I would say that apple had maybe 12 people working on Safari + WebKit. I doubt Microsoft has very many people working on IE + Trident -- before they started IE7 their dev number was zero. Opera might have nearly the same amount of developers as Mozilla, maybe. Neither Microsoft or Opera have people working for free.

Mozilla is the 800-pound corporate gorrilla of the browser market. Accept it.

And Firefox would be a piece of shit without extensions. Gecko has pretty arcane problems throughout, and is next to impossible to embed in another application (unless it's XUL, and essentially a Firefox extension). WebKit is easily embedded in applications on OS X (I've written several with no effort), and is way more standards-compliant than Gecko.


If you want the Internet to develop toward a close resemblance to a network TV channel, celebrate your diversity with Safari. If you want to fight the bastards who are likely to destroy the Internet in the next ten years (who knows? If we fight together, we might win), use Firefox.

What the fuck are you talking about dude? Firefox is what's going to destroy a viable browser ecosystem if it ever gets dominant. What happens when websites start using XUL for stuff they currently use Flash / Java applets for? Every other browser is totally fucked, and people have to shoehorn future mega-bloated glorified XUL VMs onto every platform that wants to browse the web. Fuck that.
posted by blasdelf at 7:11 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

geoff: I don't think anyone would, all things being equal, convert to Safari from Firefox (or even the latest IE incarnation). As stated above it would appeal mainly to Mac users that must use Windows occasionally and developers for iPhone related apps. It is a very developer and fanboy application.

I converted to Safari from Firefox. The big reason is that Safari integrates well with the other Cocoa apps I use on a daily basis including DevonThink, Mail.app and Mellel. Little things like not having to train at least two separate spellcheck programs, or the ability to pop this paragraph into the editor of my choice and back again. Or services such as Humane Text which provides seamless conversion to and from Markdown.

Part of the confusion as to the relative lack of Safari plug-ins is that it makes more sense to develop an aspell, markdown or gpg plug-in that works in every Cocoa text box than to write one just for Safari. Firefox also has an impoverished AppleScript interface compared to Safari.

And a huge downer for me with XUL came from downloading an OS X build of Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 and finding not only that there was a bug regarding the keyboard shortcut shift-j, but that the bug had been fixed and unfixed multiple times during Thunderbird development. It's really wacky that this bug just keeps coming back.

Mozilla:XUL::emacs:elisp. Both are fucking brilliant if you want to work entirely within the constraints of the framework. If you want to get more than trivial interoperability, you are SOL.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:17 PM on June 11, 2007

IE is a fine application, and a very good browser.

...

While I can tell we already agree, I don't think IE would have ever been compromised to the extent it has been over the years if it didn't have complete market dominance. Bad programming may have allowed it to happen, but IE's dominance made it so.

If either of you has ever tried to design a decent-sized professional website, you should know just how wrong, wrong, wrong this is. Getting a website to work in Safari, Firefox, etc. is generally a matter of just tweaking one or two things -- IE "compatibility" turns your stylesheets into Rube Goldberg machines.
posted by spiderwire at 7:20 PM on June 11, 2007

spiderwire: I only meant we agreed on the combined factors of IE's downfall. It's fucking miserable writing a stylesheet that works in IE and proper web browsers.
posted by polyhedron at 7:26 PM on June 11, 2007

But what about us Firefox users who have a bazillion bookmarks and a zillion extensions? Surely these can't transfer over to Safari? And the sheer number of extensions in FF is a big part of its appeal.

nontheless, I'll try it when I get home from work
posted by zardoz at 7:42 PM on June 11, 2007

The battle for a free web is not going to be won through the dominance of a single user agent, even if that user agent's source code is distributed under the proper copyright license. Canonically, the internet is free because it has clear, implementable standards with an ecosystem of interoperable implementations. I haven't yet heard of a reason why the web would follow a different model, even though talking about web standards has become sort of passe.

The web may not have many RFCs, but it does have the W3C. There was a danger that the W3C was/is going to be taken over by "corporate" interests and made irrelevant during the closed standards process. There was/is a danger that the W3C would become so unstuck from reality and implementations that their standards were unacceptable for the web. Some look at the incomprehensibility of XML Schema or all the WS-** and say that it's already happened. Others looked at XHTML 2 and ran screaming.

But the result of XHTML 2 and poor existing standards was the WHATWG, and they're already saving HTML from death. Likewise, CSS may be salvageable as a plausible standard if a clear and complete specification is ever written, and the DOM just needs a solid test suite. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think that HTML/CSS/DOM, plus a little help from HTML5 and some better browser UI (e.g. file upload) are all that we need.

Opera and Safari are players with minor market share, but ever since they took the standards torch from the Mozilla foundation, they started to do just as much to advance an open and free web as Mozilla.
posted by Llama-Lime at 7:53 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

...when you could support the Robin Hood browser?

Ahahahahhahahaha!!!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:05 PM on June 11, 2007

Running an appropriately plugin'd Firefox on Linux, through handbuilt Tor/Vidalia and Privoxy via an X session from my Windows machine. Does this count me as a power user then?

I like my setup, thank you. Not real impressed with Safari with Mac (girlfriend's laptop) OR Windows.
posted by Samizdata at 8:12 PM on June 11, 2007

Pssh...once you go Netscape Communicator...there's no turning back.
posted by samsara at 8:12 PM on June 11, 2007

The big reason is that Safari integrates well with the other Cocoa apps I use on a daily basis

Amen. Mozilla has been willfully, proudly stubborn about supporting Apple UI guidelines — from keyboard shortcuts to services to GUI widgets to AppleScript — that Firefox and Thunderbird are like their own operating systems when run on a Mac. If Mozilla won't play nice, I see no reason to kowtow to the "open-source" bully on the street corner and make my life more difficult.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:57 PM on June 11, 2007

Netscape Navigator 4: Never forgive, never forget.
posted by Artw at 9:40 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I converted to Safari from Firefox. The big reason is that Safari integrates well with the other Cocoa apps I use on a daily basis including DevonThink, Mail.app and Mellel. Little things like not having to train at least two separate spellcheck programs, or the ability to pop this paragraph into the editor of my choice and back again. Or services such as Humane Text which provides seamless conversion to and from Markdown.

Richer with scariness than any paragraph in The Stepford Wives.
posted by gum at 10:20 PM on June 11, 2007

Firefox is corporate. Mozilla has upwards of 70 employees and a yearly budget of over $70M and growing fast, funded almost entirely by Google royalty payments. They are the Gorrila now. The paid Safari team is at most a third that size.

What INCREDIBLE naivete. Yeah, Firefox is "the Gorrila now" in a world where nine of ten people use Internet Explorer. Excellent analysis.

And you celebrate Apple's "grassroots" Safari entry. The more the merrier? Would you like more corporate browsers, too? An Adobe browser and an AOL browser and an MSNBC browser, too? What a lovely prospect. Enjoy your "look and feel."
posted by gum at 10:32 PM on June 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'm totally fine with Safari entering the Windows sphere. I'll probably download it to test, though having used Safari on a Mac I probably won't switch full-time because of the various extensions I have on Firefox. One thing, though:

I do see this as a small step towards Apple moving away from being a packaged experience.

Yes, this is why Apple decided not to wrap Safari in non-standard faux-Aqua widgets, right down to the scroll bars. Oh wait.

(also see: iTunes for Windows)
posted by chrominance at 10:41 PM on June 11, 2007

Is anyone else having some sort of font problem? It seems to be missing one, so all the text is missing from the title bar, menus, and I can't type in the address bar. What pages I can surf to seem to be hit and miss as far as displaying text. (This is on Vista)
posted by evilcolonel at 10:44 PM on June 11, 2007

Slashdot are reporting on bugs and vulnerabilities. Naturally there is all sorts of gnashing of teeth and wailing and shooting of messengers.
posted by Artw at 10:55 PM on June 11, 2007

man. just upgraded. the search change is the best thing ever. i used to have to tilt my screen just to see the contrast with the highlight color. no fonts problem in os x.
posted by phaedon at 11:06 PM on June 11, 2007

Opera rules. Firefox is good. IE is, as it always has been, a giant pain in the neck.

It's plugin support is the only reason to keep it around.
posted by rougy at 11:47 PM on June 11, 2007

Richer with scariness than any paragraph in The Stepford Wives.

Drunker with hyperbole than Dick Vitale after a fifth of Wild Turkey and an eightball chaser.

Winning faithful converts like David Koresh running naked through the Vatican.



Go troll elsewhere.
posted by spiderwire at 11:49 PM on June 11, 2007

spiderwire: I only meant we agreed on the combined factors of IE's downfall. It's fucking miserable writing a stylesheet that works in IE and proper web browsers.

Personally, I code in Sanskrit on an X80, so Internet Explorer pages are only incrementally more difficult for me. The real trick is getting the noun declensions right -- it's all downhill from there.
posted by spiderwire at 11:52 PM on June 11, 2007

Yeh, cos Windows is this oasis of OS uniformity that needs protecting.

As someone else put it: It's taking a shit in a landfill.

I mean, yeah, it's a big garbage dump that you're just adding some extra waste too, but did you really have to take a crap there too like everybody else?
posted by sparkletone at 12:11 AM on June 12, 2007

"To say that IE has that market all sewed up is to ignore the reality that Safari wasn't available on Windows PCs until today."

You don't seem to understand how admins in big corporations hate to change setups or that 'normal' users at home hardly know the difference between the builtin browser and any alternative.
posted by homodigitalis at 12:32 AM on June 12, 2007

Slashdot are reporting on bugs and vulnerabilities. Naturally there is all sorts of gnashing of teeth and wailing and shooting of messengers.

Bugs in beta software. Whatever next?
posted by humblepigeon at 12:54 AM on June 12, 2007

I'm on it right now. Don't like it.

back to FF
posted by zardoz at 3:11 AM on June 12, 2007

Your wasting your time with your letter. You're not a power user. You're a windows user (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Yes, I know I'm wasting time with my letter, which is why it is a comment on Metafilter and not an actual letter to Apple. But no, it's not just that I'm a Windows user justgary. I do use Safari on the Mac sitting next to my Wintel box, but not because of it's "Tao of Apple" simplicity. Instead, I use it because Firefox is dog-slow on my seven year old G4. On the PC, however, Firefox runs like a champ, and it would take at a minimum of I wrote above to get me to switch.

Safari is simple, this is true. It runs quickly on my old 400 MHz machine, as does OS X (which is a testament to Apple engineering -- I'd like to see someone run that hog Vista on a 400 MHz box). But certain Firefox extensions are incredibly useful and absolutely improve the quality of my too-much-time-spent-in-the-Internet life, and Safari just doesn't match it in those fields.

True, there are some add-ons for Safari that I really like (Inquisitor X, for example, is wonderful) but others like PithHelmet reliably crash Safari on my machine, and the range of functionality available for Firefox simply isn't there in Safari.
posted by moonbiter at 3:21 AM on June 12, 2007

IE users who didn't switch to Firefox already will probably not suddenly switch to Safari. A few Firefox users might, but firefox's extension are such a beauty that I'm guessing that it won't be very high.

The two groups left are web developers who need to test their sites on multiple browsers (and now don't have to buy a Mac to do it!) and people that love all things Apple. People who love all things Apple would have already been using Safari on their Macs anyways, maybe a few of them will switch at work.
posted by drezdn at 6:44 AM on June 12, 2007

Tip for reverting to Safari 2 with the bundled uninstaller, and discussion on workarounds.

Netscape Navigator 4: Never forgive, never forget.

Netscape Navigator 9 Beta has been released
posted by kirkaracha at 7:07 AM on June 12, 2007

Is anyone else having some sort of font problem? It seems to be missing one, so all the text is missing from the title bar, menus, and I can't type in the address bar. What pages I can surf to seem to be hit and miss as far as displaying text. (This is on Vista)

I've had the same problem on every Windows XP box I've tried it on, I think it's because Lucida Grande is missing, but I can't tell for sure. It also doesn't run in Wine, with the Microsoft C++ library throwing a big fat exception.
posted by blasdelf at 7:17 AM on June 12, 2007

Jesues, gum, WE GET IT. You love sucking the dick of the Mozilla Foundation.

It's "open source can do no wrong, you're all Nazis" people like you who are the reason people hate OSS software. Go troll somewhere else.
posted by mkultra at 7:22 AM on June 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

It's "open source can do no wrong, you're all Nazis" people like you who are the reason people hate OSS software. Go troll somewhere else.

Heh. Ironic that this comes out in a thread about Apple.
posted by Artw at 8:23 AM on June 12, 2007

For those Safari users who are using extensions like Pith Helmet or Saft to improve their browsing experience, there may be bad news - it looks like Apple have effectively stopped their use in Safari 3.
posted by TheDonF at 8:52 AM on June 12, 2007

Questions: OK, I am trying it right now and it seems pretty slick. But where are the italics and bold buttons that are usually beneath the comments box here on Metafilter? And is there an inline spell checker like in the latest Firefox? And is there a Google Toolbar or equivalent available?
posted by LarryC at 9:03 AM on June 12, 2007

But where are the italics and bold buttons that are usually beneath the comments box here on Metafilter? And is there an inline spell checker like in the latest Firefox?

I'm not sure about the inline spell checking.

But you have Safari and/or WebKit's questionable Javascript support to thank for the lack of swank buttons. The same buttons will be missing in Gmail, Wordpress and various other places.

It's probably the biggest reason that drove me to Camino the moment it was feature-complete enough for me to use it full time. I still run into the javascript thing because a good 75% of my web browsing is done in NetNewsWire, which uses WebKit to render pages.

But at least Javascript's not really fucking slow in Safari/WebKit like it used to be pre-Tiger.
posted by sparkletone at 9:10 AM on June 12, 2007

You don't seem to understand how admins in big corporations hate to change setups or that 'normal' users at home hardly know the difference between the builtin browser and any alternative.

And you don't seem to understand that Safari is going to be bundled with the premiere, incredibly dominant DAP. Sells millions. The beta doesn't automatically snag the default browser position, and I hope it stays that way, andI don't expect Safari to make many inroads in corporate settings. But it will be installed on millions of computers and a fair amount of people will end up using it.
posted by polyhedron at 10:02 AM on June 12, 2007

But you have Safari and/or WebKit's questionable Javascript support to thank for the lack of swank buttons. The same buttons will be missing in Gmail, Wordpress and various other places.

The buttons do show up and work fine if you enable the Debug menu in Safari and set the user agent to FireFox. Perhaps it's time for mathowie to turn on the buttons for Safari?
posted by gyc at 10:16 AM on June 12, 2007

@polyhedron:

Rubbish. You hardly will find any iTunes installation in big offices in Corporations. So Safari won't make any inroads there. Also many custom apps are made for IE only, so no Safari, No Opera or FF either.

Sure, many PRIVATE user will suddenly find another program on their machines, but these are users won't be able to tell the difference between 'those internet things' anyway. And just because you use iTunes doesn't mean that any crap you bundle with it gets used as well.

How many people have QuickTime installed via iTunes - and don't use or don't even know that it is there?!

I find this overexcitement of some people here a bit scary. After all it's just another browser that hardly does anything new or much better.

These are not the old Netscape 4.0 days ... the market is pretty settled and any changes will be slow.

And one more thing:

It seems that Apple fans are constantly banging there heads against the 'evil windows' majority. They always insist 'their' stuff is so much better and therefore should rule the world. Get over it. Computers and software are just tools - it's important what you do, not what your commercial overlords tell you to buy or use.
posted by homodigitalis at 10:18 AM on June 12, 2007

Dude, just get a mac already, you'll feel better.
posted by chunking express at 10:22 AM on June 12, 2007

Cool, a non-modal preferences window.

I use Windows for poker, web site testing (Watir), the occasional game, and not much else. But even so, windows manages to annoy me a lot, modal dialogs being one of the major annoyances. Particularly NESTS of modal dialogs, particualarly when you CANT MOVE ones below the level that's currently open.

And, I really really like mac anti-aliasing. I realize some people don't -- it's probably a matter of what you are used to. But for me it feels really really refreshing to see familiar looking text on my peecee, instead of the spidery looking windows style text.
posted by lastobelus at 10:42 AM on June 12, 2007

That's an awful lot of snark in a thread devoted to web browsers.

Further, I wasn't aware that Mozilla was the new computer antichrist.
posted by JHarris at 11:16 AM on June 12, 2007

@chunking express:

"Dude, just get a mac already, you'll feel better."

I have owned Mac and PC since the Mac IIsi came out.

Some years ago I scraped the Mac alltogether: Photoshop is the same everywhere, Office is the same, etc.

Work is simply work - and the OS doesn't do my work - I do.
posted by homodigitalis at 12:15 PM on June 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

It seems that Apple fans are constantly banging there heads against the 'evil windows' majority.

Nonsense. This image of Apple users crusading against the 'evil windows' majority is largely a fabrication of Windows users. I've used both back and forth since I was 18 months old, and everyone is equally snotty about it on both sides. And by snotty, I mean that everyone masks their disdain and insecurity over their operating systems by acting like the mere use of a different OS is somehow an affront to them. The perpetual drone of victimhood is really tiresome.

When I used DOS and kept using it in lieu of Windows 3.1, no one knew what the hell DOS was. I even used OS/2 for a while to avoid Win 3.1.

When I used WinNT instead of Windows 95 or 98 or whatever, everyone thought it was odd.

When I had my Quadra, no one could figure it out 'cause it wasn't a PC.

When I stayed with Win2K instead of XP, everyone said it was weird. But I liked all of them as my main OS, thought I've liked OSX the best. But I don't think that it's The Best -- it just works for me. What's baffling and kind of annoying to me is when people take take this decision that I made for myself and seem to take it as a personal affront. I suspect that it masks a greater insecurity.

Windows is like that old pair of chucks or Doc Martens or Birkenstocks -- they're so ubiquitous and cliché that they're kind of embarrassing. But you wear 'em cause you like 'em. They last forever and they just work for you. But for some people, the un-hipness of a pair of old Vans puts them on the defensive. Even the smallest comment sets those people off -- and god have mercy on you if you're wearing a halfway-decent pair of Kenneth Coles. Oh, you elitist fuck, up on your high horse about this perfectly functional shoe I've got here! What is with your metrosexual anti-Birkenstock crusade? Why are you all constantly banging your heads against the 'evil sensible shoe' majority!?

...Dude, I didn't say anything. No one said anything. I mean, there's some people that'll mock you for wearing chucks or Birkenstocks, but rightly so. It's funny. But it's not as if there's this mass of anti-Birkenstock South Park Republicans hiding behind every corner. We really don't think it's a big deal, and it would be less of a big deal if you weren't so easy to tease about it. But that says something about you, not about me.

I like my OSX, but for personal reasons, just like you like your Windows, probably for equally arbitrary reasons. We have some zealots over on this side, but you kind of have to expect that, given that some of the old-school Apple folks were down there with OS/2 Warp for a few years. Like a lot of the Linux folks, they're a little touchy. And we have a lot of people who really were looking for an alternative (it was XP that made me leave Windows, not OSX) and were relieved to find one. I think that they understandably don't want others to be prevented from doing the same because of the fusillade of FUD coming from the Microsoft, Apple, and OSS communities. It does no one any good.

But given that your OS is largely a matter of personal preference -- and I think most reasonable people agree that it is -- you'll have a hard time convincing me that it's the Windows users that aren't the touchy ones about it. Frankly, most people I know that use OSX just like it and couldn't care less whether you stick with Windows. We all know they're not that different. But y'all have stirred yourselves up into a crisis of faith because you're not the only game in town anymore and, oh horrors, you might be using Windows because you're some sort of follower, and, and --

OK. Just chill out. Chill out. Doc Martens are good shoes. OK? Birkenstocks haven't been around this long for no reason. Look. Do you your OS? OK, good. Have you tried alternatives and/or thought about what's best for your computer use? Thought so. So stop making it so easy (and tempting) for everyone else to push your buttons.

Really. Trust me. No one cares. Well, except people like gum and the Linux trolls, but we're mostly using them as a foil anyway. If anything, you should be thanking OSX for lighting a fire under Microsoft's ass, or you'd still be stuck waiting for the fifth project restart of Vista. And IE would still be in web-standard-mangling no-man's-land, rather than taking decent steps towards interoperability. So calm down. You're making a huge, huge mountain out of a very small molehill (albeit a cute curvy white molded-plastic molehill, but a molehill all the same).
posted by spiderwire at 1:37 PM on June 12, 2007

This image of Apple users crusading against the 'evil windows' majority is largely a fabrication of Windows users.

And those snotty ads that apple runs, surely?
posted by Artw at 1:41 PM on June 12, 2007

Shorter spiderwire: It's an OS. It's about as personally meaningful as a pair of shoes. If it works, it works, and if you really get worked up about it, you're just making yourself miserable. Enjoy your reasonable choice and stop taking the bait.
posted by spiderwire at 1:41 PM on June 12, 2007

And those snotty ads that apple runs, surely?

Exactly my point. Try dialing your satire meter just one setting lower and you'll see what those ads are getting at.
posted by spiderwire at 1:43 PM on June 12, 2007

Exactly my point. Try dialing your satire meter just one setting lower and you'll see what those ads are getting at.
posted by spiderwire at 4:43 PM on June 12 [+] [!]

They're like many other commercials. Assumptive, generalizing, and insulting. Also, harmless.
posted by juiceCake at 4:15 PM on June 12, 2007