Following in iTunes footsteps, Apple releases the Safari 3 public beta at today’s WWDC, for both OSX and Windows. That’s right, now all you PC users can download the browser all your designer geek friends are talking about and see for yourselves what all the hubbub is all about :)
We tried it right here in the office at Visual Lizard. It installed painlessly as a stand alone browser, like Firefox or Opera. Once you get it up, the first thing you’ll notice is that, like iTunes before it, Safari 3 shuns Windows’ standard window look and ports over Apple’s own design. And, wow is it fast... both for the program to load up and for pages to render!
It took me a long time to "get; Safari. Even when I switched to Mac, I found I still preferred Firefox to OSX’s provided browser. Little niggling details kept me from using it consistently... like not being able to drag reorder my tabs kept bugging me or not using Google’s "I’m Feeling Lucky" functionality from the address bar when the URL is not recognized. The text rendering was fantastic, but I don’t have the eye to pick out the difference enough to "tolerate" all the other annoyances.
Now, with a couple of those elements dealt with, and my now regular use of Webkit for up-to-date rendering, I’m sold. And with Safari 3 available for Windows, I can have the same user experience when I Boot Camp start into Windows XP.
If you’ve never tried Safari, now’s your chance! :)