A Windows Safari

Wes Henry

Apple's Safari Browser is Now Available on the PC

Throwing its hat into the browser wars ring, Apple has released a Windows version of its formerly Mac-only web browser called Safari.

Even though it's only a beta version of Safari 3, it's very functional and already proven to be a popular download.

Apple reports that over 1 million downloads of Safari 3 beta for Windows were downloaded in the first 48 hours after Apple made it available.

My experience has been quite positive and other than a few minor quirks, it's performed very well for me. My biggest complaint at this point is still quite minor: it doesn't obey the Windows-M shortcut for minimizing all open applications. At least not on my Vista laptop.

On the positive side, it is quite fast and renders web pages very well. Apple claims Safari is the fastest major browser on Windows, saying it's twice as fast as Internet Explorer and 1.6 times as fast as Firefox 2.

Besides the fast rendering speed and Mac-looking interface, Safari also supports all modern Internet standards such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, etc.

For web designers, this may be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it'll make testing web sites for Safari compatibility easier. But on the other hand, increasing the popularity of Safari will make it even more important to verify designs on Safari and ensure their compatibility.

For web surfers, I think it's great. For the Internet and the web to continue to thrive and evolve, we need open standards, we need cross-browser compatibility, we need competition, and we need freedom to choose.

And you thought the browser wars were dead.

You can download the Safari 3 Beta for Windows from Apple's Safari home page: www.apple.com/safari/

And read more from this Apple press release.

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