I saw from Engadget that Apple have released a new beta version of their browser, Safari, which will run on Windows. There are versions for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
I downloaded it and installed on an XP machine and it does appear to run quite quickly.
However, Apple still haven’t addressed Safari’s biggest bug – it is far too easy to close a window in accidentally Safari closing all its tabs. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer give you a warning if you try to close a window with multiple tabs open. How hard would it be for Safari to implement this feature?
Having said that, if you load the Acid2 test on IE7, Firefox and Safari for Windows, only Safari displays it correctly.
Opera also passes the Acid2 test (not displayed). However, Opera also allows you to close multi-tab windows without warning!
So as well as being fast, Safari for Windows is, along with Opera, the most standards compliant browser available. Just don’t close any multi-tab windows accidentally!
You can download the beta from the Safari download page.
Update 1: Apple’s official announcement is now up
Update 2:Â As Conall notes in the comments of this post, the multi-tab warning is working in the new Mac version of Safari.
So much for the secret 10.5 features. It now comes with the iTunes interface as *the* OS interface, someone stop the presses! 😉
There’s a session manager in Firefox, and in Tab Mix Plus; although the Google Browser Sync one is more useful if you roam. However don’t use the bookmarks manager in Google Browser Sync, it’ll kill them stone dead; use Foxmarks for this.
adam
As of today, there are no more “secret 10.5 features”.
In Mac OS they have implemented the multi tab warning! I haven’t tried the Windows version yet, but it is definitely a default in the Mac OS version.
Conall, I just installed Safari 3 on the Mac and as you said, it does warn on closing windows with more than one tab open – finally!
Hopefully they’ll fix it on the Windows version soon too.
The “Close all windows on Quit” feature is a bug. There is a product called Stand that can help restore the last browser session for Safari, but I’d of course be surprised if that would be made for Windows right away. It’s a basic feature Apple needs to adopt in a big way, and I’m glad you highlighted it.
Actually, Opera’s handling of when you close the browser is pitch perfect. If you try to close a window with multiple tabs, it asks you first to confirm, and if you do close it, or it crashes, it will reload all of your tabs the next time you open the browser. I regularly keep open 60-250 tabs in Opera, and never lose one!
If you try a File -> Exit or Ctrl-Q you actually do get a warning. Only when you hit the close window [x] box you don’t get the warning, so it must be a bug.
Nathan, while Opera will reload all your tabs on re-launch, it doesn’t ask for confirmation of close on version 9.21 on Windows XP
Interesting Tim, I hadn’t tried the File -> Exit option on Windows and you are correct that this does flash up the warning so yes it must be an oversight. Hopefully it will be resolved very quickly in that case.
Also on the Mac version of Safari:
Reopen Last Closed Window
Reopen All Windows From Last Session
I was wondering why on earth Apple would create a Windows version of Safari, but got a good answer from John Gruber at Daring Fireball.
Opera does have an optional prompt when closing that works with the window X button, but I believe it’s an always-prompt-before-quit option rather than a specific prompt-with-multiple-tabs option.
IMHO, the biggest problem with Safari is its failure to automatically save sessions. This is even more of an omission because its memory leaks cause it to eventually need to be restarted.
Even if you don’t restart it, it will eventually crash, and there have been many times I’ve had to dig through my history trying to re-open as many of the pages as I could find.
I’ve recently switched from Safari 2.0 to Opera 9.2 (now free) and I’m very impressed with Opera. In a few minor ways its interface isn’t quite as Mac-like, but it automatically saves sessions. The other day when the power went out, I was able to just start it back up and everything was restored as it had been.
Opera also now has a trash can so that if you accidentally close a tab, you can retrieve it (though I’m not sure what happens if you close a whole window, since the trash seems linked to a specific window). Fast-forward (to page 2, 3, etc.) is another very useful feature.
If you’re like me and tend to open a lot of windows and tabs and like to leave them open for a while, then you should check out Opera 9.2. It’s also fairly fast.
Opera is a fabulously engineered browser, and the only one I’ll use.
Productivity is huge with the built-in mail client and RSS reader and of course the rendering is top-notch.
One of the small but essential usability features is that when you close a tab it does not go back to the next tab in line but the previous tab you were on. So simple yet so clever.
Even Opera’s not perfect, though. I always have a lot of windows and tabs open, so it does crash every couple of days, but usually I can just restart it.
Tonight I was about to click on something but Opera crashed, and when I clicked it went to the window below in Entourage, which was an HTML email with a picture link. So that link started Opera right back up, but with just that page as the “last” session.
Is there any way to get Opera to auto-save sessions every hour or so?
anyone know how to turn the prompt off in MAC? I think it’s sort of annoying…
Hi.
I’ve recently downloaded ver 3.0 0f safari for windows.
“Only when you hit the close window [x] box you don’t get the warning”
that has now been fixed, and a warning will appear.
I would like to see a tabs menu, or why can’t the windows menu show a list of all opened urls without having to open a seperate activity window. As a keyboard user, i like to be able to go to an opem url by clicking the first letter
ie g for google,com or whatever. You can’t do that in activity.
Well maybe there is an addon for it, that will do that.
M
Safari is really an appealing browser. But considering functionality there are some serious problems with the browser as it does not provide support for diverse font shapes and sizes. It even does not contain a back button, a must for all sites. One more drawback, it does not give you any of the warning messages if some how by mistake you close the browser window!
http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com/