DigitalSandbox

So by now you have heard the news. Safari 3 will be available on Windows. A public beta is available for all of the intrepid explorers. Of course, as soon as I read that it would be available I immediately went looking for it. Now that the news is out I hear people asking over and over, “why? Why do we need another browser on Windows? Especially since Firefox is so great?”

I’d like to take a stab at that question and then give a brief overview of my thoughts on how Safari for Windows is working.

Web Design

From a web designers perspective, having Safari available on Windows is very nice. I, unfortunately, use a PC here at the day job and have little hope of convincing IT to allow a Mac into the mix. With Safari on Windows I can test my designs and know that they will work in the top three rendering engines (Trident, Gecko, and WebKit). Of course, in the same breath, they also took away my best argument as to why I need a Mac. Maybe I should see about getting a Mac before the IT guys know that this is available.

iPhone Apps

Of course, the most apparent reason that it is available is because the iPhone will be using web-apps in lieu of actually 3rd-party apps. If you are going to tell people to develop apps via a browser for you new, and highly anticipated, phone, you better make sure that people can test that app.

Most developers are not going to go out and buy an iPhone just to make sure their apps work on it. But with Safari being available on Windows, many more developers will be able to ensure that their apps work on it. All Apple needs to do now is introduce an “iPhone mode” that allows developers to test in a simulated iPhone environment (think screen size, and fake call functions) and people can really start opening up the iPhone potential.

Windows Developers

This is the real target I think. Safari is a nice browser and everything, but it isn’t that great. Firefox is easily more capable has some better features that have almost tempted me to switch on the Mac. No, the real strenght of Safari on Windows is not Safari, but WebKit.

With WebKit, Apple has done something that only Mozilla has tried to do up until now. They open-sourced the rendering engine and said, “here you go. Use this in your programs that need an HTML renderer.” That may sound like, “use this to make other browsers,” but there is a difference. There are many types of programs that could use a feature like this. iTunes uses it for the iTunes Store. Coda uses it to display your page in real-time as you edit it. Other applications could easily be found for it.

Imagine an offline blogging client that can give post previews. Or imagine a desktop app that displays something like say&#hellip;your Google Office documents. Now you have something a bit better than Google Gears. You have a desktop application that plays nicely with your online data and it works on all the major platforms.

Apple and Mozilla seem to be the only ones trying to make this happen. And I think Apple has been a bit more successful (within Mac circles it seems more popular anyway). Microsoft has locked down Trident and doesn’t make it available for use in other programs. Furthermore, they recently discontinued their Mac support, and they never had Linux support.

Now I may be wrong, but I think this way forward. Everyone is excited about the prospect of the browser-based OS, where all your apps are online. I’ll go on record right now and say I don’t like them. I like the idea behind using web apps as far as keeping all of my information available from any system. That said, I still use my desktop apps. I love GMail, but I access it from Mail.app about 80% of the time. I like Google Docs, but I don’t use it because I have to launch my browser just to access it. Pages is quicker and easier to get at. If Google comes out with a desktop app version of Google Office (or whatever they call it), like they did for Google Earth, I would probably use it as my main word processor. WebKit may be just the key to this future.

Safari 3 Review

My overall impression from playing with Safari 3 on Windows is one of tempered excitement. I like that it’s there and I can start testing, but it is still very beta to me. There are a few things that don’t work that irritate me like the Back and Forward buttons on my mouse don’t work. It seems somewhat ironic to me that the things that keep me from using it on my PC at work are non-issues on my Mac at home, but such is life. I have a certain way of working in Firefox at work that I don’t use at home and vice versa. I guess you could say that I am happy it’s there, but I don’t plan on using it full-time anytime soon.