Sunday, April 6, 2008

Safari - Quick review


Just for the heck of it I downloaded and installed Safari web browser from Apple. I pretty much use Mozilla's Firefox for 99% of my web surfing and if you twist my arm real hard I might even use Internet Explorer once in awhile.

The interface is fairly straight forward and simple to figure out. I notice the Apple grey color similar to my iTunes interface so at least they are consistent. Web surfing is comparable(as far as speed) to Firefox or IE. One thing that was obviously missing was tabbed browsing which both IE and Firefox both have. I've gotten so used to it that I didn't realize I had about five windows open before I noticed. I don't see any options for it either. Kind of surprising given that this was the latest release.

All in all it seems like a competent browser but kind of seems spartan. I would expect something more from Apple. Perhaps I had to high expectations. I may try this out once in awhile to see how different pages look or have trouble opening or viewing stuff in other browsers. I'll be sticking with Firefox for now. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give it about a 5.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Safari does have tabs, just double (or right) click below the bookmark bar.

Anonymous said...

I think you haven't check the preferences carefully enough because Safari had been using tabs for quite a long time.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how it works on Windows, but on a Mac, if you click on the "Safari" heading in the toolbar and select "Preferences," you'll see a button labeled "Tabs," which allows you to customize tabbed browsing behavior.

Anonymous said...

Hello, wake up! How superficial can a review get? Tabbed browsing has been in Safari for years!

Anonymous said...

Safari indeed supports tabbed browsing, although the tab bar is hidden by default when only one tab is loaded.T o make the tab bar always visible, select "Show Tab Bar" from the "View" menu or press CTRL-SHFT-T to toggle the tab bar on and off.

To add a tab to a window, select "New Tab" from the "File" menu or press CTRL_T. When the tab bar is visible, you can create a new tab by right-clicking on the tab bar itself. You can also open a link in a new tab by holding down the CTRL key when clicking the link.

Once you have multiple tabs open, you can reorder tabs using drag and drop. You can also drag tabs off of a window and drop them onto the desktop to make them separate windows. In addition, you can drag tabs from one Safari window onto the tab bar of another Safari window. This is a neat trick for organizing pages into tab groups.

There are some other neat tricks to be found in the "Window" menu as well.

Pretty cool, huh?

Anonymous said...

Safari has tabs and a lot more. Just google for "safari 3.1 windows review" for some detailed reviews.

Ars Technica's review
PC Magazine's review


FYI, Safari's core engine - Webkit - is open source.

Anonymous said...

How did you miss Safari's tabs section? It is very prominently displayed in the preferences. If tabbed browsing wasn't enabled by default, you can enable it here and use the suggested keyboard commands listed under the checkboxes. I'm sure once you set up the tab browsing, you'll find Safari to be more to your liking. I tend to try each version of Firefox as it comes out of beta, but end up switching back to Safari--for me, Safari just looks and feels "better" and more natural. I'm not opposed to making a switch, but for me, Firefox isn't quite there, despite much better add-on management and more extensive features. How well they all integrate (and yes, their visual appearance) matter, too. YMMV;-)

Anonymous said...

Yo Bob,

Safari does have a tab browsing feature, just select view in the menu bar and choose "show tab bar". This feature can also be enabled in any individual open window. I just activated it within this current "leave your comment" window.

MJ

Anonymous said...

This post was useful in exposing the laziness of the author. Nothing of worth to read here. Move along.

Anonymous said...

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