Finally, we can (hopefully) test Safari on Windows too, but it remains to be seen how this compares with Firefox and its battalion of extensions and the ever-blazing Opera.
Apple is on to some exciting things. After the iPhone and the new eagerly awaited of the Max OSX, it even announced Safari 3 Beta for Windows!
The install was painless. Especially if you choose the no-Quicktime option (which Apple has no qualms about plugging shamelessly with almost every download it offers). I was also asked during the installation for ‘Bonjour‘ — a tool that supposedly allows better sharing of things such as printers.
The immediate uninstall
When I started the browser, it came up in some weird language. Greek, or Russian, or a specific kind of Celt. Who knows. I tried to reinstall, and it insisted on removing Safari first, which is ok, but it also required me to close Firefox, SecureCRT (for SSH) and WinSCP (for SFTP). I like my browsers to be independent of each other thank you. Opera never bothers with what else I am using.
The second and final uninstall
After the re-install, it showed up yet again in the strange language. Nowhere on my system is this language set up. All my browsers are set up to show only English, but support Japanese and Chinese. I guess it’s “beta” for a reason. It surely has a long way to go if it wants to be anywhere near decent contention to FF and Opera. Below’s a snapshot of what this gunk looks like on my machine:
Turns out these junk characters are not really a language at all. When I try to type something in the location bar, it comes up in this junk lingo. I try and rummage through these nonsensical options to see if one of the menus or submenus may have “English” as an option, but no luck.
Conclusion
This mutt is off my PC before it could even bark. So long, Safari, and thanks for all the fish.
8 Comments
Actually web developers may want to read the fine print before uncorking the champagne. The rendering engine inside Safari for PC is different from that on Macs.
Hi, thanks for the info. (That was quick! Did you get here from downloadsquad?) I just read that the html rendering engine is a port of KHTML from Konqueror (KDE), which should be a fairly capable performer and at least some Mac-ish semblance of a browser, which would make web design testing useful anyway. But it would help to first get this stupid thing working on my machine!
Don’t know what happened, but I installed it first thing this morning without a hiccup. I said no to Quicktime and yes to Bonjour.
The visual interface is impressive – looks Mac like but I’m used to Firefox’s settings. I could adapt to Safari but don’t really have a reason too and that goes for running my Mac too.
To say it’s bug-ridden and hard to install might be misleading though.
“To say it’s bug-ridden and hard to install might be misleading though.”
It is what it is. If a software cannot install and read my language properly, it is hardly misleading to call it bug-ridden. It’s not hard to install at all, just confused and poorly programmed. At any rate, the speed of access of websites is hardly much to swoon at. Opera still takes the cake by far. Of course these are my experiences, on my Vaio with 2GB RAM and Core2Duo, which suggests to me that Opera knows how to make good use of the hardware without becoming a memory hog ala Firefox.
my install of safari is doing it exactly the same thing – been trawling trying to find out why the hell it’s doing that, but got nowhere so far…. i’ll check back here in case someone posts a solution….
Derick. My safari works now. Just keep installing Apple’s auto updates and one fine day it will start to work. I have no clue when/why it started to work, but it did.
I have the same problem with Safari 3.1. It just won’t start after installation. I am on Windows XP. I saw the problem discussed here by many users
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1447340&tstart=0
If you have any ideas to fix it please email me. Thank you.
Just uninstall and reinstall it. Let it update itself. It’ll correct itself. Safari still doesn’t match the convenience of Firefox or Opera on Windows (no plugins–hhmmpph!) but it’s a nice way to test what your site etc may look like for many Mac users.