I got an interesting email a few days after I posted my article about choosing your web browser. Someone told me that I forgot about the Mac users, so I went ahead and tried Safari for Windows. I don’t have a Mac but I could say that it works pretty well and faster than my favorite browser, Firefox.

Hit the jump to read my review about this handy browser.

The first thing I’ve noticed is that this browser automatically comes with the flash plugin in it. Unlike IE and Mozilla where you still need to install the plugin, flash runs right out of the box. At first I thought that it was because flash was already installed before the browser had been installed so I tried it at home. Recently I did a fresh install on one of my home computers and I loaded up Safari first before the other browsers. To my surprise, flash was running out of the box. No more annoying "download and install this plugin" prompts! I also noticed that this browser has its own built-in quicktime plugin as well, enabling you to run quicktime videos on websites without the need for the quicktime player to be actually installed.

To summarize my experience, here are the Pros and Cons.

Pros:

1. It loads faster, even than FireFox.

2. Built-in flash and quicktime plugins.

3. Fonts and images appear sharper and clearer than other browsers.

4. Nice clean interface that reminds you that its from Apple. (Making want me to get a Mac for my own.)

Cons:

1. There were some times when the browser hanged on me. I think it was because I had too many tabs (7 or open at the same time. In short, don’t open too many tabs at once.

2. You won’t be able to view your "advanced editor" when you use Safari. For some weird reason, posting on the Sanriotown Forums are different from other normal browsers. The formatting seems disabled and you may need to do a little bit of HTML coding to display the way you want the post to be. Too much hassle.

3. The brushed silver user interface is a nice break away from the common Windows look but it can get boring after a while. I’m still not sure if you can apply custom skins but I’ve found no option so far other than doing some "hacking" on some files to change its looks.

Overall, I like this browser a LOT. In fact, I’m using it as the main browser for work and at home right now. Give it a try if you want. If you already have a Mac then I suppose you already know about this, but for windows users, go visit the Apple Safari site for Windows.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Ticker, Questions, Forum Howto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.