Apple releases Safari browser
Apple's MacOSX's default web browser is now availabe for download for Microsoft Windows OS. Click here to download it. This is a very exciting news for all web developers and web graphics designer out there. As it stands now there are 4 major web browsers in the market today, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera browser. This means that if you are creating your web application in Windows, you can simultaneously view your created web app using the 4 major browsers without the need to buy a Mac. You may ask why? Why do I need to view my webapp using Safari? Well as it stands now, any web customers that you deny access to your site is a loss revenue. With 5% usage share, that is still a lot of potential customers, approximately 18.5 million of them.
Safari is based on WebKit with KHTML as default HTML renderer. This is also a good news for web developers who wants consistency in all the web browsers. WebKit is open source and so does the Gecko engine of Firefox.
Performance Testing
HTML Performance on Windows XP for Apple Safari is 2.2 seconds, Firefox comes in second with 3.7 and Internet Explorer comes in with 4.6. That's twice the speed to render HTML on Safari than on Firefox. I'm using Safari right now and it is indeed much faster in terms of HTML rendering. But I'm hoping they throw Opera in there.
Javascript Performance on Windows XP for Internet Explorer is 2.4 seconds, Firefox with 1.6 and Safari with .9 of a second.
Conclusion
As I said earlier it is important to note that Safari and Firefox are based on open source technology and will implement open standards on the internet. This will ensure that no more special HTML, javascript, etc. hacks between different browsers. And so much more time devoted for developing and designing wonderful sites rather than debugging.
I also found out that everything in Safari appears crispy, down to the graphics and texts. But as for now I will still be rooting for Mozilla Firefox because of its enormous library of plugins.
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2 comments:
For me, I use multiple browsers. Even though firefox has alot of plug-ins, web page loading and memory usage is a big concern for me.
I'm not giving up on firefox but I use Opera more now for surfing since it loads web pages alot faster than Firefox.
Safari is a good substitute:
1.) it loads web page faster
2.) it uses lesser memory than firefox
3.) I like the design
Text display is the same with firefox on windows, OSX has the best Clear-type setting which make the Safari text display good.
I also notice that firefox and safari has the same preference window design.
I also use multiple browsers but right now I am down to two, 95% on Firefox with the other percentage to IE7 (because of some online banks that requires you to use only IE! Welcome to 2007!). I just can't leave with my add-ons and hacks.
Being an exclusive Opera users for many months I gave up when it's visible quite slow when you opened too many tabs at the same time. But give the guys credit, Opera uses small footprint for what essentially is a fully-packed browser.
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