Today Steve Jobs announced the availability of Safari 3 via a public beta. Although this was interesting news, what was more interesting was the announcement that Safari 3 is now also available for Windows! To some, this may be the news they’d been wanting to hear for a long time but to others it may just be another sign of impending world destruction. My personal opinion is that this move is at least one step in the right direction for Apple. It will certainly make my life as a developer much more easier as I won’t have to rely on services such as Dan Vine’s iCapture or annoyingly have to ask friends to screen shot my sites on their Macs.
First Impressions
My first impressions are that this is indeed true beta software. My experience is that it is rather slow and feels rather heavy as an application. As with all Apple software, the user interface is indeed nice. It’s not clogged with buttons and only the bare essentials are shown but it still allows for nearly as much customisation as Firefox, although it’s not quite on par at this stage. The traditional brushed metal theme has only been on my screen for a few minutes and it’s already growing on me. Although it’s default font choice as Times New Roman isn’t to my taste, it doesn’t take anything away from the browser.One thing I will say is the option to resize most text areas is a nice feature.
Get it Now
Go and get the beta from the Apple site, try it out and return here. Mac or PC users can download the beta and I advise that you do. Give it a go and come here and leave a comment! Below are a few screen shots to tickle your fancy.
