I found it interesting a couple weeks ago when my Apple software update requested a push of the Safari browser to my Windows computer. It was identified as an 'update', but since I'd never used Safari it was a brand new install for me. Apple is kind of doing a Microsoft with this push of their browser -- although I had the option to decline the installation, I bet many others didn't think much about it, just like when Apple pushes updates to Itunes that include Quicktime software. I'm sure there are going to be complaints about the way Apple is force feeding Safari to anyone using Itunes on Windows.
As a loyal Firefox fan, I haven't really put Safari through the paces much, mostly because I don't like the way it handles tabs. With Firefox, you have the option of opening new web sites in tabs instead of new windows without adding extra keystrokes. In Safari, you've got to add a Ctrl to prevent links from opening in new windows. That should be an option for the user to select easily, but I can't find it. And if it takes me more than a few minutes to figure out something that should be very easy, I tend to go back to the old familiar software. I'm probably just missing something.
A couple of nice things to mention -- Safari is way faster than Internet Exploder Explorer and Firefox version 2. The beta 5 version of Firefox 3 seems to be almost as quick as Safari -- and with the add-ons I'm using, I still prefer Firefox 3 over Safari even looking past my issue with tabs. Also, I like the fact that I can test web page layouts on Safari now without having to find someone with a Mac. I'm guessing that Safari for Windows and Safari for Mac still have some differences, but for the relatively low numbers of Safari users, it's not a major concern.
Having competition for Internet Explorer is a good thing. I stopped using IE as my primary browser while the original version of Firefox was still in beta. And although Microsoft has caught up a little by adding tabbed browsing, it still seems to me to load pages much slower than FF. Microsoft's software overhead is a killer in IE.
Hopefully this competition for users will keep pushing the development of better web browsers that make the things faster, more stable, and even more feature-rich.
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