While I appreciate any move towards native Windows controls-you know, God forbid, the thing does run in Windows after all-Apple's use of standard Windows font rendering, is perhaps, the browser's most appealing concession to the dominant computing platform. Just tap Alt to see the menu, or you can enable it for good if you'd like. And I will discuss the browser's most horrible user experience miscarriage, its "tabs on top" functionality, in just a bit.Īpple is hiding the Safari menu bar by default, a curiously IE-like move that hides some needed functionality.
Apple oddly claims that the Safari 4 title bar and toolbar are native as well, but that's clearly not the case. This time around, Safari utilizes native Windows-style window borders and semi-native window control buttons (Minimize, Maximize/Restore, and Close) on both Windows XP and Vista (and 7).
Native Windows look and feelĪpple says that Safari 4 looks more like a Windows application than its predecessors, and while that's certainly true enough, the bar was pretty low. Safari 4 shares some DNA, and some user interface elements, with Google Chrome. (Previous versions looked like an OS X app.) It's "the world's fastest, most efficient, and most innovative" browser, according to the humble folks in Cupertino, and they're even touting its "new Windows-native look," which, as anyone who's used the browser will tell you, is long overdue. Of course, Apple being Apple, they are promoting Safari 4 as if it were the second coming. Safari 4, like its predecessors, is just a horrible Windows application. I just wish Apple could get the basics right on Windows. And that's too bad, because the underlying Web rendering technology utilized by Safari-WebKit-has a better than average chance of becoming the technology layer through which most of us access the Web and cloud-based services of the future. But as an Apple product, it's also uniquely unsuitable for Windows users. As an Apple product, it's immediately interesting of course. They're back this week with a beta version of their upcoming Safari 4 browser, which appears to be Google Chrome with a few UI changes. Well, kudos to Apple for keeping up the good fight. It's been almost two years since I've looked at Apple's Safari browser in any official capacity (see my overview of Safari 3), and for good reason: Safari simply isn't a good option for Windows users.
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