Safari for Windows?

[Timelessblur]

Also they would have to keep windows' safari constantly updated, discontinuing it would look bad, and keeping it going with no return in revinue would suck, complete tosh!

Well another view would it would help Apple redem it self from it Quick time port over to windows. I am sorry but Quicktime for windows is a joke and a POS (out side of being used for webpages) iTunes was nice but to a lot of people see it as a way to make money for them (which it is) Quicktime they see as a free program from apple that is well crap so it would give them a chance to redime themselves and make a quility program for windows besides iTunes. It will take more than one good program to repear the damage 1 bad program did

 

[GregA]

I never understand rumors like this.

Why would Apple spend money to make the windows platform better with zero opportunity for revenue for them? When there is already free and better alternatives to IE on the 'Doze platform?

To show people how good Apple is? They have the iPod to do this.
This rumor simply makes zero business sense. Zero.

Well if we add 1 or 2 things in that make business sense could we score a 1 in 5 (or 1 in 100? or....)

1. If Apple releases Safari for Windows - big or small developers could easily check their websites are usable and look good in Safari, without having to buy a Mac.

2. Even with a small percentage of people on Windows using Safari, there'd be a bigger market of Safari users, so more web-developers would want to test their sites were working under it.

Other arguments are really just opinions - like whether Safari makes people buy other Apple products or not, and so on. I have my opinion but when I think about it, it's really about the whole Apple strategy and what I'd like.... more than this thread!

 

[GFLPraxis]

Wow, this is a little out there. I doubt Apple would ever really do this.....I mean, why would a PC user ever use Safari over IE 6?

Are you insane?
IE actually just lost a 1% marketshare recently. FireFox is growing rapidly, because IE is a SUCKY browser (FireFox has the features of Safari, such as tab browsing and popup blocking and faster speeds and a cleaner interface).

The question is, why would a PC user use Safari over FireFox? Apple will have to REALLY give Safari some sweet features, since FireFox just got RSS.

 

[MacBandit]

Well another view would it would help Apple redem it self from it Quick time port over to windows. I am sorry but Quicktime for windows is a joke and a POS (out side of being used for webpages) iTunes was nice but to a lot of people see it as a way to make money for them (which it is) Quicktime they see as a free program from apple that is well crap so it would give them a chance to redime themselves and make a quility program for windows besides iTunes. It will take more than one good program to repear the damage 1 bad program did

As funky as Quicktime is for Windows it's far better then Real and in my oppinion on par with the really ugly and crash happy WMP.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Well another view would it would help Apple redem it self from it Quick time port over to windows. I am sorry but Quicktime for windows is a joke and a POS (out side of being used for webpages) iTunes was nice but to a lot of people see it as a way to make money for them (which it is) Quicktime they see as a free program from apple that is well crap so it would give them a chance to redime themselves and make a quility program for windows besides iTunes. It will take more than one good program to repear the damage 1 bad program did

Are you nuts? Almost everyone I know has quicktime and has had it for years, even before I became a Mac nut. Quicktime for Windows rules!

 

[Timelessblur]

As funky as Quicktime is for Windows it's far better then Real and in my oppinion on par with the really ugly and crash happy WMP.

Ok a lot of people only have quicktime mainly because of web content that uses it. Real player well I give you there it even worse and most people dont even put it on there computer.

As for WMP well it is better than quicktime for windows. For quicktime to come close you have to pay money for it. Quicktime for windows can not do full screen. It pretty week. A lot of windows people like me have a crack codex so we can run quicktime files though WMP or some other media player for windows. (Winamp is one of them). WMP is a lot better on the windows side.

If quick time files could be easily played on any player I can promises you that quicktime would take a huge hammering. To see how good it is look at how many windows computer have quicktime as there defaut media player. It will be even lower than Real player being on some computer. you will find a large number of winamp and WMP on windows computer for media players for playing all but offal quicktime files.

Quicktime files I say are great for the web and I think it a great media player for running on the web. Better than WMP but take that away and it would just never be used

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

The question is, why would a PC user use Safari over FireFox? Apple will have to REALLY give Safari some sweet features, since FireFox just got RSS.

According to the Tiger-Safari-page RSS is coming, along with other long missed features like saving/e-mailing webpages.

But, I got to admit, Firefox is looking mighty sharp... my former primary browser may yet again become number one at the expence og Safari, if Apple makes a bo-bo or gets delayed with Safari 2.0...

 

[ASP272]

It's getting kind of scary - that is - Apple offering ports to Windows. These apps may open doors to hackers and virus creators previously unable or unwilling to tackle OS X. Yes, Apple's market share does give us a lot of protection from virus creators, but delving into Windows with too many Mac apps could lead to interest in OS X attacks that weren't there before. Just a thought.

 

[topdog1]

Safari for windows

Hi
my understanding is that Safari is more than just a browser for MACs but is an interface for many other system plugins.
What would be good is to have a MAC compatible browser for windows - not that I have any passions about some 'precious browser' just a question of cross platform testing.
On the other hand with 98% of the world viewing the web using Windows MSIE mac anything is insignificant. So what if it looks crap on a MAC - get a propper browser.
So if you want a site to look ok on a Mac, or an Atari or a ZX81 maybe ensure there is a browser that runs of the 98% of the systems.
What kills me is web sites that are developed on the oh so pretty Macs and look weird on the Majority platform.
If 98% of the world used Macs then I would be fine with that, I would just have a PC for occasional testing.
Incidently if you find my view offensive - consider when a manufacture brings out a new cpu chip the first software they bring out is a C cross compiler for the PC and the new CPU. So it is in the best interest of Mac to get a version of Safari for the PC, even if it is to glote with a sticker to say 'runs 5 times faster on a Mac'
Just my option as a Technical Architect of some 25 year experince.

 

[mrgreen4242]

Hi
my understanding is that Safari is more than just a browser for MACs but is an interface for many other system plugins.
What would be good is to have a MAC compatible browser for windows - not that I have any passions about some 'precious browser' just a question of cross platform testing.
On the other hand with 98% of the world viewing the web using Windows MSIE mac anything is insignificant. So what if it looks crap on a MAC - get a propper browser.
So if you want a site to look ok on a Mac, or an Atari or a ZX81 maybe ensure there is a browser that runs of the 98% of the systems.
What kills me is web sites that are developed on the oh so pretty Macs and look weird on the Majority platform.
If 98% of the world used Macs then I would be fine with that, I would just have a PC for occasional testing.
Incidently if you find my view offensive - consider when a manufacture brings out a new cpu chip the first software they bring out is a C cross compiler for the PC and the new CPU. So it is in the best interest of Mac to get a version of Safari for the PC, even if it is to glote with a sticker to say 'runs 5 times faster on a Mac'
Just my option as a Technical Architect of some 25 year experince.

Wow - not only was that nearly unintelligable, it was also stupid! Your 'syle' of writing is extremely difficult to read. There is very little internal structure to your prose, and your grasp of grammar and general writing structure seems pretty limited. If you are a non-native english speaker, ignore that, as I am sure if I tried to write something in your native language it would read like a 3 year old composed it. If you are a native english speaker, then I suggest you go to your local community college and take a basic english composition class.

Onto the actual content of what you have to say... firstly, the Safari browser is built on a cross platform HTML renderer called KHTML that is used in many browsers, notably the Konqueror browser that is the 'core' of the KDE graphic user interface for Linux/XWindows. It, unlike the browser used by "98% of the world" is fully standards compliant, meaning that a page will look like the author intended, regardless of what system it is being viewed on.

IE is built on a terrible rendering library that is not standards compliant at all, and often horribly misrenders HTML files so badly that most sites have to have errors left in them intentionally as 'dirty hacks' to make it look acceptable on IE. Sadly because of the number of IE users out there, pages must be left broken so that people can view them in a manner close to what the author intended.

Fortunately, 98% of the world doesn't use IE anymore! Right now, IE commands a roughly 71% market share. Every day more and more people are using standards compliant browsers, mostly Mozilla's browsers (21%), namely Firefox. In fact at Mozilla's current growth rate it will overtake all versions of IE in about 18 months. As a recreational and sometimes professional web developer I can't wait for this!

On my personal sites I have often grown so tired of adding 'hacks' to make my page render properly in IE that I have given up supporting it at all, and simply direct users of IE to a page explaining why my site looks 'funny' in IE, and also other various benifits to switching to either Mozilla or a KHTML based browser.

In summary, if a page is designed and looks great on a Mac, it WILL look great on ANY machine running a STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser. The fact that IE mutilates pages has nothing to do with Apples small market share. If you want to launch some sort of tirade about Macs on an Apple site, the least you can do is form you post in a readable and thoughtful manner, not just a semi-random collection of sentances.

For the record, I do not own a Mac, and I am posting this from my PC running Linux. I'm looking forward to getting a Mac, however, for so many reasons, one of which is that it's a fully supported OS that sports a fully standards complaint HTML renderer at it's core. I will continue my practice of reffering IE users to mozilla.org to upgrade so they can view my websites properly.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

<snip>
firstly, the Safari browser is built on a cross platform HTML renderer called KHTML that is used in many browsers, notably the Konqueror browser that is the 'core' of the KDE graphic user interface for Linux/XWindows. It, unlike the browser used by "98% of the world" is fully standards compliant, meaning that a page will look like the author intended, regardless of what system it is being viewed on.

This is correct. I must add, though, that Safari's engine (which Apple calls WebKit, and in turn uses another engine called WebCore) is implemented in Mac OS X 10.3 in such a way that any Mac developer can make their own web browser based on it. MSIE doesn't make it that easy, on the other hand.

IE is built on a terrible rendering library that is not standards compliant at all, and often horribly misrenders HTML files so badly that most sites have to have errors left in them intentionally as 'dirty hacks' to make it look acceptable on IE. Sadly because of the number of IE users out there, pages must be left broken so that people can view them in a manner close to what the author intended.

Fortunately, 98% of the world doesn't use IE anymore! Right now, IE commands a roughly 71% market share. Every day more and more people are using standards compliant browsers, mostly Mozilla's browsers (21%), namely Firefox. In fact at Mozilla's current growth rate it will overtake all versions of IE in about 18 months. As a recreational and sometimes professional web developer I can't wait for this!

On my personal sites I have often grown so tired of adding 'hacks' to make my page render properly in IE that I have given up supporting it at all, and simply direct users of IE to a page explaining why my site looks 'funny' in IE, and also other various benifits to switching to either Mozilla or a KHTML based browser.

In summary, if a page is designed and looks great on a Mac, it WILL look great on ANY machine running a STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser. The fact that IE mutilates pages has nothing to do with Apples small market share. <snip>

For the record, I do not own a Mac, and I am posting this from my PC running Linux. I'm looking forward to getting a Mac, however, for so many reasons, one of which is that it's a fully supported OS that sports a fully standards complaint HTML renderer at it's core. I will continue my practice of reffering IE users to mozilla.org to upgrade so they can view my websites properly.

One more thing I should mention: watch out for those little transpose errors. Using "standards complaint" when you meant "standards compliant", for example, makes a significant difference in the meaning of your post (although I knew what you meant ).

 

[JJTiger1]

Hi
my understanding is that Safari is more than just a browser for MACs but is an interface for many other system plugins.
{...sigh}
Just my option as a Technical Architect of some 25 year experince.

... you got it backwards. Safari is just a browser. Some other applications have plugins that work with Safari.

Some people design bad looking websites. Looks bad on a Mac using Safari, and just as bad in Internet Explorer. The chip in the machine couldn't help a bad looking website.
=-=
I'm almost tempted to make a comment that someone who truly is a Technical Architect understands that MicroSoft got it wrong. The user has the right to use the browser of the user's choice. The browser should not have tentacles into all aspects of the Operating System.

I'm almost tempted to make a comment that you should try it before you take a broadside shot at it.

I'm almost tempted to make a comment about children masquerading as adults.

... and please, proof-read before you send. Use a spell checker.

 

[mcarvin]

On my personal sites I have often grown so tired of adding 'hacks' to make my page render properly in IE that I have given up supporting it at all, and simply direct users of IE to a page explaining why my site looks 'funny' in IE, and also other various benifits to switching to either Mozilla or a KHTML based browser.

Give Dean Edwards' IE7 extension a shot. It uses an IE Conditional to call an external javascript file which parses your CSS and feeds IE a compatible set of declarations. I know it looks like a hack at first, but you don't need to dirty up your CSS at all and the end result is that IE will render CSS _almost_ as good as Gecko/KHTML browsers. I have a site in beta which is using it, and I can tell you now that I'm not going to have to do anything to get my CSS to work equally well across platforms/browsers. Easy to use, easy to implement, easy for me to like.

And I guess TopDog1 hasn't been following the recent news from WebSideStory and OneStat - IE/Win is down to around 88-90%, Gecko/KHTML around 6-7%. Back in May, IE was hanging around 95-96%, so we're talking a conservative full 5% drop in 6 months. Someone on this board did a little regression and figured that, at the current rates of gains and drops, Gecko browsers and IE/Win could have more equal market shares by the end of '05. (Sorry MrGreen, I wish it really was 71/24! When Firefox hits 10%, it'll be huge news.)

 

[mrgreen4242]

IE/Win is down to around 88-90%, Gecko/KHTML around 6-7%. Back in May, IE was hanging around 95-96%, so we're talking a conservative full 5% drop in 6 months. Someone on this board did a little regression and figured that, at the current rates of gains and drops, Gecko browsers and IE/Win could have more equal market shares by the end of '05. (Sorry MrGreen, I wish it really was 71/24! When Firefox hits 10%, it'll be huge news.)

My numbers came from here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and also http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm#source5

It looks like IEs overall marketshare is something like 70-75%. I didn't intend to indicate that Firefox was the lions share of the other 30%... more I was trying to convey that the Gecko catagory of browsers was the largest part of that 30% and that Firefox is the fastest grower in that, or any, group. Firefox's number may be under 10% right now, but it is mosty responsible for 'stealing' 1-2% of IE users away each month.

Rob

 

[Xtremehkr]

I've found that Firefox is faster than Safari, which is disappointing. But it does require more plug ins.

Isn't losing 5% market share is such a short time usually considered disasterous?

Not that it would take long for Microsoft to fix IE. I imagine that will arrive when Longtooth does.

 

[maxterpiece]

I've found that Firefox is faster than Safari, which is disappointing. But it does require more plug ins.

Isn't losing 5% market share is such a short time usually considered disasterous?

Not that it would take long for Microsoft to fix IE. I imagine that will arrive when Longtooth does.

by fix do you mean further integrate it in the system and make it harder to avoid?

 

[jiv3turkey748]

thats bs windows losers dont diserve to get safari thats just one less reason for them to switch i really hope this rumor isnt true

_______________

-ibook g3 900mhz/40gb/256mb
-4g 20gb ipod

 

[jiv3turkey748]

I hope they don't. But if they did I wonder if they'll release Safari beta 1 for peecee and go through the same process as they did with us mac users. I think they would have to wow them something fierce to get them to use it. What would it look like? I wonder... (insert dreamy music)

it would probaly look the same way itunes for windos looks which is pretty much the same

 

[lordmac]

I dont see it happening

I don't see apple doing this.
There is nno reason for them to Firfox is already almost as good as safari(only thing firfox dosn't have is the sexxyness)
Plus what would aple get out of becoming a dominate web browser even if they were successful at doing this.



-Just my thoughts

 

[Platform]

Don't let windows get it there is FireFox for them and why give such a great browser to the competitor?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Don't let windows get it there is FireFox for them and why give such a great browser to the competitor?

Welcome to the forums Platform!

I couldn't agree with you more.

It just doesn't make sense for Apple, since they won't really gain anything from it. This is in stark contrast to iTunes, where there was a clear benefit to Apple to porting it to Windows.

 

[sebisworld]

Believe it or not, this makes technical sense. Why? iTunes 4 uses the WebCore component for its HTML rendering!

No, it doesn't. iTMS is not coded in HTML. I'm too lazy to look for a source, but if you want to make sure, check Dave Hyatt's Weblog.

 

[mcarvin]

My numbers came from here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and also http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm#source5

It looks like IEs overall marketshare is something like 70-75%. I didn't intend to indicate that Firefox was the lions share of the other 30%... more I was trying to convey that the Gecko catagory of browsers was the largest part of that 30% and that Firefox is the fastest grower in that, or any, group. Firefox's number may be under 10% right now, but it is mosty responsible for 'stealing' 1-2% of IE users away each month.

Rob

Those sites are primarily tech users who are more likely to be using Firefox, whereas OneStat and WebSideStory service a much more mainstream array of sites. I trust the numbers from OS and WSS as being more realistic.

That being said, there are lies, d-mn lies, and statistics.

 

[grafenberg]

firefox! firefox!

 

[Platform]

Welcome to the forums Platform!

I couldn't agree with you more.

It just doesn't make sense for Apple, since they won't really gain anything from it. This is in stark contrast to iTunes, where there was a clear benefit to Apple to porting it to Windows.

Thank you

About iTunes i very much agree with you, becasue there apple can get a benefit for wintel users not with safari !