Apple's New Safari Runs Faster, Supports Windows

Mak 2.0

Mak 2.0

Mod...WAFFLES!?!?
Staff member
Apple released a 3.1 version of its Safari Web browser on Tuesday with several improvements. Apple said the new version loads Web pages 1.9 times faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than the open-source Firefox 2 browser. It also said Safari 3.1 runs JavaScript up to six times faster than any other browser, and it is the first to support new Web standards.

Apple said the speed benchmarks were based on VeriTest's iBench Version 5.0 with default settings, running on an iMac 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system with Windows XP and 1GB of memory.

For Mac and Windows

The browser is available as a free download at Apple - Safari, and works on both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. For Mac, the browser requires either the Tiger 10.4.11 version of Mac OS X, or Leopard, with at least 256MB of memory on any Intel-based Mac or any Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor. For Windows XP or Vista, at least 256MB of memory is required and at least a 500-MHz Intel Pentium processor.

Apple Senior Vice President Philip Schiller said Safari 3.1 is "blazingly fast, easy to use" and features an "elegant user interface." Best of all, he added, the newest Safari supports audio, video and animation standards needed for the next generation of Web 2.0 experiences.

In particular, Apple noted that Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support new video and audio tags in HTML 5, as well as the first to support CSS animations. It also supports CSS Web fonts that offer new design choices.

Source

I must say that i am impressed more with this release than with the Betas. There is still the Font issues. Some CSS is messed up. But it is quick. I would say it loads faster than Opera now. It also passes the Acid2 and has a inline spell checker like Firefox.

If now they only had a ad blocker i would be all set....
 
Certainly have a place for trying it out on XP lately. I'll have plenty of room on XP and Vista alike to see how it goes.
 
Yeah i made reference to the font thing myself. I have tried every setting. Nothing works. Wach site is different. This site looks good with the Medium setting while others looks nice in the Light. Just not right.
 
It seems to magnify the home page as well as every other and runs into the "this not supported" type error messages. But you're not limited to tabbed browsing like seen in FireFox and offers a clean interface to work with.

The one thing that was found annoying was trying to see a links option while one install on XP saw the IE links added along with the favorites I could only get the favorites on while in Vista. But no fuss as far as simply dragging the ison down onto the tool bar from the address bar. Plus it does open and load pages much faster then seen with IE and FF lately.
 
What are you talking about with the favorites? I loaded my favorites from Opera easily. Not my IE Favorites. I load all my bookmarks from Opera as that is my main browser and every other one spawns from that one.
 
Those were from IE not any other browser while I do have FF 2.0 on both versions of Windows here. In Vista when you go to the right side and click the links tab the dropdown list shows what comes included like Google, Yahoo, news with links seen at the bottom. I see both IE favorites and the links folder there.

The problem is seen in XP now that IE 7 is finally up and running where you won't find the links since those were imported like the favorites were for some reason. It could be simply from being the older version there while 3.1 is geared more towards Vista since this is a brand new release. It was made compatible but maybe not fully compliant with XP?
 
I am running it with XP. I still do not understand what you are talking about. It could just be the defaults that the browser comes loaded with. It could be the ones that you had installed previously. If you just upgraded. Just not realized that you had them on there. I know that Safari comes with several bookmarks already witha fresh install.

I did my install in XP and i did not see this issue at all. I sw my bookmarks that i added back in February when i first installed Safari. I removed all of them and added my newest list after the update. So no this is not a specific issue toward XP. Cause i know of several people who have installed it and not one have said a word about any bookmark issue like you have. There has to be something on your system that has caused this. Sorry to say. But your system seems to act wierd to certian things. Cause it is not responding the way my XP is. I will even removed Safari and the apple Updater, get rid of all Registry entries and folder then reinstall just to show you what comes in the bookmarks area.

Addendum:

Alright after removing all signs of Safari and apple software. From the REgistry using Registry Crawler. Also all folder and everything that is Apple related i have found out something interesting about Apple and Safari. If you ever had the software installed. It remembers it last state. Cause all my bookmarks are back along with all my settings.

I will remove it yet again and check even further into my system to make sure it wasn't just me....

Addendum:

Okay i got that sorted now. It was me. I did not get everything removed. GRR.

But upon install it will take your IE favorites. Along with teh ones it comes preinstalled with.

Apple, Yahoo, Google Maps, YouTube, Wikipedia, 9 News sites and 10 different Popular sites.

News sites include:

CNN, The New York Times, Google News, CNet News, ESPN, Los Angeles Tiems, BBC News, NPR, USA Today

Popular site include:

eBay, Amazon, Flickr, Expedia Travel, Orbitz, Facebook, Monster Jobs, Career Builder, Disney, Craigslist

So if you say that you didnt ahve IE favorites yet you had some of the favorites listed that is because those are the ones that come with Safari.
 
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I didn't say it failed to import the IE favorites but the links seen in the links folder you see as an option for IE when you have that ticked. That's a sub folder inside the favorites folder that somehow was added in on XP here. When I boot into XP again I will be removing and trying a fresh install to see if it then includes the links sub folder.

The reinstallation of safari twice still comes up without the links sub folder being found in XP. The two images here will show just what I am referring to as not being added when importing from IE 7. I enlarged the two screen captures for easier viewing.

Here's the one taken while in XP.



Now see how it looks when in Vista.



As you can see between the two VIsta sees the links sub folder added in while not added in XP for some reason. Other then that there's a lack of options while being preferred over FF2. I ran one of the earlier versions of Safari some time before Vista came out and had eventually lasked seeing it installed again inbetween builds.
 
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The Links is the stuff it imported. So you must have had something in IE at the time for it to import. I will restart in Vista and so it again.

I did a full uninstall and reinstall. The first time it had saved my settings from before. The 2nd time it was a fresh install and only imported my IE stuff. So i seriously dont know why your XP is acting all wierd. Cause it worked just fine for me. I know it will do that in Vista for me as well.
 
In XP the only way so far to see bookmarks on the bar is to drag down from the address. When you open the all bookmarks option everything in favorites plus what was dragged down is present. I reinstalled 3.1 about a half dozen times and still see the same thing.

In Vista there's no concern as you can see. That makes me wonder if I should first remove 3.1 and wipe the current links folder to start over there and then it again with a fresh install.
 
UPDATE:

Once removing 3.1 and clearing out all links to then see all dragged into the links folder in IE 7 Safari was reinstalled again to see everything but the links folder. The links themselve were seen for the first time automatically displayed on the bookmarks bar. When opening the dropdown menu the image here shows how they are seen now.



At least there was some progress seen there.
 
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