The browser wars was interesting in the late 90s. However, most of the rivals disappeared and were replaced by Internet Explorer versus Mozilla Firefox. Lately we've been blessed with a number of Internet Explorer-based browsers such as Maxthon, Google Chrome and, of course, Apple Safari for Windows. Did anyone really take Safari for Windows seriously? We don't think so and Apple have thought the same. So, what do you do? Look at what your rivals have done with your own technology (Webkit) and realise that they've done a better job on the front-end. So, you need to copy it.

Apple Safari for Windows v4 has just been released as a public preview and, on first load, it looks like a carbon copy of Google Chrome. It now places the tabs at the top of your browser window and ships with a Windows user-interface. On Vista, we could have opened Google Chrome by mistake and not even realised.

There's a lot more than user-interface changes. The next thing you'll notice is that you are welcomed with a pictorial view of your 'Top Sites'. Click on a site and this is brought to the front of your browser window. Click on your bookmarks and you can view through a cover view style visual flip function. Did we mention that this browser was fast? Very very fast. Pages load immediately, almost as if they've been pre-cached.

We were never fans of Safari for Windows (or even the Mac version). We are impressed - so far - with Safari 4. Looks good, some interesting new functionality, launches pages impressively and so on. The only thing is lacks is the number of addons and extensions you can get with Mozilla Firefox.

[UPDATE] Although the new Safari v4 ships with a new Windows-native user interface, there are still some Apple-esque elements that remain. For example, the downloads window shows a blue aqua progress bar. Still, it's a lot better than the previous version.

[UPDATE2] Just need to point out that we do NOT think Google Chrome, Safari or others are based on the Internet Explorer HTML engine. We just wrote that quickly - we meant Maxthon and other IE-based browsers are available, whilst there are also WebKit-based browsers such as Chrome and Safari. Ok, no more complaints, please!

Safari for Windows v4 link.

24 Feb 2009