This is bad news for developers. Instead of going with the mature Gecko engine (as used in Mozilla, Netscape 7 etc.) they've chosen Konqueror's engine, which is fast, but somewhat incomplete. Like Opera in the past, it also tries to fool web servers (mentions Gecko in its useragent), which is incredibly unhelpful and irritating, and is likely to evolve in a gradual and unpredictable way.

So, as with Opera 5/6, Safari users can marvel at the rendering speed for now, but are going to be rather disappointed when they find many sites don't display correctly, and developers will find it awkward to support until it's fully mature.

To me it says a lot about Apple's relationship with Microsoft - they're seemingly worried that MS isn't fully supporting Mac IE and could pull the plug at any time. It'll be interesting to see if they do the same with an office suite at some point in the future (perhaps based on OpenOffice?), although MS has a file format stranglehold in that area and businesses like to stick with their MS Office security blanket.

Posted by: Matt Round on January 8, 2003 02:12 AM

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My first impression is that it has a lot of potential, but obviously needs a lot of work. The main reason it loads pages so fast is because it displays pages before they're completely rendered, so I'm not taking their claim to speed too seriously. Bookmark organization feature is very neat. Snapback is clever but will take some getting used to. No tabbed browsing! What were they thinking? I expect them to add this by version 2. Googlebar built in, which is way cool, but I would love it to provide a few more options like the Nutshell Toolbar. Feedback is as simple as the pushing the little bug button, so start giving it!

Posted by: Joshua Kaufman on January 8, 2003 08:12 AM

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I like Safari. I love the Snapback feature, but that is just how I tend to browse, so it may not be for everyone. Of course, built-in Google is cool, and I like the way the "loading" indicator is in the address window itself - conserving space is very nice.

It is just a beta release, so I'm not expecting rock-hard stability, but it performed very well even at my most complicated, IE-crashing regulars.

Frankly, I don't care how fast it loads pages, and I honestly didn't notice much of a difference on my slow modem connection. I wanted to use it for the bookmark organization (as well as the Goggle, snap-back, etc.), because I tend to bookmark sites that I want to go back later and look at, so being able to mine them from the History logs is excellent.

This browser completely appeals to the type of surfer I am, which is to say, a very non-technical one. I suspect that this will not appeal as much to more high-intensity/technical users. I don't think that is Apple's aim, anyway - they just want to make a suite of applications for their typical "iLife" user.

I didn't notice the bug feedback icon - I'll look for it! Tabbed display would definitely be nice, and I agree that we'll probably be seeing it in the future.

Posted by: Lydia on January 8, 2003 01:51 PM

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also, try and right-click after you've typed in a form-field..does spellchecking in an instant!

Posted by: michel binkhorst on January 9, 2003 03:54 AM

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