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Product: Safari
Company: Apple Computers Inc. (www.apple.com)
Rating: (out of 5)
4
Pros: Fastest browser available for the Mac. New
version 1.0 fixes BETA bugs. Great pop-up window blocking software.
Cons: History keeping features need work.
Safari, Mac's ace-in-the-hole web
browser, is billed as a fast, lean and smart way to view the internet.
And they are right, at least to some extent.
Until now, Safari had been a somewhat buggy, beta version of what is
now version 1.0. There were numerous problems with links not
working (because of client-side errors, in other words not because the
webmaster of the site you're viewing pulled a SNAFU) and the browser
freezing, as well as a few other minor
bugs all of which were fixed for version 1.0.
One somewhat disappointing feature of the beta version which carried
over into the current version is that the user has no choice of how
long Safari keeps track of its history, unlike competitor browsers
Mozilla, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera and others. The history
box can be annoying because it automatically fills in any
subdirectories you visited (so say you were going to
www.anyplace.com, the history function would automatically place
www.anyplace.com/news.html instead of the normal home page).
The previously-mentioned faults are Safari v1.0's only drawbacks.
The GUI (Graphical User Interface) has a beautiful "brushed aqua"
interface, so it will coincide with Panther (Mac OS 10.3, available by
the end of the year) interface very
well.
Another incredible feature of Safari is it's great bookmark
management. The bookmarks are displayed directly under the URL box,
for easy access. This is by far the best bookmark management of any
browser out there.
Finally, Safari is blazingly fast. With an average site launch
time of 10 seconds (compared to IE and Netscape's launch times of 10
and 22 seconds, respectively; source: MacAddict issue #82) and
extremely fast navigation within the site, Safari is the fastest
browser on the web right now. It also supports the latest versions of
HTML and XML.
Overall I'd say Safari version 1.0 is a very solid product and should
definitely be all Mac users' primary web browser. There is no WinDOZE
version of the browser planned for release anytime soon.
Product's Website:
www.apple.com/safari ■»
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