Safari on Windows?

I decided to give the Safari on Windows beta a quick test drive, from curiosity rather than any pressing need.

Look and feel wise, I found it interesting that it totally disregards the Windows conventions. For example, there is a complete lack of resize handles on all window edges. There is also no aero support, the scroll bar sliders are very mac-like, etc. iTunes, in comparison, seems to be only halfway along in its “maciness”.

Browsing worked quite well. I had one glitch on the store part of Apple’s Australian website but that came good on the next visit. Since the apple store is totally unusable for me in Firefox, that is actually an improvement 🙂 I don’t think text rendering was as clear as Firefox or IE. Maybe tinkering with the font settings would have improved that, but I did not invest the time in that. I had some minor issues in Crucible which will be worth looking at.

I’m not sure what is Apple’s motivation in making Safari available on Windows. I think it will be good for testing purposes, but I will stick to Firefox for my everyday browsing.