Yesterday Apple released a beta version of its web browser, Safari 3.0 beta, for Mac OS X 10.4, Windows XP & Vista.
Apple Releases Safari 3.0 Beta
As John Gruber points out, the main reasons for the Windows versions are to increase market share for Safari, attract more developers to the browser and to increase search revenue (Apple gets a small referral revenue from Google every time you use the search in the top right).
Interesting features over Safari 2.0:
- Tabs can be reordered, dragged out to make new windows1 or dragged back in to anther window2.
- Textarea elements can be resized by dragging the lower left corner.
- With the debug menu enabled, the new web inspector is available. Great for web developers, we’ll have to see how it stacks up against Firebug for Firefox
- There is a new menu item under history to recover a previous session: History > Reopen All Windows from Last Session. Useful when you close a window by mistake or the browser crashes.
- Latest Webkit, featuring CSS shadows, border images, multiple backgrounds, outlines, SVG and more.
- Firefox style find.
With a gain in market share for Safari (I’m guessing double what it is now by this time next year), Microsoft will have to respond with a new version of Internet Explorer sooner rather than later. Assuming they improve their standards support for newer versions, this is good for everyone.
Footnotes