> I will bet against both for the forseeable future. Mobile "browsing" is now and always will be a novelty.
I'm so glad, because can you imagine how much work it would be to invent a wireless Internet connection? That would be so hard and would take many years, and then to get to the end of that and find out nobody wanted to browse the Web except from their office desk that would be a drag.
> In an age of $50 feature rich cell phones, why would consumers choose a $500 option?
The iPhone is priced like this:
$100 phone $199 iPod $100 Web $100 Email --------- $499
> but they won't if it won't sync to Outlook
iPhone syncs to Outlook.
> Plus there's a deluge of cheaper, (better?) competitive products from more established or more fashionable companies. (like the Samsung or Prada)
The Prada phone is $800, it is not cheaper, and it runs Flash Lite instead of OS X and has no Web and no iPod and no dock connector and no Wi-Fi. It is not even more fashionable than Apple. Do you think Madonna wants an iPhone or a Prada?
Samsung's equivalent phones are $1000 and Samsung is NOT more fashionable than Apple, not by a long shot.
Nokia's S60 phones are the closest to iPhone features, they are over $1000 also.
You just don't know what you're talking about is the problem.
I couldn't tell which side of the argument you are really on.
You seem to be in the anti-Apple camp on this issue, yet your argument proves Apple's point.
> and offered what was in effect SDK documentation: 'this is how to optimise user experience'. For some reason, almost nobody > ever bothered to read said documentation.
There is almost no point in learning to program "Phone model X from vendor Y", by the time you learn its quirks, the model is gone and even the same vendor has a new phone with new SDK. That is the Microsoft method. Still, Apple has almost a million Mac developers, they wanted to port their Mac apps to iPhone. Hence the big hubbub about no SDK. It is sort of bad for Mac developers that they can't leverage their existing work and make popular iPhone apps for the hot new gadget.
If you are a Web developer instead of Mac developer, though, then everything that Apple did regarding iPhone development is good. You get to leverage your existing development for iPhone users.
Instead of an SDK Apple offered this:
- HTML4 with some of HTML5 - CSS 3 - JavaScript and Ajax - PNG and SVG - MPEG-4 H.264/AAC audio video - print-level typography - open-source rendering engine - fastest Web rendering available - the maturity that comes with 4 years of testing running 5% of the Web's browsers for very demanding users - cross-platform, Mac+Windows+iPhone+Nokia - "like Gecko" Firefox compatibility - free
The SDK is at w3.org.
The issue here is "will developers make that kind of content?" Duh. There is already more Web 2.0 content in the world today than all of the craplets written for every phone and PDA platform ever in existence. If there were a Web 2.0 development strike tomorrow the iPhone has more apps than one of these other systems that lack a real Web browser.
> pointed out that extremely high expectations had built up around mobile browsing. It wasn't so much that the current experience > as of today's Nokia smartphone is particularly bad - it's more that there was a huge mismatch between expectation and experience.
The mismatch is the definition of the Web itself, in the minds of users as opposed to in the minds of geeks.
About 99% of the people who have used the Web do not understand that it is remote code being instantiated locally according to the capabilities of your client device. When they go to MySpace and see X they expect to go to MySpace on another computer and see the same exact X. Even if the second computer is a phone or set-top box. If it doesn't come up the same, they think it is broken.
With iPhone Apple has adjusted the device so that you can use a full Web browser. The same apple.com you see on your Mac is what you see in your iPhone... The Web, not a Web site.
> And nearly everybody who cares to have a cell phone already has one.
The lasts-forever kind, I hope.
I know some people who are excited about iPhone who don't even have computers. They would never buy themselves a laptop but they want an iPhone, it's the computer for them. So they see it as $99 for phone, $199 for iPod, and $199 for Web and Email and it looks really cheap compared to $1000 Windows laptop and how hard that is to own.
> Apple killed WMA as a standard. Safari is going to kill IE as a standard.
That is a great comparison. In both cases Apple wins because they unite the de facto standard with the real standard. The iPod made MPEG-4 H.264/AAC the de facto standard media, but it was also the real ISO standard, so when HD DVD and Blu-Ray came along they were using the same media as iPod. Now in music studios we talk about MPEG-4, it is broader than one company. Windows Media is Microsoft, but MPEG-4 is Apple, Sony, Panasonic, that is much more like music to the music industry's ears.
Now the main practical reason for removing DRM from iTunes (separate from philosophical reasons) is so that the listener can play their content on the universe of MPEG-4 players including PSP and RealPlayer and even Zune plays AAC. There is a universe of "iPod-compatible" players because the iPod was ISO compatible in the first place.
With iPhone, Apple is making Web 2.0 the de facto standard for mobile browsing, and it is the real standard also. When iPhone clones show up they will have Firefox in there because a) it renders the same content as Safari, b) it's free. Web 2.0 is hot in developer circles but everyone is sort of waiting for "the platform" to arrive. With iPhone you can make something just for iPhone users and it works elsewhere as an extra.
When you talk about IE, same as Windows Media, it's just Microsoft. WebKit is Apple, Nokia, Adobe and also Firefox-compatible, and that was before the iPhone and Safari for Windows.
>> Wait, I thought nobody gave a shit about WMA and everybody listened, and still listens, to MP3?
Not in this century. We are talking about what replaced MP3. It was going to be either MPEG-4 or Windows Media.
If you buy a Zune, it cannot even read "Podcasts", which in spite of their pod name are just RSS+MP3. So even in 2007, Microsoft is trying to get you off of the MP3 and into Windows Media.
> Their estimate is 1% of the smartphone market in the first year. You dictate nothing at one percent.
In the first year of the iPod it was Mac only and did not have a dock connector or USB.
> In three years, Microsoft will have the mobile IE be as functional as the desktop
In the first place, if your argument is based on predicting that Microsoft make one of their products better, that is shaky ground.
Second, they have had 7 years to make mobile IE as functional as say, IE on Windows 2000.
Finally, even if they made their mobile IE just as functional as desktop IE, that is not very functional. IE for Windows can't pass the CSS Acid tests, not even the one from 1999. IE for Windows does not have native Ajax, if you disable ActiveX you lose Ajax also, and this is the number one security tip for IE Windows users. Safari for Windows is twice as fast as IE for Windows today. On a mobile platform that speed is even more important.
Captions are done with text tracks. A text file with time codes and dialog can be added to any movie with QuickTime. I don't know what the support is in MPEG-4 for this yet, but it would be done the same way, the QuickTime container and the MPEG-4 container are the same, inside you have audio track, video track, now you need a text track with dialog and time codes. The only other option would be to burn the text into the video frame by frame, but that means you can't run captions off, you can't modify the size of them later, you can't localize them, and you ruin the video encoding algorithm.
The only tools you need to caption a movie is QuickTime Pro ($29, Apple, Mac/PC) and any text editor. Both of these are already on any video-editing work station.
The text file looks something like this:
[00:00:01:22]
It's a nice day today.
[00:00:04:13]
Sure is.
[00:00:06:00]
See you later.
That is SMPTE time code (hours:minutes:seconds:frames).
However for a lot of Web video the tool chain is not professional. You can only appreciate it compared to having no video at all. If you use any Microsoft tools you are just supposed to be amazed on the rare occasions when the audio and video synchronize.
> Perhaps if Apple pull their finger out and produce a Windows look & feel version I may give it another shot. Otherwise I don't see much draw.
Which of the various Windows looks and feels would you like Apple to use? Even if you only target Vista you have at least two entirely different looks.
> Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images.
In other words, publishing production standards instead of PC production standards.
This will be especially important when we have 300 dpi displays, because at that point, all of the "screen" based media becomes obsolete and the screen becomes just another print medium. We will show things in inches/cm and the computer will use as many pixels as it can. That is the whole idea behind the PDF-based graphics in Mac OS X, it's already a print medium just waiting to grow up.
Microsoft seems to have missed the memo. They're still relying on Verdana's squareness to hide their font rendering flaws. Any Adobe app has better font rendering than Windows.
> Yet another platform to test my CSS / javascript / DHTML / Ajax on... > Sigh...
No no no no you have it all wrong.
The reason we had to test in every browser in the past is because they were all completely unique. Firefox and Safari are the only example of the end of that fucking disaster. They are the Web 2.0 vanguard, either one without the other is nothing. They make each other better in every way, at every level from the browser developers working together to make standards work, right up through consumer choice in browsers.
Right now there are two camps: Firefox+Safari+WHATWG+W3C and most everyone else. Get on board one train or the other.
For a year now I have been developing sites with either Firefox or Safari, and when I take it into the other browser at the END, it just works. The only exception to this has been when my code was broken and one browser was letting me get away with something and the other browser didn't. After I fixed the mistake in the code, every time I then got the same exact thing in both Firefox and Safari. And I'm doing lots of unobtrusive JavaScript, lots of CSS all the way to 2.1, all by hand, no libraries or templates that have been pre-tested. The reason I can do this is that both the WebKit (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) teams have been working together one level down in the browser guts.
Further: Safari is years and years old. Only the Windows and iPhone versions are new. If you are dismayed about Safari testing going forward, it is worse because you have already been serving Safari users for years, including Steve Jobs and 89% of San Francisco, all the time with no testing. But you were probably alright even though you didn't know it, because Safari/WebKit goes well out of its way to be standard so that you don't have to test in it.
The Web is moving off the PC with the iPhone for the very first time. It's not going to be possible to test in every browser in 5 years, if it's even possible now (you haven't been testing in Safari yet because you didn't have a Mac, right?) so get over that idea.
What I'm saying is if you have any frustration with non-standard browsers and browser testing, don't take it out on Safari or Firefox or those development teams. That is totally misplaced. Write Bill Gates a letter and attach the CSS 1 and 2 specifications, that is much more like it. Recommend that he move the JavaScript team into the same building as the rest of IE's developers.
> Certainly Safari on windows will never be anyone's primary browser
Certainly Safari v3 BETA for Windows will never be anyone's primary browser.
It has been stated many times in this thread already that anyone who could download a browser to replace their IE has already done so and is using Firefox. When you see that 15% of PC's have Firefox on them that is exactly the right number.
The primary distribution for Safari for Windows is going to be with iTunes for Windows, the single most popular third-party application for Windows. It will be in the download, which is very popular, and on the disc that accompanies iPods and most especially iPhones, which people install first thing when they get their iPod or iPhone. The iPhone user will really need it because after using Safari on the iPhone, they are going to notice how bad Explorer is.
That's not the way Slashdot looks in Safari v3 for Mac, or in v2 or in v1. You are hurting in some way that is related to running the very first beta of the browser on a new (and buggy) platform.
> Unfortunately, the type of computer user that would download and evaluate different web browsers are the type > of users that have likely already switched to Firefox.
Fortunately, Apple is not going after those users.
The key to Safari for Windows adoption is that you don't have to download it. When you buy an iPod or iPhone, Safari will install along with iTunes and QuickTime on your PC. iPhone users will need it so they can run the same Web 2.0 sites on their PC as on their iPhone.
The MAJORITY of the world's PC's have iTunes and QuickTime on them already. There are more iTunes users than Windows Media Player users, and WMP comes free with every PC. The number of iPods in the world is dwarfed by iTunes for Windows. It's like 4:1 iTunes for Windows : iPod.
What Apple is doing with Safari is killing IE in the same way as they killed WMP. All the Web 2.0 developers I know already build their stuff for Firefox/Safari and W3C it is easy they are like twins. Similarly, music and video are authored for iTunes and MPEG-4. Microsoft is free to make viewers for Web 2.0 and MPEG-4 just like everybody else, that is the beauty of standards, however they have not even started yet and the game is pretty much over.
> Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE.
You don't have to download Safari. It is on the disc with iPod and iPhone and installs along with iTunes and QuickTime.
The vast majority of PC's already have QuickTime and iTunes on them. Now the vast majority will also have Safari. The user is left only to try it out and learn how bad Explorer is.
We are also on the cusp of Web 2.0. I made two sites this past year that look like Web 1.0 in Explorer but in Safari or Firefox you get all kinds of extra features. Once you get used to the Web doing extra things for you in your iPhone it is going to be hard to go use Explorer on a PC.
Apple already said that Safari for Windows is going to be part of the iTunes/QuickTime download. It is going to be on the disc with every iPod and iPhone.
iPhone users will need it most especially, because they will be looking at the Web in Safari on iPhone and it will spoil them for Explorer, which makes the Web look like ass. Further, a lot of Web 2.0 content that only runs in Firefox and Safari is going to sell itself as iPhone enhanced. You can't go back to Explorer if you're hooked on a couple of great sites that look a decade older in IE.
> The bigger change is open standards. But if too many users move to a single alternative browser run by a corporation > we might be right back in the same boat we are with IE.
That is why it is good that Safari is based on an open-source Web rendering engine that is dedicated to standards.
Of course lots of Web developers are downloading Safari, that is the same type who knows what WWDC is and cares about what browsers are out there.
Consumers are going to get Safari for Windows free with their iPod and iPhone, just like they get Explorer free with their PC.
- 100 million iPod users - 300 million iTunes for Windows users - 400 million QuickTime for Windows users... all about to get Safari for Windows for free. It's as good as Microsoft's pre-install or maybe better since there is a moment where each user chooses the Apple product.
> I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
I think you're way off.
There are two kinds of PC users: one uses Explorer to browse the Web because it came free with their computer, and the other one knows better.
If you know better then you are already using Firefox. However if you don't know better, you are about to get Safari free with your iPod.
If you put Firefox and Safari side-by-side there are not that many reasons to switch. But if you put Explorer next to Safari there are plenty of reasons to not go back to IE.
Also, as a Web developer, many times I have been asked by someone in a suit to make sure the Web site I'm building works in Internet Explorer. However, since January 2007 the same types are asking me to make sure stuff works in iPhone. And they didn't even get their iPhones yet. Safari for Windows is included with the iPhone.
If you put an iPhone next to a PC running Explorer looking at the same Web page, you have to ask why the PC looks like ass. The iPhone is going to make iPhone users not want to use Explorer, and on the other hand the iPhone includes Safari for Windows. I bet you one year from now 90% of iPhone users use Safari, whether they are PC or Mac based.
> I've downloaded Safari for Windows > I have no intention of using it as my primary browser. > Firefox.
The thing is, Apple doesn't really want you to use Safari. Neither does Google. They are really happy with you as you are because you are already using a standards-based browser. You are a good Web citizen. You are easy to author for, easy to serve in the future.
However there are many people using Explorer because it came with their PC and they don't know any better. Getting those people to just try either Safari or Firefox is important because it costs so much money to develop for Explorer because of its extremely low quality. We are all doing the least common denominator stuff in the same way that ISO 9600 CD's have 8.3 file names so that they can be compatible with "everything".
> Other things like extensions also keep me using Firefox over Safari.
Absolutely. The lack of extensions in Safari is a feature. If you like extensions, use Firefox.
As long as you don't use Explorer that is bad for everyone.
The lack of features in Safari is a FEATURE. Same way iPods have only two controls (scroll wheel, hold switch).
If you don't think so, then for you there is Firefox. It has more features, and you can add further features with extensions.
It's a beautiful arrangement because I know from experience that you can author Web pages for one or the other and they will work in both. If half the Web used Firefox and half Safari we would have a very healthy Web API to work with.
No, Opera copies IE's behavior and bugs. That is why you can ignore Opera completely as a developer, there is no future in authoring for it.
WebKit and Gecko have quirks modes to work around the bad content on the Web, but they are not mimicking IE they are moving quickly towards HTML5.
You can author a Web site while testing only in Firefox and then go look in Safari and if your code is valid you will see the same thing. There are no other browsers where this is true. It is because the WebKit and Gecko teams work both together and using standards.
> If all this compliaince BS was actually to HELP developers, the OSS community would've adopted IE settings > as the standard. I mean, why not?
Because this would require cooperation from Microsoft and they do not cooperate.
The WebKit and Gecko programmers work together on standardization. For example, WebKit introduced the canvas tag which is used in Mac Widgets, and Gecko implemented this also, however during the standardization process, the way the canvas tag "should" work was changed, and then WebKit adjusted its own canvas tag behaviors to match the standards.
In other words, after canvas was standardized, the WebKit team did a bunch of work to implement the standard canvas tag, even though they themselves had invented the non-standard version. You are not going to see Microsoft do this kind of thing.
If you look at Safari's user-agent string it says "like Gecko"... the idea there is that if there isn't already a standard way to do something, WebKit does it like Gecko for the sake of Web content and Web authors.
No, it is basically a myth that Safari and Konqueror are the same.
What happened was that the WebKit project did not start from scratch, they used KHTML as the basis for it, because KHTML was philosophically the same: small code, fast, standards-oriented. That was years ago, though. At this time they are different browsers with different code bases, although the two projects share a lot of code and they are continuing to do so.
This is a great arrangement because Safari is clearly designed to be the browser for everyone, and Konqueror is not. For example, Safari has about 20 preferences and very few of them can even get you into trouble. Another example is that Safari always has QuickTime available, Konqueror, no.
The big feature for Windows users to enjoy in Safari other than speed is it has actual publishing-based type rendering, e.g. I can do a design in Photoshop and replicate the text design in Safari/CSS 2.1, whereas what Microsoft does with their square fonts is a screen-based hack that has very little life left in it now that we are moving from pixel-based design to resolution-independence.
Slashdot Mirror
> I will bet against both for the forseeable future. Mobile "browsing" is now and always will be a novelty.
I'm so glad, because can you imagine how much work it would be to invent a wireless Internet connection? That would be so hard and would take many years, and then to get to the end of that and find out nobody wanted to browse the Web except from their office desk that would be a drag.
> In an age of $50 feature rich cell phones, why would consumers choose a $500 option?
The iPhone is priced like this:
$100 phone
$199 iPod
$100 Web
$100 Email
---------
$499
> but they won't if it won't sync to Outlook
iPhone syncs to Outlook.
> Plus there's a deluge of cheaper, (better?) competitive products from more established or more fashionable companies. (like the Samsung or Prada)
The Prada phone is $800, it is not cheaper, and it runs Flash Lite instead of OS X and has no Web and no iPod and no dock connector and no Wi-Fi. It is not even more fashionable than Apple. Do you think Madonna wants an iPhone or a Prada?
Samsung's equivalent phones are $1000 and Samsung is NOT more fashionable than Apple, not by a long shot.
Nokia's S60 phones are the closest to iPhone features, they are over $1000 also.
You just don't know what you're talking about is the problem.
I couldn't tell which side of the argument you are really on.
... The Web, not a Web site.
You seem to be in the anti-Apple camp on this issue, yet your argument proves Apple's point.
> and offered what was in effect SDK documentation: 'this is how to optimise user experience'. For some reason, almost nobody
> ever bothered to read said documentation.
There is almost no point in learning to program "Phone model X from vendor Y", by the time you learn its quirks, the model is gone and even the same vendor has a new phone with new SDK. That is the Microsoft method. Still, Apple has almost a million Mac developers, they wanted to port their Mac apps to iPhone. Hence the big hubbub about no SDK. It is sort of bad for Mac developers that they can't leverage their existing work and make popular iPhone apps for the hot new gadget.
If you are a Web developer instead of Mac developer, though, then everything that Apple did regarding iPhone development is good. You get to leverage your existing development for iPhone users.
Instead of an SDK Apple offered this:
- HTML4 with some of HTML5
- CSS 3
- JavaScript and Ajax
- PNG and SVG
- MPEG-4 H.264/AAC audio video
- print-level typography
- open-source rendering engine
- fastest Web rendering available
- the maturity that comes with 4 years of testing running 5% of the Web's browsers for very demanding users
- cross-platform, Mac+Windows+iPhone+Nokia
- "like Gecko" Firefox compatibility
- free
The SDK is at w3.org.
The issue here is "will developers make that kind of content?" Duh. There is already more Web 2.0 content in the world today than all of the craplets written for every phone and PDA platform ever in existence. If there were a Web 2.0 development strike tomorrow the iPhone has more apps than one of these other systems that lack a real Web browser.
> pointed out that extremely high expectations had built up around mobile browsing. It wasn't so much that the current experience
> as of today's Nokia smartphone is particularly bad - it's more that there was a huge mismatch between expectation and experience.
The mismatch is the definition of the Web itself, in the minds of users as opposed to in the minds of geeks.
About 99% of the people who have used the Web do not understand that it is remote code being instantiated locally according to the capabilities of your client device. When they go to MySpace and see X they expect to go to MySpace on another computer and see the same exact X. Even if the second computer is a phone or set-top box. If it doesn't come up the same, they think it is broken.
With iPhone Apple has adjusted the device so that you can use a full Web browser. The same apple.com you see on your Mac is what you see in your iPhone
> And nearly everybody who cares to have a cell phone already has one.
The lasts-forever kind, I hope.
I know some people who are excited about iPhone who don't even have computers. They would never buy themselves a laptop but they want an iPhone, it's the computer for them. So they see it as $99 for phone, $199 for iPod, and $199 for Web and Email and it looks really cheap compared to $1000 Windows laptop and how hard that is to own.
> Apple killed WMA as a standard. Safari is going to kill IE as a standard.
That is a great comparison. In both cases Apple wins because they unite the de facto standard with the real standard. The iPod made MPEG-4 H.264/AAC the de facto standard media, but it was also the real ISO standard, so when HD DVD and Blu-Ray came along they were using the same media as iPod. Now in music studios we talk about MPEG-4, it is broader than one company. Windows Media is Microsoft, but MPEG-4 is Apple, Sony, Panasonic, that is much more like music to the music industry's ears.
Now the main practical reason for removing DRM from iTunes (separate from philosophical reasons) is so that the listener can play their content on the universe of MPEG-4 players including PSP and RealPlayer and even Zune plays AAC. There is a universe of "iPod-compatible" players because the iPod was ISO compatible in the first place.
With iPhone, Apple is making Web 2.0 the de facto standard for mobile browsing, and it is the real standard also. When iPhone clones show up they will have Firefox in there because a) it renders the same content as Safari, b) it's free. Web 2.0 is hot in developer circles but everyone is sort of waiting for "the platform" to arrive. With iPhone you can make something just for iPhone users and it works elsewhere as an extra.
When you talk about IE, same as Windows Media, it's just Microsoft. WebKit is Apple, Nokia, Adobe and also Firefox-compatible, and that was before the iPhone and Safari for Windows.
>> Wait, I thought nobody gave a shit about WMA and everybody listened, and still listens, to MP3?
Not in this century. We are talking about what replaced MP3. It was going to be either MPEG-4 or Windows Media.
If you buy a Zune, it cannot even read "Podcasts", which in spite of their pod name are just RSS+MP3. So even in 2007, Microsoft is trying to get you off of the MP3 and into Windows Media.
> Their estimate is 1% of the smartphone market in the first year. You dictate nothing at one percent.
In the first year of the iPod it was Mac only and did not have a dock connector or USB.
> In three years, Microsoft will have the mobile IE be as functional as the desktop
In the first place, if your argument is based on predicting that Microsoft make one of their products better, that is shaky ground.
Second, they have had 7 years to make mobile IE as functional as say, IE on Windows 2000.
Finally, even if they made their mobile IE just as functional as desktop IE, that is not very functional. IE for Windows can't pass the CSS Acid tests, not even the one from 1999. IE for Windows does not have native Ajax, if you disable ActiveX you lose Ajax also, and this is the number one security tip for IE Windows users. Safari for Windows is twice as fast as IE for Windows today. On a mobile platform that speed is even more important.
Captions are done with text tracks. A text file with time codes and dialog can be added to any movie with QuickTime. I don't know what the support is in MPEG-4 for this yet, but it would be done the same way, the QuickTime container and the MPEG-4 container are the same, inside you have audio track, video track, now you need a text track with dialog and time codes. The only other option would be to burn the text into the video frame by frame, but that means you can't run captions off, you can't modify the size of them later, you can't localize them, and you ruin the video encoding algorithm.
The only tools you need to caption a movie is QuickTime Pro ($29, Apple, Mac/PC) and any text editor. Both of these are already on any video-editing work station.
The text file looks something like this:
[00:00:01:22]
It's a nice day today.
[00:00:04:13]
Sure is.
[00:00:06:00]
See you later.
That is SMPTE time code (hours:minutes:seconds:frames).
However for a lot of Web video the tool chain is not professional. You can only appreciate it compared to having no video at all. If you use any Microsoft tools you are just supposed to be amazed on the rare occasions when the audio and video synchronize.
Apple - Education - QuickTime Text Tracks
> The problem? Safari for Windows just isn't Windows enough
That is not the problem, that is its greatest feature. Same as iTunes.
Yes, any market that is 75% Internet Explorer must have very very high standards.
> Perhaps if Apple pull their finger out and produce a Windows look & feel version I may give it another shot. Otherwise I don't see much draw.
Which of the various Windows looks and feels would you like Apple to use? Even if you only target Vista you have at least two entirely different looks.
> Safari offers two things that no other browser offers: Apple's font rendering and color space recognition of images.
In other words, publishing production standards instead of PC production standards.
This will be especially important when we have 300 dpi displays, because at that point, all of the "screen" based media becomes obsolete and the screen becomes just another print medium. We will show things in inches/cm and the computer will use as many pixels as it can. That is the whole idea behind the PDF-based graphics in Mac OS X, it's already a print medium just waiting to grow up.
Microsoft seems to have missed the memo. They're still relying on Verdana's squareness to hide their font rendering flaws. Any Adobe app has better font rendering than Windows.
> Yet another platform to test my CSS / javascript / DHTML / Ajax on...
> Sigh...
No no no no you have it all wrong.
The reason we had to test in every browser in the past is because they were all completely unique. Firefox and Safari are the only example of the end of that fucking disaster. They are the Web 2.0 vanguard, either one without the other is nothing. They make each other better in every way, at every level from the browser developers working together to make standards work, right up through consumer choice in browsers.
Right now there are two camps: Firefox+Safari+WHATWG+W3C and most everyone else. Get on board one train or the other.
For a year now I have been developing sites with either Firefox or Safari, and when I take it into the other browser at the END, it just works. The only exception to this has been when my code was broken and one browser was letting me get away with something and the other browser didn't. After I fixed the mistake in the code, every time I then got the same exact thing in both Firefox and Safari. And I'm doing lots of unobtrusive JavaScript, lots of CSS all the way to 2.1, all by hand, no libraries or templates that have been pre-tested. The reason I can do this is that both the WebKit (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) teams have been working together one level down in the browser guts.
Further: Safari is years and years old. Only the Windows and iPhone versions are new. If you are dismayed about Safari testing going forward, it is worse because you have already been serving Safari users for years, including Steve Jobs and 89% of San Francisco, all the time with no testing. But you were probably alright even though you didn't know it, because Safari/WebKit goes well out of its way to be standard so that you don't have to test in it.
The Web is moving off the PC with the iPhone for the very first time. It's not going to be possible to test in every browser in 5 years, if it's even possible now (you haven't been testing in Safari yet because you didn't have a Mac, right?) so get over that idea.
What I'm saying is if you have any frustration with non-standard browsers and browser testing, don't take it out on Safari or Firefox or those development teams. That is totally misplaced. Write Bill Gates a letter and attach the CSS 1 and 2 specifications, that is much more like it. Recommend that he move the JavaScript team into the same building as the rest of IE's developers.
> Certainly Safari on windows will never be anyone's primary browser
Certainly Safari v3 BETA for Windows will never be anyone's primary browser.
It has been stated many times in this thread already that anyone who could download a browser to replace their IE has already done so and is using Firefox. When you see that 15% of PC's have Firefox on them that is exactly the right number.
The primary distribution for Safari for Windows is going to be with iTunes for Windows, the single most popular third-party application for Windows. It will be in the download, which is very popular, and on the disc that accompanies iPods and most especially iPhones, which people install first thing when they get their iPod or iPhone. The iPhone user will really need it because after using Safari on the iPhone, they are going to notice how bad Explorer is.
That's not the way Slashdot looks in Safari v3 for Mac, or in v2 or in v1. You are hurting in some way that is related to running the very first beta of the browser on a new (and buggy) platform.
> Unfortunately, the type of computer user that would download and evaluate different web browsers are the type
> of users that have likely already switched to Firefox.
Fortunately, Apple is not going after those users.
The key to Safari for Windows adoption is that you don't have to download it. When you buy an iPod or iPhone, Safari will install along with iTunes and QuickTime on your PC. iPhone users will need it so they can run the same Web 2.0 sites on their PC as on their iPhone.
The MAJORITY of the world's PC's have iTunes and QuickTime on them already. There are more iTunes users than Windows Media Player users, and WMP comes free with every PC. The number of iPods in the world is dwarfed by iTunes for Windows. It's like 4:1 iTunes for Windows : iPod.
What Apple is doing with Safari is killing IE in the same way as they killed WMP. All the Web 2.0 developers I know already build their stuff for Firefox/Safari and W3C it is easy they are like twins. Similarly, music and video are authored for iTunes and MPEG-4. Microsoft is free to make viewers for Web 2.0 and MPEG-4 just like everybody else, that is the beauty of standards, however they have not even started yet and the game is pretty much over.
> Safari is no competition for Internet Explorer, since noone who is able and willing to download and install another browser is still using IE.
You don't have to download Safari. It is on the disc with iPod and iPhone and installs along with iTunes and QuickTime.
The vast majority of PC's already have QuickTime and iTunes on them. Now the vast majority will also have Safari. The user is left only to try it out and learn how bad Explorer is.
We are also on the cusp of Web 2.0. I made two sites this past year that look like Web 1.0 in Explorer but in Safari or Firefox you get all kinds of extra features. Once you get used to the Web doing extra things for you in your iPhone it is going to be hard to go use Explorer on a PC.
Apple already said that Safari for Windows is going to be part of the iTunes/QuickTime download. It is going to be on the disc with every iPod and iPhone.
iPhone users will need it most especially, because they will be looking at the Web in Safari on iPhone and it will spoil them for Explorer, which makes the Web look like ass. Further, a lot of Web 2.0 content that only runs in Firefox and Safari is going to sell itself as iPhone enhanced. You can't go back to Explorer if you're hooked on a couple of great sites that look a decade older in IE.
> The bigger change is open standards. But if too many users move to a single alternative browser run by a corporation
> we might be right back in the same boat we are with IE.
That is why it is good that Safari is based on an open-source Web rendering engine that is dedicated to standards.
Of course lots of Web developers are downloading Safari, that is the same type who knows what WWDC is and cares about what browsers are out there.
... all about to get Safari for Windows for free. It's as good as Microsoft's pre-install or maybe better since there is a moment where each user chooses the Apple product.
Consumers are going to get Safari for Windows free with their iPod and iPhone, just like they get Explorer free with their PC.
- 100 million iPod users
- 300 million iTunes for Windows users
- 400 million QuickTime for Windows users
> I might be way off, but it seems more likely to me that Safari will be grabbing its marketshare from firefox, not IE.
I think you're way off.
There are two kinds of PC users: one uses Explorer to browse the Web because it came free with their computer, and the other one knows better.
If you know better then you are already using Firefox. However if you don't know better, you are about to get Safari free with your iPod.
If you put Firefox and Safari side-by-side there are not that many reasons to switch. But if you put Explorer next to Safari there are plenty of reasons to not go back to IE.
Also, as a Web developer, many times I have been asked by someone in a suit to make sure the Web site I'm building works in Internet Explorer. However, since January 2007 the same types are asking me to make sure stuff works in iPhone. And they didn't even get their iPhones yet. Safari for Windows is included with the iPhone.
If you put an iPhone next to a PC running Explorer looking at the same Web page, you have to ask why the PC looks like ass. The iPhone is going to make iPhone users not want to use Explorer, and on the other hand the iPhone includes Safari for Windows. I bet you one year from now 90% of iPhone users use Safari, whether they are PC or Mac based.
> I've downloaded Safari for Windows
> I have no intention of using it as my primary browser.
> Firefox.
The thing is, Apple doesn't really want you to use Safari. Neither does Google. They are really happy with you as you are because you are already using a standards-based browser. You are a good Web citizen. You are easy to author for, easy to serve in the future.
However there are many people using Explorer because it came with their PC and they don't know any better. Getting those people to just try either Safari or Firefox is important because it costs so much money to develop for Explorer because of its extremely low quality. We are all doing the least common denominator stuff in the same way that ISO 9600 CD's have 8.3 file names so that they can be compatible with "everything".
> Other things like extensions also keep me using Firefox over Safari.
Absolutely. The lack of extensions in Safari is a feature. If you like extensions, use Firefox.
As long as you don't use Explorer that is bad for everyone.
> [Safari's] features are just too lacking.
The lack of features in Safari is a FEATURE. Same way iPods have only two controls (scroll wheel, hold switch).
If you don't think so, then for you there is Firefox. It has more features, and you can add further features with extensions.
It's a beautiful arrangement because I know from experience that you can author Web pages for one or the other and they will work in both. If half the Web used Firefox and half Safari we would have a very healthy Web API to work with.
> You must not be a very good developer. Windows+IE7 is free for testing.
It would have to be, since it renders the Web in an entirely unique way and can't even pass the CSS acid tests.
No, Opera copies IE's behavior and bugs. That is why you can ignore Opera completely as a developer, there is no future in authoring for it.
WebKit and Gecko have quirks modes to work around the bad content on the Web, but they are not mimicking IE they are moving quickly towards HTML5.
You can author a Web site while testing only in Firefox and then go look in Safari and if your code is valid you will see the same thing. There are no other browsers where this is true. It is because the WebKit and Gecko teams work both together and using standards.
> If all this compliaince BS was actually to HELP developers, the OSS community would've adopted IE settings
... the idea there is that if there isn't already a standard way to do something, WebKit does it like Gecko for the sake of Web content and Web authors.
> as the standard. I mean, why not?
Because this would require cooperation from Microsoft and they do not cooperate.
The WebKit and Gecko programmers work together on standardization. For example, WebKit introduced the canvas tag which is used in Mac Widgets, and Gecko implemented this also, however during the standardization process, the way the canvas tag "should" work was changed, and then WebKit adjusted its own canvas tag behaviors to match the standards.
In other words, after canvas was standardized, the WebKit team did a bunch of work to implement the standard canvas tag, even though they themselves had invented the non-standard version. You are not going to see Microsoft do this kind of thing.
If you look at Safari's user-agent string it says "like Gecko"
No, it is basically a myth that Safari and Konqueror are the same.
What happened was that the WebKit project did not start from scratch, they used KHTML as the basis for it, because KHTML was philosophically the same: small code, fast, standards-oriented. That was years ago, though. At this time they are different browsers with different code bases, although the two projects share a lot of code and they are continuing to do so.
This is a great arrangement because Safari is clearly designed to be the browser for everyone, and Konqueror is not. For example, Safari has about 20 preferences and very few of them can even get you into trouble. Another example is that Safari always has QuickTime available, Konqueror, no.
The big feature for Windows users to enjoy in Safari other than speed is it has actual publishing-based type rendering, e.g. I can do a design in Photoshop and replicate the text design in Safari/CSS 2.1, whereas what Microsoft does with their square fonts is a screen-based hack that has very little life left in it now that we are moving from pixel-based design to resolution-independence.