Safari On Windows
Hell Frozen Over. Again.
11 June 2007 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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Justin Williams gives you an overview of the new Safari beta for Windows Vista.
By far the biggest surprise announcement at WWDC this year was Apple's release of Safari for Windows. Safari has been the Mac's browser of choice since it's initial public beta for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar. With Mac OS X Leopard, Apple has decided to try and gather more of a market share with it's browser by releasing an identical version of the Mac version on the Windows platform: much like Apple did with iTunes. Is this the return of Yellow Box, or just another attempt at Apple to gather more of a market share for their products, and hopefully attract users to the Mac?
Hardly. With the announcement of the iPhone SDK being based on Safari, Apple was forced to put Safari on Windows, so they could attract Windows developers to build iPhone applications. By having the barrier to iPhone development as low as, building a Web application, it wouldn't make sense for Apple to only allow Mac using developers to build those applications.
Safari is a gateway to iPhone development.
Going On A Windows Safari
As part of my day job, I'm required to keep a copy of WIndows around to test Web sites I build for clients. I decided to take Safari on Windows for a spin, so that you don't have to. Who wants to run Windows anyway?
Apple bundles Safari in a standard Windows MSI Installer along with Quicktime and Windows-based Bonjour support.
As you can see, there's not much of a different look. It's still a bit eerie though. One thing you'll notice is the extra fat toolbar at the top.
RSS Support is the same as it is in Mac OS X. There doesn't seem to be a way to set a default third-party aggregator as you can on the Mac, however.
Bookmarks doesn't really offer anything new or unique.
The Preferences window is accessible via the Edit menu and has the same look and feel as it's Mac counter-part.
And for the geekier in the group, here's a listing of all the files in the Safari directory. DLL hell anyone? Notice there's a CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics and CFNetwork DLL.
It should be noted that I was unable to modify the Defaults file to show the Debug menu using the standard IncludeDebugMenu key that works for the Mac. If anyone figures out how to enable the Debug menu, please share it in the comments.
If you want to install the Safari beta on your Windows machine, you can download it from Apple's Safari Web site.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (29)
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#1) On June 11, 2007 4:39 PM
Don’t know how it goes on windows, but finding a word on the page using command-f got more interesting.
#2) On June 11, 2007 4:55 PM
search your hard drive for Preferences.plist (it will be in some directory …/…./safari
Edit it and add
IncludeDebugMenu
save and restart. Wola!
#3) On June 11, 2007 5:07 PM
More than Safari being the gateway to iPhone development, in turn the iPhone will be the gateway to growth for the Mac platform. If you can code for an iPhone you’ll be able to code for the Mac. In theory, mapped out here in our minds and on paper in some back room at 1 Infinite Loop, it’s a cross-platform dream come true. It was a dream promised and dashed by the PowerPC, re-promised by the Intel transition and now made real by the iPhone. Its interface will be the cornerstone of the new Mac line-up.
#4) On June 12, 2007 12:44 AM
Finally I can use Safari at work!
#5) On June 12, 2007 11:33 PM
I installed Safari for Windows at my work place. The installation went smooth and the browser opens okay. Safar has to conect through a proxy server and the authentication dialog box opens ups when I try to access any web site.. Safari crashes the moment I input the ID and PWD and press enter. The error signature window contains the following details
AppName: safari.exe AppVer: 3.522.11.3 ModName: cfnetwork.dll
ModVer: 1.185.6.0 Offset: 0000af81
No matter how many times I try, I get the same error.
Additionally the proxy change settings button is greyed out in Edit->Preferences->Advanced-Proxy “Change Settings”
Can any body help me out ??
#6) On June 13, 2007 4:19 AM
I am having the exact problem with narasimha, is there any solution to this yet?
I tried to surf around for cfnetwork.dll, and was indicated that this might be a virus/malware, is this correcT?
#7) On June 13, 2007 6:48 AM
Your preferences.plist is in c:\documents and settings\username\Application Data\Apple something\Safari
Well, in your case, c:\Users.…..
#8) On June 13, 2007 12:50 PM
FYI, You can also run Safari.exe with the switch /enableDebugMenu.
#9) On June 14, 2007 8:41 AM
Worst Browser on PC… so far. The beta isn’t very good, even for a beta. No spell checking! No proxy settings! No Minimise option on the task-bar… what are Apple thinking?
Great on my Mac though, I always liked Safari. PithHelmet doesn’t run on Safari 3 Beta though… o well, sure it will soon.
Hopefully Safari PC is just as good as Safari Mac when it’s officially released.
#10) On June 17, 2007 6:56 AM
what does the enable debug menu do? will it let me input my proxy settings or do i have to wait for the original release? {using safari right now, its not THAT bad come on}
#11) On June 17, 2007 9:19 AM
The debug menu let’s you see the JavaScript console. It’s useful for Web developers.
#12) On June 21, 2007 6:20 PM
I posted about my experiences with Safari on Windows a couple of days ago, and I’m sorry to say I don’t like it. I’m an Apple fan, and don’t go for starting ‘religious’ wars, but I think it was a mistake to try to shoehorn Apple fonts and application styling into a Windows release like this.
Also, I had some major performance issues with Safari on my XP laptop. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else experienced these.
#13) On June 25, 2007 9:52 AM
Had bags of problems so far, tried installing it on 3 XP machines, 2 win2k machines and a server 2003 just to see if it would. On all of them I get an “Enter proxy username/password” dialogue (which I do), it then shuts itself down and asks if i want to send an error report to Mr. Gates (I’m sure he’d appreciate the irony). Seeing as there is no option to manually enter proxies (greyed out as mentioned above) and I cant waste any more time trying to get software that should work out of the box working, I’ve canned the idea and returned to firefox. Its done nothing to convince me or the powers that be in my company that Apple can produce adequate software beyond their own “my first computer”/”it just works” platform.
#14) On June 26, 2007 1:13 AM
Hey, I had the same crash problem when entering proxy settings. Now after the latest upgrade. I just get an error saying that my login details are incorrect for section “” of . Still can’t get into Proxy Settings though. :(
#15) On June 27, 2007 1:16 PM
Same here with the initial proxy crash problem, and now the incorrect login issue with 3.0.2
#16) On July 7, 2007 10:02 AM
Hello Apple fans!
I ‘m great fan of Apple.With much of excitement,I tried New Safari for Windows.According to me for a Web Browser only proxy setting is the essential one.I dont know why on Earth a web Browser releasing with inactive PROXY setting’s button.
Hereby i’m not degrading Apple’s work,I’m awaiting for Improvement from Apple.
#17) On July 15, 2007 1:05 PM
I have switched over to use Safari, Firefox has been acting strange lately taking forever to load pages and crashing. I haven’t had a crash yet with Safari.
#18) On July 24, 2007 9:05 PM
Safari on windows is awesome!! finally don’t need to use IE or FF.
The only down fall and i know its coz its the beta but no proxy support. Well it does work and the proxy settings are taken from IE or FF but if your proxy needs authentication - like ours at work, it doesn’t work :(
I can’t wait till the next version is released.
woop woop safari rocks!
#19) On July 24, 2007 10:07 PM
Hi its me again - thought i might share this with you guys as it was annoying the hell outta me as i couldn’t use Safari till i did the following:
First off at work we have ISA Server 2006 so not sure if this’ll work on any other proxy server but there might be an equivelent, so just install the Microsoft Firewall Client that comes on the ISA Server install disk and you’re away laughing - or at least using Safari from behind a proxy that requires authentication
hope that helps someone
cheers
Paul
#20) On August 16, 2007 1:59 AM
I have installed safari in windows XP. I am not able to configure the proxy settings. The button “Change Settings” is disabled.
I am unabel to use the browser.
Ebin John Poovathany.
#21) On September 12, 2007 8:52 AM
When you install Safari it also takes the internet setting from internet explorer. if you have proxy settings in there then it will automatically set safari to the same. change your internet explorer settings from control panel. and try again.
#22) On September 23, 2007 2:56 AM
I have worked with Safari (on windows) for several weeks now and I’ve come across several bugs that make it impossible to use it as one’s primary browser.
I happen to run an Apache server on localhost and I often access my own IP address to load the page hosted by Apache - this normally takes 1 second on Firefox/Opera/IE but it takes several minutes in Safari before timing out. There’s no reason for it not to be able to access the localhost domain, but it happens and there’s nothing I can attribute it to.
#23) On September 23, 2007 2:59 AM
I should also add that my Apple MacBook has occasionally had a similar issue , despite the fact it’s an entirely different environment. I’ll be honest though, I’ve never been a Safari so it doesn’t bother me too much.
#24) On November 21, 2007 5:58 AM
Hi
I installed safari. My internet explorer’s proxy setting are such that I have to enter my username and password whenever i have to open any new window(as the network admin has set some security on my laptop). When i use safari no pop is there for user id and password and it just says cannot open the website. Can any one help….?
#25) On January 26, 2008 11:04 PM
always an bad apple in the bunch 8(
#26) On March 14, 2008 10:18 AM
i had same matter, but did not it rsolve yet. please e-mail me the solution
#27) On March 18, 2008 7:56 AM
Hmmm thats odd Author Bio first sentence “Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn’t looked back since.” and he’s using Vista…
#28) On March 25, 2008 10:13 AM
I have installed Safari on my desktop (Vista Ultimate) and laptop (XP Professional). So far, with my desktop, I have not had many problems. However, with my XP laptop, I cannot access preferences. Oh, the preferences screen comes up alright. However, I am not able to access any buttons on the screen, including the close button. I don’t have this same problem on Vista.
Has anyone else experienced this? Until it’s fixed (even in the beta), I will continue to stick with FF on both machines.
Craig
#29) On June 22, 2008 5:42 PM
I have Vista Home Premium on my laptop, and I installed Safari. I <3 Mac. stuff and I can’t use it, so it was like heaven when I discovered Safari.
I used it without any trouble for a couple days, but then, when I opened it, it would say: “Safari cannot open a browser window and may be missing important resources. Try installing Safari again.” I installed it again like a thousand times, and in a million different ways, but it still shows the same message! Help!