So I finally managed to download Safari for windows (ironically it only worked for me in IE, not Firefox).
Pros:
Nice look.
Nifty appleness with the input field highlighting.
Nice working with RSS.
Sheets work and look nice for bookmarks, RSS, etc.
Built in bug reporting from the toolbar, including option to send in screenshot as well... nice and fast and will no doubt lower the barrier to entry for bug reports.
Plugins seem to work out of the gate.
Nice font smoothing, cleartype-ish, almost a little too cleartypeish for me though.
Gorgeous apple native widgets.
Dragging around tabs works nicely and is great visually (drag a tag off the window and it gives you a shaded thumbnail of the new browser window that'll appear.
In page find is great and spotlight like.
Cons:
My MS mouse back button doesn't work.
No adblock and other Firefox plugins I've grown used to.
No ctrl-backspace in text entry boxes and textareas.
No built in spellcheck in textareas (I'm very used to this in FF).
Other:
The way the address bar works I don't really like... in FF I can start typing in an address, then hit TAB to move to the autocomplete entries. In Safari TAB moves from the address bar to the search box, down arrow moves to the other autocomplete entries, which takes my hands off the home row. Maybe a familiarity thing, but kinda a con for me.
Sadly the lack of a working back button (might be just this particular computer... will test more when I get home tonight) and the lack of adblock are deal breakers for me :(
but see, that's why it's a "Beta" version :) I've crashed it two times already, when I inadvertently tried to bookmark a page...so it looks as though they've still got a few bugs to work out.
It's highly insecure too... :/
Hi, i've solved the back button problem for Safari beta 3 on windows.
This worked for me and I hope it does for you too.
I've always used the navigation buttons on my mouse to flick backwards and forwards between pages while browsing in IE. and in safari it doesn't work...
Well, here's how I fixed it.
firstly... i have a media keyboard that uses browsing buttons (forward and back) as well as other functions like a button for media player and email etc... many people have these now.
I also have a programmable mouse. With most 5+ button mice you get a program that you can change the function of the buttons on your mouse. I've got a Razer Mystify Boomslang "Boomer" mouse, and that comes with a good little program to change all the buttons... ANYWAY
I load the program up and tell it i want to change the function of the back button on my mouse and it asks me to press a key, so I press the back navigation key on my keyboard and save the config, and hey presto, it works!!!!!
Then I changed the forward button for the forward button on my keyboard too.
I can't be more specific than this because every mouse uses a different bit of software to program the buttons on it. I used the part of my program that says "assign a key" to the button.
hope you guys have some luck