Safari 3 First Impressions

It’s not an iPhone, but Safari 3 is a new Apple product to test.
You can download Safari 3 for Mac & Windows at
http://www.apple.com/safari/.
Here are my comments after a full day of testing.
WINDOWS
You need to get 3.0.2, but it did install on my XP, and it runs as speedy as the Mac version. Plus the fonts are the best rendered of all my Windows browsers (even IE 7). Windows users may wonder what hit them.
On the other hand, Safari means that Windows users will learn about the weird feed:// protocol for RSS feeds. For Mac users this is old news and our feed readers can cope, but it will be a new glitch for Windows users.
And Windows users will see the subtle Safari CSS gotchas for themselves.
MAC
Safari 3 will overwrite Safari 2 (although there is an un-install option available). If you want to maintain both versions of Safari, see the workaround at http://macenstein.com/default/archives/659
SPEED
Safari 3 is as speedy as Safari 2 – yipee!!
COOKIE CONTROL
Same as Safari 2 – which is to say that it doesn’t have as much precision as I would like. My solution has been to to disable cookies altogether on Safari. Safari becomes my speedy 2 seater browser and then I use Firefix as my power all-wheel-drive browser.
NEW FEATURES
Some are catch-up features, but some are new. See
* http://forevergeek.com/apple/safari_3_new_features.php
* http://www.macworld.com/2007/06/firstlooks/safari3/index.php
* http://www.justbull.com/article/12-2007/
I like the ability to disable tabs overall, but then still open a tab anyway by clicking the Apple key while clicking a link. You can also right click (or command-click) on a tab and have it open in a new window.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Safari made some improvements, but it still has some work ahead of it. You can read more in the Got Unicode blog if you’re really interested.