Safari for Windows?

BeachBill

Anyone try the Safari for Windows beta yet? I wonder how it renders Smugmug pages, but I don't know if I want to be the guinea pig. :dunno

Andy

BeachBill wrote:

Anyone try the Safari for Windows beta yet? I wonder how it renders Smugmug pages, but I don't know if I want to be the guinea pig.

Seems to work just fine, for my site, and yours. I just downloaded it and used it. Ironic, isn't it... I used Safari for Windows on my Mac Pro

It *is* beta software, so we don't officially support Safari For windows, but I do expect we will.

BeachBill

Andy wrote:

Seems to work just fine, for my site, and yours. I just downloaded it and used it. Ironic, isn't it... I used Safari for Windows on my Mac Pro

Okay, I couldn't stand it. I installed Safari. I compared my site in three browsers, Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 1 and the Safari beta. The first difference that jumps out at me is all of the text is bold in Safari. Does Safari do this on the Mac (and I'm talking about the Mac version on the Mac, not the Windows version on the Mac)? Anyone know how to get Safari *not* to make the text bold, or is this just a beta issue?

Attached is the results of my comparison showing the difference.

DavidTO

This is Safari 2 on the Mac.

BeachBill

Thanks David. So I guess that is normal for the Mac? I wonder how Firefox compares on the Mac?

iamback

BeachBill wrote:

Thanks David. So I guess that is normal for the Mac?

It's Safari's font smoothing, which uses very different algorithms, apparently, than those mostly used on Windows. You can try configuration to minimize font smoothing but apparently it will still be different even then - see here.

There are some serious security issues as well - see link in that thread.

DavidTO

BeachBill wrote:

Thanks David. So I guess that is normal for the Mac? I wonder how Firefox compares on the Mac?

Here you go.

BeachBill

iamback wrote:

It's Safari's font smoothing, which uses very different algorithms, apparently, than those mostly used on Windows. You can try configuration to minimize font smoothing but apparently it will still be different even then

I tried changing the font smoothing from medium to light, but as you say, it doesn't change much. Still more bold than I'm used to.

My only purpose for installing Safari is for platform development testing. I don't think I will ever use anything other than Firefox for full time web browsing.

I think Safari is going to serve it's purpose for me. If they keep it rendering pages as closely as possible to how they render them on the Mac I will be happy.

By the way for anyone interested, I may have found an issue (bug, config, who knows?) in this Safari beta with the Smugmug shopping cart. When I add a photo to the cart, I get the "add to cart, done" click to view the cart and get "shopping cart is empty". Yeah I know it's a beta and not supported but does anyone know if this is a config issue in Safari or perhaps a bug?

BeachBill

DavidTO wrote:

Here you go.

Thanks again David. I see that FF/Mac is still a little bolder than FF/Win but not as bold as Safari. Good to know. Appreciate your samples!

DavidTO

BeachBill wrote:

I get the "add to cart, done" click to view the cart and get "shopping cart is empty". Yeah I know it's a beta and not supported but does anyone know if this is a config issue in Safari or perhaps a bug?

Sounds like a cookies issue, to me.

dem

BeachBill wrote:

Anyone know how to get Safari *not* to make the text bold, or is this just a beta issue?

OK, I'm no CSS guru, but when I poke at your site with the program CSSEdit on the Mac, it says this is one of the styles applied to your gallery titles:

.miniBox .albumTitle a.nav {
	font-size: 14px;
	font-weight: bold;
	padding-top: 5px;
}

So perhaps Safari is doing the right thing.

BeachBill

dem wrote:

OK, I'm no CSS guru, but when I poke at your site with the program CSSEdit on the Mac, it says this is one of the styles applied to your gallery titles:

.miniBox .albumTitle a.nav {
    font-size: 14px;
    font-weight: bold;
    padding-top: 5px;
}

So perhaps Safari is doing the right thing.

As previously mentioned it's the font smoothing that Safari does, which makes non-bold text appear bold and bold text "more bold"...

jfriend

BeachBill wrote:

As previously mentioned it's the font smoothing that Safari does, which makes non-bold text appear bold and bold text "more bold"...

Do you think Safari on Windows actually comes with all it's own fonts and is doing it's own font rendering, independent of the font sub-system built into Windows?

I could see how Safari has different default style sheets of a different interpretation of non-specific style sheets such that it chooses different fonts for a given piece of CSS/HTML, but I'd be surprised if Safari was really doing it's own font rendering on Windows.

peestandingup

I wouldnt recommend using this current beta version of Safari for Windows OR Mac. Several bugs have been found & even a few security issues on the Windows side. So, just be careful.

Anyways, porting over safari so it runs on Windows in a half-assed way is about one thing & one thing only...iPhone developers.

devbobo

i don't know why they bothered...it sucks on the mac and it sucks on windows now too

peestandingup

devbobo wrote:

i don't know why they bothered...it sucks on the mac and it sucks on windows now too

Amen to that.

They wont let 3rd party developers write apps for the iPhone, so they "compromised" & are letting 3rd party web-based apps in through the Safari browser thats on the iPhone. Soooo, they needed Safari to run on Windows so those developers who used PCs could write apps too. Thats why it seems rushed & full of bugs & security holes. Doesnt have anything to do with wanting more browser market share.

Its all horse poo if you ask me.

jfriend

peestandingup wrote:

Amen to that.

They wont let 3rd party developers write apps for the iPhone, so they "compromised" & are letting 3rd party web-based apps in through the Safari browser thats on the iPhone. Soooo, they needed Safari to run on Windows so those developers who used PCs could write apps too. Thats why it seems rushed & full of bugs & security holes. Doesnt have anything to do with wanting more browser market share.

Its all horse poo if you ask me.

It's also a lot easier for people that only have Windows machines to test their web-sites with Safari now. You don't have to buy a Mac to make sure your web-site works with Safari. That's better for Mac users and also has nothing to do with wanting more browser market share.

jogle

found a bug in safari 3 on mac, affects uploading.
I've been using safari 2 on the mac (i've got firefox and camino too, but prefer safari) and everything on smugmug seems fine,

I upgraded to Safari 3 last night and it seems the add photos java applet is broken, Dragging a photo onto it pops an error "java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused"

So I've been using firefox today without any problems and will downgrade safari tonight.

Smug techs, I don't know if you want to try and reproduce this, if you need some help or more info let me know. I've logged a bug with apple too.

Sewerman

It locks up my gatway laptop (delete!!!)

BeachBill wrote:

Anyone try the Safari for Windows beta yet? I wonder how it renders Smugmug pages, but I don't know if I want to be the guinea pig.

BeachBill

DavidTO wrote:

Sounds like a cookies issue, to me.

Yes, it looks like a "cookie" bug in Safari.

I've got preferences set to accept cookies: "always", yet the "show cookies" button is never enabled.

BeachBill

jfriend wrote:

Do you think Safari on Windows actually comes with all it's own fonts and is doing it's own font rendering, independent of the font sub-system built into Windows?

Safari definitely uses the windows font because if you go in to change the standard font, it brings up the windows font dialog for selection.

The "problem" is that Safari is "enhancing" the font as part of it's "font smoothing" feature which make all fonts look "bolder".

Safari only offers three options for font smoothing: light, medium and strong. If they would offer an option to completely turn off font smoothing, I'm guessing the font would end up looking more like it does in the other browsers.

So far Safari is doing for me what I want it to do. As someone else said, I don't need to go buy a Mac Mini now just to test my websites in Safari.

iamback

jfriend wrote:

Do you think Safari on Windows actually comes with all it's own fonts and is doing it's own font rendering, independent of the font sub-system built into Windows?

No, no browser comes with its own fonts, they can only use the fonts already installed on the system (which is why you should to specify a list of options when building web pages). What it's doing, is using its own style of font smoothing. Microsoft renders fonts to match as closely as possible the pixel grid, so they appear crisp - but they look different from what they would look in print. Apple renders fonts to match as closely as possible what they would look like in print (good for graphical designers) but the result is the fonts look slightly "fuzzy" on screen - on a Mac as well as now on Windows.

It's completely independent of stylesheets (which Safari is actually very good at).

W.W. Webster

jfriend wrote:

It's also a lot easier for people that only have Windows machines to test their web-sites with Safari now. You don't have to buy a Mac to make sure your web-site works with Safari. That's better for Mac users and also has nothing to do with wanting more browser market share.

For me, the problem has been the other way round - having a site that runs correctly on standards-compliant browsers (e.g. Safari) and being faced with how (or, whether) to deal with a non-complaint one, IE.

I choose not to. Windoze users now have another non-IE option, and that's got to be good.

iamback

W.W. Webster wrote:

I choose not to. Windoze users now have another non-IE option, and that's got to be good.

BeachBill

Safari's font rendering philosophy revealed
Safari for Windows "blurry" or "fuzzy" fonts have been the talk of the net lately. There is a very good article about why Safari displays text the way it does here.

To quickly summarize:

Basically Apple attempts to preserve the design of the typeface in the limited pixels available on a computer screen, which results in some blurriness. Microsoft renders fonts to improve readability on screen at the expense of being true to the font design.

The difference originates from Apple's legacy in desktop publishing and graphic design. The nice thing about the Apple algorithm is that you can lay out a page of text for print, and on screen, you get a nice approximation of the finished product. The advantage of Microsoft's method is that it works better for on-screen reading.