Review: Apple Safari 3 browser

Safari is Apple's browser that, until recently, was restricted to Mac users.

The company has recently released a version for Windows users as well, though, and it can be easily downloaded using the Apple Updater if you have iTunes or Quicktime installed (otherwise it's a free download from the Apple website).

It looks almost identical to the Mac edition, to the point that Windows users will feel a little disorientated at first – there's no status bar, for instance (page loading progress is shown in the address bar) and no borders on the sides of the browser window.

It's quite stripped down compared with Firefox and even Internet Explorer 7 – while it does tabbed browsing and ad-blocking and has a search box, there are no add-ons so those who like to customise their browsers will be disappointed.

That aside, Safari does some things very well – the RSS feed reader is much better than the one in Firefox, for instance, and there are some clever touches such as spell-checking in all text-entry fields. It's fast, too, and text in pages looks good thanks to Apple's font-smoothing technology.

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