Apple releases Safari for Windows
Huh, interesting. Seems like I heard some rumors about this, but I didn't see that one coming. Honestly, this is the best news I've heard all week (okay, fine, it's noon on Monday). We've got a couple of Macs here on site over a VPC type setup but using them is still a bit of a pain - you have to prop to IIS, log into the machine, etc. Being able to do some level of smoke testing right from the desktop will make this a lot easier. That is, of course, as long as the Mac and Windows Safari continue to act the same.
Like iTunes, Safari is styles like a Mac window, so it's a little odd to see it running on the desktop with all the Vista-themed stuff.
But right a way you can pick out the distinctive way that it does it's font rendering. Yup, looks like Safari. So I tried to configure it so I could launch it directly from VS to debug web pages.
Hit OK, then Browse and.....
Hmmm...appearently "Safari.exe [url]" doesn't launch that URL. If someone out there knows the command line switch for this, let me know. I tried "safari.exe -?" and all that, no luck.
UPDATE: Sounds like "safari -url [url]" does the trick. I've updated this picture. See above, choose "No" when it warns you about "c:\Pro...\Safari.exe -url" not being valid.
I also notice I can't resize from the sides or bottom. Weird.
I also notice there's no JavaScript console...is there some plugin I'd need for that?
UPDATE: here's how to enable the console.
- Command prompt
- cd %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\Safari
- notepad preferences.plist
- At the end, before </dict> paste in: <key>IncludeDebugMenu</key> <true/>
- Save, restart Safari.
Anyway, I will say that Safari hasn't been the, uh, easiest browser to work with. I think the big upside of this release is that more people will test their websites on Safari, and hopefully it will also drive more quality into the platform which will make it less work to have your apps work as expected on Mac.
