Safari 3.1 for Windows: ready for prime-time?

Almost there, at least according to Arstechnica.

We put the Safari 3 beta on Windows through the wringer last summer, and we weren’t too terribly impressed. The problems were significant, such that we’d have a hard time recommending the browser to any Windows user. As of last summer, Firefox was still the Windows browser of choice here at Ars. Have things improved for Safari? Wow, have they.

Let’s sum up some improvements Arstechnica acknowledged in Safari 3.1:

• Safari 3.1 scores a 75 on Acid 3 (compared with a 53 on Firefox 2.0.0.12, a 40 on Opera, and a paltry 12 on IE7),
• it’s now a stable, usable web browser (night and day difference compared to the previous beta),
• memory usage is good, too (Safari uses about the same amount of memory as Firefox),
• start time is fast, but not lightning fast (IE7 still faster),
• HTML rendering speeds are very quick,
• JavaScript performance is Safari’s strong point (subjectively faster than IE and about as fast as Firefox, perhaps a bit speedier).

..and some problems left:

• no “new tab” button,
• problems when trying to add certain buttons to the toolbar (doing so would consistently fail, but a restart fixed this),
• Safari 3.1 for Windows continues to use the Mac OS X font anti-aliasing approach rather than the native font anti-aliasing system in Windows - ClearType (the result is text that is often fuzzy, particularly smaller text).

Interested in more details about Arstechnica short review? Off you go..

Want to try Safari 3.1 on your own? Off you go..

P.S.: Arstechnica rules!

- Regards, Milan