Brennan’s Blog

You should have already heard the news. You can now get Safari for Windows. As a web developer I find this very exciting. And as much as I appreciated the improvements that came with IE7 I feel the browser is still lacking innovative features. For example, it has support for RSS but it does not really do a whole lot for you. Having Safari and Firefox as alternatives to the Microsoft browser will surely turn up the heat and compel Microsoft to give the IE development team more resources.

Improving Internet Explorer is important for every web developer because many companies, including my employer, only officially support the Microsoft browser. They still hold onto the premise that supporting rich functionality across browsers is too costly. While there is some necessary effort it is much less than it was just a few years ago because standards for HTML, CSS and Javascript have taken in hold in the major browsers. The competition that Safari will add will be just the right kind of pressure and contribute great ideas to the space. I just wonder if I will find enough reason to use Safari over Firefox, which leads to another important point.

The people who have not switched to Firefox yet are not likely to switch to Safari. Safari will eat into the Firefox user base. The situation is very similar for Linux and MacOS X. They compete for the leftover market that Windows does not hold. What Apple needs to do is create a very compelling reason for corporate environments to want Safari on company computers. Perhaps iTunes-like integration with the iPhone will be one of those reasons.