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Safari 3.0 Beta

It's been a while since a new Web browser made headlines, but when Apple made the beta of its Safari 3.0 Beta browser available to Windows users, it raised a few eyebrows. It certainly caught my attention -- as a non-Mac user I thought this was a great opportunity to sample the simplicity and efficiency that my Apple-using friends have been touting for years.



Simplicity is part of the aesthetic of Safari.

(Click image to enlarge.)

Certainly, simplicity is part of the aesthetic of Safari. The slightly shaded metallic gray design offers a more Blade Runner feel than the corporate blues and tans of my Firefox browser. And there are a lot of nicely designed details: the way the Customize Toolbar window unfolds out from the address field like a window shade, for example. You want to add an URL or an RSS feed to your bookmarks? Hit the plus mark. You want to see your bookmarks? Click on the open book icon. It's so simple, it's almost sparse.

I also found that the look some of the Web sites I went to were improved, either to a greater or lesser extent. The main Google search page, for example, looks a bit more polished than its equivalent in Firefox: the buttons are more 3D in appearance, and the blue outlines around the fill-in fields make them stand out more. The appearance of the RSS feeds was also clean and easy to read.

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