Safari Review

Safari is one of the innovate web browsers which works on Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch. Safari is a product of Apple, Inc. The software lets user search the internet fast and safe, and it also comes with many features for both users and developers such as: accessibility, built-in RSS, advanced technology supports, bookmark tools, developer tools, graphics and fonts tools, and much more.

Safari is available for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and Mac. The software is free to download from Apple website.

Safari has 13 main features such as: Accessibility, Advanced Web Technologies, Bookmarks, Browsing & Navigation, Built-in RSS, Developer Tools, Graphics & Fonts, International, Mac Integration, Search, Security & Privacy, User Interface & Appearance, and Windows Integration.

Accessibility Highlight Features:

• VoiceOver Screen Reader – Describes aloud what appears on user’s screen and reads the text and links of websites.
• ARIA Support – Supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) and helps web developers make dynamic web content more accessible for people with disabilities.
• Enhanced Keyboard Navigation – Lets user navigate the web without a mouse.
• Full-Page Zoom – Lets user zoom while it scales up images and graphics and keeping the text remains razor sharp and the web page layout consistent.
• Zoom Text Only – User can choose to zoom in on only the text when they take a closer look at a web page.
• Custom Style Sheets – User can apply custom style sheets to make their favorite websites more readable.
• Minimum Font Size – User can increase the font size to make it more legible.

Advanced Web Technologies Highlight Features:

• Next-Generation Standards Support – Supports HTML 5 media tags, CSS animation, and CSS effects, web designers and renders current and future web applications as they were meant to be seen.
• CSS Animation – Lets web designers scale, rotate, fade, and skew web elements to create cutting-edge websites.
• CSS 3 Web Fonts – Allow web designers to create stunning websites using the fonts they prefer rather than restricting themselves to “web-safe fonts.”
• CSS Canvas – Web designers can position canvas elements anywhere an image can be placed using CSS.
• HTML 5 Media Support – Supports HTML 5 audio and video tags.
• HTML 5 Offline Support – Lets web developers create applications that they can use even when they don’t have access to the Internet.
• HTML Canvas – Allows web designers to specify an area in HTML that can be dynamically stylized by a JavaScript program.
• HTML 4.01 Support – Supports HTML 4.01, the authoring language that defines the structure and layout of web documents.
• WebKit – Supports WebKit, an open source rendering engine introduced by Apple, powers Safari on iPhone and iPod touch and Safari 4 on Mac and Windows systems.
• Acid 2 Compliance – The software passed Acid 2 tests for compatibility with new features in the HTML, CSS, and PNG standards.
• Acid 3 Compliance – It also passed Acid 3 for ability to fully render pages using the web standards used to build dynamic, next-generation websites, including CSS, JavaScript, XML, and SVG.
• Nitro JavaScript Engine – Comes with Nitro JavaScript engine, an advanced bytecode JavaScript engine that makes web browsing even faster.
• JavaScript Support – Supports ECMA 262 version 3, the latest edition of the JavaScript standard.
• Speculative Loading – Loads the documents, scripts, and style information required to view a web page ahead of time.
• SVG 1.1 Support – Web developers can create fonts, graphic elements, and animations on the fly that look great no matter how large or small they’re sized.
• ICC Color Profile Support – Supports advanced color management technology to deliver web images with rich, accurate color.
• Plug-in Support – Works with the full range of popular Internet plug-ins, including Flash, Shockwave, and QuickTime.
• Scriptable Plug-ins – Lets developers create plug-ins that interact with standard elements on a page.
• Java Support – Lets user enjoy running Java applets on the web.
• XML 1.0 Support – Supports Extensible Markup Language (XML), a popular open industry standard for creating, managing, and sharing structured data.
• LiveConnect Support – Supports LiveConnect to ensure compatibility with popular enterprise web applications. LiveConnect allows Java and JavaScript to work together to deliver a more seamless browsing experience.

Bookmarks Highlight Features:

• Bookmarks Library – Let user view, create, and organize their bookmarks.
• Cover Flow – Lets user flip through websites as easily as they flip through album art in iTunes.
• Drag-and-Drop Bookmark Organization – Allows user to easily rearrange your bookmarks in the bookmarks bar by dragging them to the right or left.
• Drag-and-Drop Bookmark Creation and Deletion – Lets user create and delete bookmarks with a simple drag and drop.
• History View – Lets user take a closer look at their browsing history in the History view.
• Bookmark Search – User can find bookmarks quickly while it searches for matching URLs, website names, and even website content to find the bookmark they are looking for.
• Bookmark Folders – User can organize their bookmarks in custom folders, such as News, Resources, Networking, Photo, or Blogs.
• Integrated Bookmarks Bar – The most frequently used bookmarks are always visible without cluttering user’s screen.
• Bookmark Auto-Click – The software offers a great way to automatically open the bookmarks inside a bookmark folder, each in a separate tab.
• Bookmark Tabs – Let user reopen each site in a separate tab with a single click.
• Custom Bookmark Naming – User can simplify their bookmarks with custom names.
• Bonjour Bookmarks – Lets user access and manage the printers and computers on their network from the Bonjour section of their bookmarks library
• Synchronize Bookmarks Using MobileMe – User can keep the bookmarks on their computers and devices in sync using MobileMe.
• Import Bookmarks – Allows user to choose Import Bookmarks from the File menu to import their Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarks into Safari.
• Export Bookmarks – User can easily transfer and back up their bookmarks.
• Address Book Bookmarks – The software automatically lists address book in the Address collection in user’s bookmarks library.

Browsing and Navigation Highlight Features:

• Top Sites – The software automatically identifies user’s favorite sites and displays them as a wall of stunning graphical previews.
• Customize Number of Top Sites – Lets user display 24, 12, or 6 site thumbnails, respectively.
• Pin Top Sites – User can pin sites to specific locations by clicking the pushpin that appears over the site.
• Top Sites: Fresh News – User can see at a glance when one of their top sites has been updated.
• Full History Search – User can instantly find pages they visited in the past with Full History Search.
• Tabbed Browsing – This is a great way to check several websites at once without cluttering user’s desktop, tabbed browsing lets them see and switch between multiple websites in a single window.
• Movable Tabs – Let user organize tabs by dragging and dropping.
• Open New Windows with a Group of Tabs – User can open a group of tabs that contain the sites they want to visit every time they browse.
• Smart Address Field – Lets user enter web addresses quickly and easily. It automatically completes it with the most likely match and highlights it.
• Auto-Complete Web Addresses – User can let Safari complete their web addresses automatically. It uses user’s bookmarks and browsing history to anticipate the destination and fill in the full address for user.
• AutoFill: Personal Information – User can let the software automatically fill out web forms for them using information in their Mac OS X Address Book, Outlook, or Windows Address Book.
• AutoFill: Forms – It can also automatically fill in forms, such as search fields, that user repeatedly uses on the web.
• AutoFill: User Names and Passwords – The software can auto fill and encrypt the user names and passwords to keep user’s personal information secure.
• Downloads Window – Comes with a download management window. User can user it to pause, resume, or cancel a transfer or find the location of downloaded files.
• Auto-Remove Download List Items – Minimizes the number of items appearing in user’s downloads list.
• Spell Checking – Offers built-in spell checking.It can spell-check in 14 different languages.
• Grammar Checking – Offers built-in grammar checking.
• Middle-Click Pan and Scroll – User can click the middle mouse button to enable the feature, then move the mouse in any direction to pan through the web content. Middle-click a second time to return to the normal mouse mode.
• Save as Web Archive – Lets user store important or private web documents like receipts and invoices on their hard drive as web archive files.
• New Window Preference – User can choose what’s displayed when they first open Safari: Top Sites, their home page, an empty page, their current web page, or their bookmarks.
• Merge All Windows – User can consolidate all of the open browser windows into a single window with multiple tabs by choosing Merge All Windows from the Window menu.
• Reopen All Windows from Last Session – User can start browsing where they left off the last time they quit Safari.
• Reopen Last Closed Window – User can easily recover the close window by choosing Reopen Last Closed Window from the History menu.
• Auto-Remove History Items – Safari automatically purges history items older than one month by default.
• Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts – Lets user browse faster and more productively using keyboard and mouse shortcuts.
• Help – User can learn how to get the most out of Safari with its comprehensive Help system.
• Report Bugs to Apple – Lets user report Bugs to Apple to correct the problem and improve the browsing experience.
• View Installed Plug-ins – The software groups the plug-ins by category, listing the name, version number, description, and associated extensions for each plug-in.

Built-in RSS Highlight Features:

• RSS Reader – Offers the built-in RSS reader for user to scan the latest news, information, and articles from thousands of websites in one simple-to-read.
• RSS Auto-Discovery – Offer an RSS feed by displaying an RSS icon in the address field.
• RSS Search – Lets user search their RSS feeds for topics of interest, simply enter their search in the Search Articles field.
• RSS Aggregation – User can view multiple feeds in one unified list.
• RSS Unread Indicator – It distinguishes between read and unread articles by highlighting items they haven’t read.
• RSS Sorting – User can change the order in which Safari lists the articles by clicking Date, Title, Source, or New in the list on the right side of the RSS article listing.
• RSS Actions – User can update their RSS pages, mark articles as read, or email a link to an RSS feed.
• Bookmark RSS Feeds – Lets user bookmark an RSS feed the same way they bookmark traditional websites.
• RSS Update Notification – Maintains a count of the number of new articles appearing in user’s RSS feeds since user last checked them.
• RSS Adjust Length of Article – User can adjust the length of their RSS article summaries and obtain the right amount of detail at a glance.
• Personal RSS Clipping Service – User can create a personal clipping service to notify them when certain topics are mentioned on their favorite sites.

Developer Tools Highlight Features:

• Powerful Tools – Comes with a powerful set of tools that make it easy to debug, tweak, and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility.
• Web Inspector – Gives user quick and easy access to the richest set of development tools ever included in a browser.
• Elements – Makes it easy for developers to examine their Document Object Model (DOM) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) rules.
• JavaScript Debugger – Comes with powerful JavaScript Debugger that lets user pause the JavaScript, set breakpoints, and evaluate local variables.
• JavaScript Profiler – User can optimize their JavaScript code using the state-of-the-art JavaScript Profiler.
• Databases – Allows user to view tables and databases and even execute SQL queries.
• Resources – The software graphs the order and speed at which website components load over the network.
• Snippet Editor – Makes it easy for user to test experimental pieces of HTML markup.
• Error Console – It highlights warnings, syntax mistakes, or JavaScript errors affecting user’s site.
• Develop Menu – User can access all of the developer tools in Safari from their menu bar.
• View Activity – Lets user see a complete list of the documents, images, and other web assets that load as part of a page.
• View Source – Allows user to examine the original HTML of a web page.
• Change User Agent – Lets user determine if a website is customizing content for different browsers.
• Open Page With – User can select an alternative browser by choosing Open Page With from the Develop menu.
• Save As Page Source – Lets user save their website’s HTML source code.
• Disable Caches – User can choose Disable Caches from the Develop menu to force the browser to grab live graphics, pages, and other resources from the network instead of using cached resources.
• Disable Images – User can learn how such users experience content on their site by disabling your site’s images in the Develop menu.
• Disable JavaScript – Lets developer experience how their website will behave for users who have disabled JavaScript.
• Disable Runaway JavaScript Timer – Alerts users when they land on a site that uses slow JavaScript code.
• Disable Styles – Safari loads pages without applying any CSS rules, allowing developer to evaluate how text browsers, search engines, and screen readers will interpret their pages.

Graphics and Fonts Highlight Features:

• High-Fidelity Graphics and Fonts – The software delivers the beautiful graphics, fonts, and effects user expects from Apple.
• Anti-Aliased Fonts – User can enjoy crisp, gorgeous fonts.
• Color Profile Support – Lets user see the photos and images in their browser as true to the originals as possible.
• Printing Auto-Format – The software formats the site based on the content and displays a preview for user’s approval.
• Shrink-to-Fit Printing – It calculates the web page layout and adjusts the print size by up to 10 percent if doing so will reduce the number of printed pages.
• Contextual Letters – Safari recognizes many of these contextual letter forms when rendering different fonts and languages.
• CSS Animation – Allows designers to scale, rotate, fade, and skew web elements to create sites with cutting-edge graphics animation.
• CSS Effects – Developers can stylize images and photos with eye-catching gradients, precise masks, and stunning reflections, providing an extra layer of polish to their websites by adding just a few lines of code.
• CSS 3 Web Fonts – Web designers can choose from a broader set of fonts to design stunning websites.

International Highlight Features:

• International Localizations – Safari is available in 16 languages and can spell-check in 14 languages.
• International Web Content – The software is designed to handle web content from all regions of the world, including a broad range of alphabets, number systems, writing directions, currencies, weights and measurements, date and time formats, and time zones.
• Unicode Support – Supports Unicode, the accepted international encoding standard, user can enjoy web content in any number of languages, including Arabic, English, and Japanese.
• IDN Support – User can access sites with non-English web addresses.
• Right-to-Left Text – Supports multi-directional text rendering, allowing websites drafted in other languages to display characters from right to left.
• Default Regional Bookmarks – The software uses user’s operating system’s regional settings to determine their location, then customizes their bookmarks based on region.

Mac Integration Highlight Features:

• Downloads Stack – When user downloads files or programs to their Mac, Safari saves them in the Downloads stack in the Dock so they can get to them with a few clicks.
• Web Clip – User can turn any web page into a Dashboard widget on their Mac.
• Inline PDF Viewing – Comes with a built-in PDF engine, allowing user to quickly review PDF documents in Safari without having to install slow and cumbersome third-party plug-ins.
• Save Images to iPhoto – Lets user save web images directly to iPhoto.
• Mail Contents of This Page – Integrates seamlessly with Mac OS X Mail, making it easy to email full web pages to friends, family, or colleagues.
• Mail Link to This Page – User can easily email web page links to a friend, colleague, or yourself.
• Automator Support – User can access web images, downloads, and text directly from their custom workflows with the Safari actions built into Automator on a Mac.
• AppleScript Support – Allows AppleScript developers to access the content and properties of websites such as HTML, DOM, and JavaScript elements directly in scripts and custom applications.

Search Highlight Features:

• Built-in Google Search – Comes with built-in Google search.
• Smart Search Field – The software recommends relevant searches courtesy of Google Suggest and lists their most recent searches, presenting them in an easy-to-read list.
• Search Suggestions – It uses Google Suggest to complete search queries as user types, based on popular search terms.
• Full History Search – User can use Full History Search to instantly find pages they have visited in the past.
• Find – The software instantly locates all occurrences of the text on the current web page, shows user how many occurrences it’s found, and highlights every instance.
• SnapBack – A single click on the SnapBack icon takes user right back to their original search results.
• Built-in Yahoo! Search – User can choose to search the Internet using built-in Yahoo! Search.
• Bookmark Search – Lets user find their bookmarks instantly with bookmark searching.

Security and Privacy Highlight Features:

• Phishing Protection – Protects user from fraudulent Internet sites. When user visits a suspicious site, Safari warns user about its suspect nature and prevents the page from loading.
• Malware Protection – The software recognizes websites that harbor malware before user visits them.
• Antivirus Integration – Notifies user’s antivirus software whenever user downloads a file, image, application, or other item. This allows the antivirus software to scan each download for viruses and malware.
• Private Browsing – Helps protect user’s personal information.
• Pop-Up Blocking – Intelligently blocks all unprompted pop-up and pop-under windows, so user can avoid distracting advertisements while they browse.
• EV Certificates – Supports Extended Validation (EV) Certificates, allowing user to easily identify legitimate websites and businesses.
• Cookie Blocking – Blocks tracking cookies by default. Safari accepts cookies only from user’s current domain.
• Safe Downloads – Reminds user where it came from before opening it for the first time, so they can be sure it’s legitimate.
• Secure Encryption – To prevent eavesdropping, forgery, and digital tampering, Safari uses encryption technology to secure user’s web communications.
• Standards-Based Authentication – Lets user identify themselves when visiting secure websites.
• Parental Controls: Custom Filter – Quickly reviews websites before they load to determine if they’re suitable for kids.
• Parental Controls: Logs – Lets user see which web pages their children have visited.
• Parental Controls: Approved List – User can create an approved list of websites that their children can visit.
• Proxy Support – Supports the most popular proxy services and automatically detects a variety of proxy protocols, including Automatic Proxy configuration, FTP Proxy, Web Proxy (HTTP), Secure Web Proxy (HTTPS), Streaming Proxy (RTSP), SOCKS Proxy, and Gopher Proxy.
• Automatic Updates – Lets user get quick, easy access to the latest security updates.
• Reset Safari – User can erase every trace of their browsing in one simple step.
• Empty Cache – User can clear the stored files when they choose Empty Cache from the Safari menu.
• Clear History – Lets user choose Clear History from the History menu to erase their browsing history and start with a clean slate.
• Customize Offline Database Storage Size – User can control the amount of storage available for their offline applications.

User Interface and Appearance Highlight Features:

• Default Font Preference – User can change the default font Safari uses to display text on their web pages.
• Elegant User Interface – User will see a scroll bar only when they need one.
• Full-Page Zoom – Lets user take a closer look at small print on their favorite sites.
• Multi-Touch – Allows user to use Multi-Touch gestures in Mac OS X to browse using only their fingers.
• Inline Progress Indicator – The software moves the progress indicator into the address field, making it more visible and freeing up space for web content.
• Customizable Toolbar – User can personalize their Safari toolbar, so they see only the buttons they use.
• Resizable Text Fields – User can drag the bottom-right corner of a text entry field to expand it on the page.

Windows Integration Highlight Features:

• Windows Native Look – Comes with native look including a native title bar, borders, and toolbars.
• Windows Font Rendering – Safari on Windows now uses Windows Standard fonts to deliver a more consistent experience.
• Downloads Folder Preference – When user downloads files or programs to their computer, Safari saves them to their My Documents folder (Windows XP) or Downloads folder (Windows Vista).
• Mail Link to This Page – User can easily email web page links to a friend, colleague, or themselves.
• Plug-in Download Assistance – Links user directly to the most popular plug-ins and walks thme through the installation steps.

User Experience with Safari Software

To add more useful information for other users, if you have ever experienced using or trying the Safari program, I encourage you to write a short review about your experience with software and share it in the following section: