Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Computer, Inc. and available as part of Mac OS X. It was included as the default browser in Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) and is the only browser bundled with Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger).

Safari uses Apple's brushed metal user interface, has a bookmark management scheme that functions like the iTunes jukebox software, integrates Apple's QuickTime multimedia technology, and features a tabbed-browsing interface similar to that of Firefox and Opera. A Google search box is a standard component of the Safari interface, as are software services which automatically fill out Web forms and spellcheck entries into web page text fields. The browser also includes an integrated pop-up ad blocker and an configurable image blocker.

Since the release of Safari its browser usage share has been consistently climbing but is still below 5%. For the month of April 2006, thecounter.com reports that Safari has a usage share of 2% and NetApplications.com reports that Safari has a usage share of 3.3% for the same time period.

History and development

Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers had shipped with Netscape Navigator. Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Mac was subsequently included as the default web browser as part of the five-year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft released five major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac, with the last one being released on March 27, 2000.

On January 7, 2003, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed in-house their own web browser called Safari. They released the first beta version that day and a number of official and unofficial beta versions followed, until they released version 1.0 on June 23, 2003. Available as a separate download initially, it was included with Mac OS X v10.3 on release on October 24, 2003, as the default browser, with Internet Explorer for Mac included only as an alternative browser. Since the release of Mac OS X v10.4 in April 29, 2005, Safari is the only web browser included with the operating system.

Safari uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (based on KDE's kjs JavaScript engine). Like KHTML and kjs, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license.

In June 2005, after some criticism from KHTML developers over lack of access to change logs, Apple moved the development source code and bug tracking of WebCore and JavaScriptCore to OpenDarwin.org. WebKit itself was also released as open source. The source code for non-renderer aspects of the browser, such as its GUI elements, remains proprietary.

Version 2.0 of Safari, released on April 29, 2005, includes a built in RSS and Atom reader. Other features include Private Browsing (a mode in which no record of information about your web activity is retained), the ability to archive and e-mail webpages, the ability to search bookmarks, and a reported 1.8x speed boost over version 1.2.4.

In April 2005, Dave Hyatt, one of the Safari developers at Apple, documented his progress fixing bugs in Safari to get it to pass the Acid2 test. On April 27, 2005, he announced that his development version of Safari now passed the test, making it the first web browser to do so. The changes were not initially available to end-users unless they downloaded and compiled the WebKit source code themselves or ran one of the nightly automated builds available at opendarwin.org. However on October 31, 2005, Apple released version 2.0.2 of Safari that included the Acid2 bug fixes.

Version history

Safari version	Webcore version	Mac OS version	Release date	Features
0.8	48	10.2	January 7, 2003	Public Beta. Initial release at Macworld conference.
0.9	73	10.2	April 14, 2003	Public Beta 2. Tabbed browsing, forms & passwords autofill, browser reset (removes cookies, cache and so on), Netscape and Mozilla bookmarks importing, improved support for web standards, improved AppleScript support, more localizations.
1.0	85	10.2	June 23, 2003	First non-beta release. Safari is now default Mac OS X browser, faster autotabs, support for iSync bookmark synchronization, all Mac OS X languages supported, more AppleScripts to control browser, improved support for web standards.
1.1	100	10.3	October 24, 2003	Released with Mac OS X v10.3. Improved speed, improved support for web standards, improved CSS support.
1.2	125	10.3	February 2, 2004	Improved compatibility with websites and web applications. Support for personal certificate authentication. Full keyboard access for navigation. Ability to resume interrupted downloads. LiveConnect support. XMLHttpRequest support.
1.3	312	10.3	April 15, 2005	Released with 10.3.9. Included most of the rendering speed and website compatibility improvements that were developed for 2.0.
2.0 (Safari RSS)	412	10.4	April 29, 2005	Released with Mac OS X v10.4. Improved rendering speed and website compatibility. Integrated RSS and Atom reader. Integrated PDF viewer. Private Browsing mode and Parental Controls. Saving Websites completely as Web Archives. Some problems still exist, notably incompatibility with Google's Gmail service.

References

External links

Official Safari website
KDE weblog "The Dot" announcement about Safari
WebKit Nightly Builds – Nightly builds of WebKit that include SVG support.
NightShift – Automates the process of downloading and installing the latest WebKit Nightly build and creates a backup copy of the previously installed build.
Pimp My Safari – Extensions and plugins for Safari
SafarIcon – Allows you to change Safari's user interface to various preset themes and modify hidden Safari preferences.

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History and development

Version history

See also

References

External links