apple.com/safari/.
Market share estimate: About 4%.
Trend: Slow growth.
Engine: KHTML.
Compliance: Excellent, with reservations (see comments). Passes Acid2, making it
suitable for a development base.
Comments: Most likely developed as a reaction to Microsoft axing Internet
Explorer for Mac, Safari rapidly became the primary browser for Mac users. Its
clean interface complements the KHTML engine, which is one of the most compliant
in existence. (Indeed, Safari was the first browser to pass Acid2.) Although
initially available to Mac users only, June 2007 saw the first beta of Safari for
Windows, primarily intended as an aid to Windows-based developers creating content
for Apple??™s iPhone. Safari has some shortcomings regarding JavaScript support,
and its method of anti-aliasing text is significantly different to other browsers. Prior
to version 3, CSS borders and colors for form fields and buttons were ignored, the
Mac OS Aqua equivalents instead being ???forced.???
Other browsers
A number of other web browsers exist, although their market share is so minimal as to be
considered all but insignificant. A possible exception to this is Linux-based Konqueror,
although with its KHTML engine, you should expect similar results to those in Safari.
Elsewhere, some browsers are based on Gecko (such as SeaMonkey/Mozilla and Flock),
some on Trident (such as AOL Explorer/OpenRide), and one on both (Netscape Browser).
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CSS AND HTML WEB DESIGN
500
F SOFTWARE GUIDE
Opinions on the merit of software tools are usually pretty subjective.
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