Am I The Only One Who Likes Safari’s Font Smoothing?

A lot has been written about Safari over the past several days, and a lot of what’s been written has been negative. Many people seem to have a lot of “Mac vs. PC” baggage that is spilling out into the open with Apple’s announcement of a Windows Safari release. I’ve never used Safari on a Mac, so I’ve been looking forward to trying out the Windows release and seeing it for myself. I finally got the opportunity to download it a couple of days ago, and I’ve been using it heavily ever since.

I like it. It’s fast, the user interface is very clean and simple, and once it loads, it doesn’t have to access the hard drive again (unlike the other browsers, which are so large they are continually thrashing around the drive as I use them). The search highlighting feature is nice, too; when you’re searching for something, it’s good to be able to immediately see where it is on the page. I also quite like Safari’s font smoothing. I know that’s a controversial opinion. Robert Scoble says that Apple’s font smoothing is blurry compared to Microsoft, and in a way I agree with him; but in another way Apple’s font smoothing makes the letters look more solid and gives the page a more soothing look. (Joel Spolsky gave a good explanation of the difference between Apple’s and Microsoft’s font-smoothing strategies.)

There are a few small points that keep irritating me about Safari:

1. All the other Windows browsers let you hover over a hyperlink to see the URL. I can’t seem to do that with Safari. To see the URL, I have to right click, select “Copy Link,” and then paste the link into a text editor.

2. The Bookmarks window opens in an existing tab, which seems strange to me. I think it should open in a brand new tab. There doesn’t seem to be any Preferences option to set that behavior.

3. Safari is “un-Windows-like” when it comes to selecting, copying, and pasting text. For example, with other browsers the entire URL is selected by default when you click anywhere in the address bar. Safari merely places the cursor where you click; to select the entire URL you have to drag the mouse over it yourself. This may actually be more sensible behavior, but it’s different from the other Windows browsers and keeps surprising me.

But these are minor points. I like the Windows Safari release, and I plan to keep experimenting with it. Does anyone else like this browser?

Tags: Safari, Apple Safari

Filed Under Apple Mac News & Views