Windows Safari bugs and exploits "popping up like hotcakes"

Sorry rogersmj, Emor8t is right, it is "another" browser. It does render differently to Safari Mac. I had originally thought great, I dont need to fire up my Mac to see if safari renders my page...However I have a web app with valid HTML and CSS that renders Identically in IE6, IE7, FF2, Safari Mac and Opera 9 (yes I put a lot of effort into it) And yet the input boxes render with an incorrect alignment in Safari PC. Also I have some page loading javascript which fades out the existing page and places a loading message on the screen. It runs fine on all browsers except Safari PC which fades out the page, but does not display the loading message.

@rogersmj:

In theory, yeah. But seeing as it only works for 25% of windows users as it is, assuming it renders the same as the Mac would be a logical fallacy at this point.

Alex: "PUBLIC BETA"


Exactly!

Yeah, so by the time iPhone is out, all these bugs will have been discovered/worked out.
Oops, that makes Apple look smart.

Doh!

#34: In this post with the words "any number of reasons," I already linked to a thorough post over at Download Squad that elaborates on why Apple brought Safari to Windows. I highly recommend reading it, but to summarize:

1) Safari on Windows means that web developers can make apps for the iPhone without needing to buy a Mac or an iPhone. More apps for the iPhone = a good thing.

2) Believe it or not, the search box in the top right of browsers these days has become an immense revenue generating tool for companies. Firefox made about $75 million in 2006 from that search box alone.

3) The more popular WebKit (the rendering engine that powers Safari, many other Mac OS X browsers, the iPhone's Safari and Windows Safari) becomes, the more likely that websites will ensure their design and services work on Safari. I.E. - the more people that use Safari across the Mac, PC and iPhone, the nicer the internet will become to Safari.

Well, how secure can anything be on windows anyway?

" We all know this is the way they work, so we'd better start preparing our devastatingly reality-based counter-arguments right now."


I already got a whole rolodex of arguments ready. ^^

Actually, I think Steve blew it by not letting developers see this beforehand. This is not a stroke of genius, this is Apple's hubris coming out again. They should have let Windows developers kick it around a bit and give feedback--an open public beta without real security testing...irresponsible, there's no other way to put it.

And to delete the original Safari? Who thinks it's okay to replace final software with beta software? That's just lame.

Apple's looking kinda silly right now, in my opinion. Safari for Windows should have been released when it was ready, stable and secure.

Miso: I've been running Safari 3 on Windows (Server 2003, to be exact, which technically isn't even a supported platform—but then it isn't for iTunes or QuickTime either), and there have been zero issues with it.

Part and parcel of it being buggy beta is that it'll work fine for some folk and horribly for others. Same happens with vast amounts of other software on a daily basis.

Dave: Security holes are just bugs that happen to have security implications. Safari, the WebKit Windows port, and it's supporting code, are all expected to have bugs. That's rather the point. In an ideal world, one might say “well, everything except the UI is bug-free as far as we can tell, so test the hell out of that”, but that's not what Apple did. If a piece of network client software has crashing bugs that can be triggered by badly or specially-crafted packets [which obviously includes files being served by a remote web server], then you—as a user of that software—must assume that it's potentially remotely exploitable. This applies as much to the command-line FTP client as it does to Safari. The fact it's an unfinished product, newly ported to a platform, means you have to _assume_ it will have bugs, and those bugs could crop up anywhere. This is common sense.

So I am wondering if anyone will read this comment as I type it...too late...WHY WOULD APPLE RELEASE SAFARI FOR WINDOWS! So stupid Apple, don't ge me wrong I love you, but, WTF? Do you honestly think a browser will bring people to the mac, a browser who's default setting is to have tabs turned off? What a waste of programmers time, they should be improving the functionality of iTV! More movies, what happened to games? You could release a whole series of retro Nintendo games. Youtube, sweet, but is it really "that" cool...nope. Here's another one how can I get bittorrent on an Apple TV?
God I should be working for Apple!