Safari 3: Beta or Not?

So, Leopard ships and all is right in the world of Mac users. Web Developers have a lot to like in Safari 3. Numerous HTML/CSS/Javascript bug fixes and improvements make the viewing experience significantly better than Safari 2 (and Safari 2 was no slouch either). Additionally, Apple has made Safari 3 available to Tiger users and Windows users, which is nothing but good for the platform. You want your rendering engine fixes to be used as broadly as possible, so this is a no brainer for Apple.

However, with Safari part of Leopard, and Leopard now shipping, the question needs to be asked: Has Safari 3 left the beta program? You would think so, because, well it’s actually shipping in Leopard. But if you check out the Safari page on Apple’s website, it still reads Public Beta. What’s even more bothersome is that Apple doesn’t give you any indication on the Safari page whether the build available for download is newer than the build included with Leopard. Now, I’m a smart guy and I follow these things, so I know that Safari in Leopard is newer than the downloadable beta version. But the average joe won’t, and Apple gives them no way to tell if it is before you download it.

The WebKit team has continued to make improvements and fix bugs, even after Safari 3 shipped in Leopard. While I applaud Apple’s perseverance in improving Safari’s rendering engine, as a Web Developer, not having the definitive word on whether a browser is a release or not, can be troubling. It turns a target for development and testing in to a gray area. If I have a Mac customer who is seeing some strange issue with a site that I develop for them, is that issue resolved in the shipping version of Safari? And are there to be two shipping versions of Safari – one for Leopard users, and one for Tiger/Windows users?

Good luck asking Apple these questions. Transparency is not their policy. This is understandable for hardware products. But for software products that developers depend on, it is not.

Category: News