Apple, if I were a teacher, and you turned in a term paper with no titles, I’d have to give you a failing grade.

This is how I felt when I decided to load Safari on my Windows XP computer. This week I read about Apple coming out with Safari for the Windows environment, and thought OK, I’ll give it a try. Now, I understood that the software was in beta form, but I did not think it was at an alpha stage.

The installation went fairly smoothly, except I was given an option to Install Bonjour Service. Confusing to say the least since I was expecting to be installing Safari. The installation screen reads:

Bonjour for Windows enables Safari to detect shared devices on your local netwok and make them available to you. For example, you can view and configure shared printers available through Bonjour, without any complica…

Was that last word complications?

Well, let me tell you of complications with the Safari for Windows XP Pro.

After going through the install, I launched Safari, and the first impression was all the menus were missing. They had little dashes – present in place of the menu items. Not only were the menus missing in the tool bar area, but the Apple website was missing large amounts of information and data. See the Safari screen shots below.

Apple Safari Missing Menus

Apple Safari Screen Shot With Missing Support and Menus

FYI, I also have a Mac PowerPC G5 desktop computer, running Mac OS X, version 10.4.9 and did the install of the new Safari on that platform prior to installing it on my Windows platform. So, I knew what it was supposed to look like.

I tried a number of fixes for the problem. Tried downloading the complete package again, with QuickTime included and then uninstalled and reinstalled Safari. I still had the same problem. I hate spinning my wheels on something that should work, but at the same time I hate giving up. So, I placed the issue on the back burner until today. After doing some research online, it appears that many people are having the same no menus problem.

I went to the Apple forums area for Safari for Windows and there is quite a collection of talk going on about this problem.

See the threads: Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows

and all the various forum talk for missing menus:

Apple.com > Support > Discussions > Safari

There is a fix for the font issue. Fix font issue in Safari for Windows. However, I feel that it is a workaround solution at best. Apple, if 99.9% of all my Windows programs function properly, I should not have to use special treatment for Safari.

Letter to Apple

To be honest with you folks, I have not been a particular fan of Safari on the Mac for quite some time. Most people that have a Mac have switched to Firefox a long time ago, in order to have a better browsing experience. Pages that would not be displayed properly on Safari, would be displayed fine on Firefox. Safari has to be more forgiving, if you wish people to take up the use of it as their main browser.

As an Internet marketing marketer, I have had to verify different websites for various customers across a broad spectrum of industries. So, having more than one browser, and more than one computer system is a prerequisite for website development.

Don’t dismiss this so lightly. If you say, that if website developers were to program their pages to certain standards, then everything would work properly in Safari. No, with so many people using the Windows environment, this argument is foolish indeed.

Now, you are trying to make the step into the Windows browser environment. I applaud your thinking, and think it will be good in the long term for both the Apple brand and giving the consumer more choices, but in the short term you are frustrating many individuals and not exactly helping your brand image.

So, for the moment Apple, I have to give you a failing mark. Go back and rewrite your code. Give me titles that I can read. Let me see the text in websites. Don’t be afraid to use some color. I’ll give you another chance, but don’t short change yourself or your long time fans. Give me something that I can write home about.

Sincerely,

Jim Warholic
President of Professional Web Services, Inc.