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Safari (web browser)
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Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X. It was first released as a public beta on January 7, 2003, and is the default browser in Mac OS X v10.3 and later. It is also the native browser on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. Safari for Windows was released on June 11, 2007. Windows XP and Windows Vista are supported.
Since the release of Safari, its usage share has been steadily climbing. According to Net Applications, Safari's marketshare for May 2008 was 6.25%.
FeaturesSafari offers most features common to modern web browsers. In addition, some of these features are implemented in distinctive ways, while it also includes some unique to the browser:
- A tabbed browsing interface that allows dragging tabs to reorder them, moving them between windows or creating new windows
- A bookmark management scheme reminiscent of the iTunes jukebox software
- A resizable web-search box in the toolbar. This uses Google on the Mac and either Google or Yahoo! on Windows
- Pop-up ad blocking
- History and bookmark search including search of content in history pages
- As-you-type text search
- Spell-checking for all text entry fields
- Expandable text entry boxes, which can be resized by the user to make entering long texts easier
- Automatic filling in of web forms
- Built-in password management via Keychain
- Functionality for subscribing to and reading web feeds
- Quartz-style font-smoothing, even on Windows
- Integration of Apple's QuickTime multimedia technology
- Support for user-specified style sheets
- The Web Inspector, a DOM Inspector-like utility that lets users and developers browse the Document Object Model of a web page
- A high level of standards compliance through its use of the WebKit framework, including partial, preliminary support for CSS3 and HTML 5
CSS supportSafari features full support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), including partial support of CSS3. Safari 3 supports several experimental properties like text-shadow, text-stroke, box-shadow, border-image, multiple backgrounds for each element, resizeable elements, rgba and the CSS3 pseudo-element :first-of-type.
History and developmentUntil 1997, Apple Macintosh computers had shipped with Netscape Navigator only, competing with Internet Explorer 2.x and 3. Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Mac was subsequently included as the default web browser as part of the five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. However, Netscape Navigator continued to be included. Microsoft released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were bundled with the OS, with the last one, Internet Explorer 5 being released on March 27, 2000.
On January 7, 2003, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser based on KHTML rendering engine, called Safari. They released the first beta version that day and a number of official and unofficial beta versions followed, until version 1.0 was released on June 23, 2003. Available as a separate download initially, it was included with the Mac OS X v10.3 release on October 24, 2003, as the default browser, with Internet Explorer for Mac included only as an alternative browser. Since the release of Mac OS X v10.4 in April 29, 2005, Safari is the only web browser included with the operating system.
Safari uses Apple's WebKit for rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore (based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (based on KDE's JavaScript engine named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS, WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license.
In June 2005, after some criticism from KHTML developers over lack of access to change logs, Apple moved the development source code and bug tracking of WebCore and JavaScriptCore to OpenDarwin.org. WebKit itself was also released as open source. The source code for non-renderer aspects of the browser, such as its GUI elements, remains proprietary.
Version 2.0 of Safari, was released on April 29, 2005 and runs only on Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) or later. It includes a built-in RSS and Atom reader. Other features include Private Browsing (a mode in which no record of information about the user's web activity is retained), the ability to archive (using the proprietary .webarchive format) and e-mail web pages, the ability to search bookmarks, and a reported 1.8 times speed boost over version 1.2.4.
In April 2005, Dave Hyatt, one of the Safari developers at Apple, documented his progress fixing bugs in Safari to get it to pass the Acid2 test. On April 27, 2005, he announced that his development version of Safari now passed the test, making it the first web browser to do so. The changes were not initially available to end-users unless they downloaded and compiled the WebKit source code themselves or ran one of the nightly automated builds available at opendarwin.org. However on October 31, 2005, Apple released version 2.0.2 of Safari that included the Acid2 bug fixes.
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs formally announced Apple's iPhone, which uses a version of the Safari browser known as MobileSafari.
At the 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs announced Safari 3 for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. The Safari beta version for Windows had several known bugs and a zero day exploit that allows remote execution, upon its initial beta release on June 11, 2007, in version 3.0. The addressed bugs were then corrected by Apple three days later on June 14, 2007, in version 3.0.1 on Windows. On June 22, 2007, Apple released Safari 3.0.2 to address some bugs, performance issues and other security issues. Safari 3.0.2 for Windows handles some fonts that are missing in the browser but already installed on your computer, such as Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, and others. There is also a guide that allows the software to run under Linux with Wine. The final release of the Windows version (3.1 (525.13)) was offered as a free download on March 18, 2008.
At the announcement, Steve Jobs claimed that Safari is the fastest browser and, to prove this, he ran a benchmark, based on the iBench browser test suite, which gaining significant advantage for Safari over other browsers, live at the show. External measurement of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) load times suggested that Safari is the fastest browser on the Windows platform in terms of initial data loading over the Internet, but is tied with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox when comparing loading from caches.
On June 2, 2008 the WebKit development team announced SquirrelFish - a new JavaScript engine that vastly improves Safari's speed at interpreting scripts. The engine is one of the new features in Safari 4, released for developers on June 11, 2008.
CriticismDistribution through Apple Software UpdateApple Software Update, which is bundled with QuickTime and iTunes in Microsoft Windows, automatically selects Safari for installation when it is not detected on a user's machine. John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, stated that Apple's use of its updating software to promote its other products is "a bad practice and should stop." He argued that the practice "borders on malware distribution practices" and "undermines the trust that [software companies are] all trying to build with users." Apple has responded to Lilly's statement, saying that the company is only trying to ensure users have the latest updates to Safari, Apple also released a new version of Apple Software Update that puts new software in its own section, although still selected for installation by default.
PWN 2 OWN Browser ExploitAt the 2008 PWN 2 OWN security conference hosted by CanSecWest, an exploit in Safari caused Mac OS X to be the first to fall in a "hacker Super Bowl". Participants competed to find a way to read the contents of a file located on the user's desktop, in one of three operating systems: Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista SP1, and Ubuntu 7.10. On the second day of the contest, when users were allowed to physically interact with the computers (the prior day permitted only network attacks), Charlie Miller compromised Mac OS X within two minutes, through an unpatched vulnerability of the PCRE library used by Safari.
Microsoft security advisoryIn May 2008, Microsoft published a security advisory on their TechNet website, prompting Windows XP and Vista users to restrict using Safari as their web browser. The advisory says that Safari can be forced to download executable files and execute them on the user's desktop by visiting a malicious web site. Apple replied that they did not see this vulnerability as a significant threat.
In June 2008 Apple released 3.1.2 which addressed the problem.
End-user license agreementThe original end user license agreement for Safari on Windows was self-contradictory for several months, reading in part:
This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.
As personal computers running Windows are not Apple-labeled computers, with the exception of Intel-based Mac computers running Windows, it was impossible for most users of Windows to use the software and abide by the license agreement. Within hours of the story breaking, Apple changed the agreement to read:
This license allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on each computer owned or controlled by you.
Updates through Apple Software Update still contained the old license.
Version compatibility
Safari usually requires the latest system update in order to function. For Windows, these are Service Packs, and for Mac OS X, these are minor version releases.
Version history| Key: | Old Version | Current Version | Developer Beta |
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Mac| Major version | Minor version | WebKit version | Operating System | Release date | Features |
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| Beta | 0.8 | 48 | Mac OS X v10.2 | January 7, 2003 | Public Beta. Initial release at Macworld conference. |
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| 0.9 | 73 | April 14, 2003 | Public Beta 2. Tabbed browsing, forms and passwords autofill, browser reset (removes cookies, cache and so on), Netscape and Mozilla bookmarks importing, improved support for web standards, improved AppleScript support, more localizations. | | Version 1 | 1.0 | 85 | June 23, 2003 | First non-beta release. Safari is now default Mac OS X browser, faster autotabs, support for iSync bookmark synchronization, all Mac OS X languages supported, more AppleScripts to control browser, improved support for web standards. |
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| 1.0.3 | 85.8.5 | August 13, 2004 | Improves the Safari rendering engine to expand third party application support and delivers the latest security enhancements. | | 1.1 | 100 | Mac OS X v10.3 | October 24, 2003 | Released with Mac OS X v10.3. Improved speed, improved support for web standards, improved CSS support. |
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| 1.2 | 125 | February 2, 2004 | Improved compatibility with websites and web applications. Support for personal certificate authentication. Full keyboard access for navigation. Ability to resume interrupted downloads. LiveConnect support. XMLHttpRequest support. | | 1.3 | 312 | April 15, 2005 | Released with 10.3.9. Included most of the rendering speed and website compatibility improvements that were developed for 2.0. | | 1.3.1 | 312.3 | August 29, 2005 | Improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications. | | 1.3.2 | 312.5 | January 11, 2006 | Improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications. Requires 1.3.1 in order to install. | | Version 2 | 2.0 | 412 | Mac OS X v10.4 | April 29, 2005 | Dubbed "Safari RSS." Released with Mac OS X v10.4. Improved rendering speed and website compatibility. Integrated RSS and Atom reader. Integrated PDF viewer. Private Browsing mode and Parental Controls. Saving Websites completely using the proprietary WebArchive format. |
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| 2.0.2 | 416.11 | October 31, 2005 | Safari passes The Web Standards Project Acid2 test. | | 2.0.4 | 419.3 | 13 January, 2006 | Most widely distributed version of Safari 2. Last stable version released before version 3.0. | | Version 3 | 3.0 | 522.11 | June 11, 2007 | Public beta. Initial release at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Version for Mac OS X v10.4.9 and later. Improved searching within web pages. Drag and drop tabs, and the ability to save a group of tabs as a single bookmark. Live resizing of text input fields. Bonjour support for bookmarks. Initial SVG support. |
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| 3.0.2 | 522.12 | June 22, 2007 | Public beta. | | 3.0.3 | 522.12.1 | July 31, 2007 | Public beta. Latest security updates. | | 3.0.4 | 523.10 | Mac OS X v10.4-10.5 | October 26, 2007 | Officially released with Mac OS X v10.5 out of beta. Includes the ability to re-arrange tabs by dragging, improved web standards support, the ability to display SVG images, and integration with the Dashboard, allowing users to create widgets from ordinary web pages. For web developers, Safari 3 includes a new “Web Inspector” similar to the popular Firebug extension for Mozilla Firefox. |
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| November 14, 2007 | Officially released with Mac OS X v10.4.11. | | 3.1 | 525.13 | March 18, 2008 | Introduces support for CSS Web fonts and animations and improves support for SVG and HTML 5 media. Performance improvements. | | 3.1.1 | 525.17 | April 16, 2008 | Improved stability and added security updates. | | 525.20 | May 28, 2008 | Officially released with Mac OS X v10.5.3. | | 3.1.2 | 525.21 | June 30 2008 | Officially released with Mac OS X v10.5.4. | | Version 4 | 4.0 | 526.11.2 | Mac OS X v10.4-10.6 | June 11, 2008 | First developer seed. Includes SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter. Adds ability to save webpages as standalone web applications. |
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Windows| Major version | Minor version | WebKit version | Operating System | Release date | Features |
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| Version 3 | 3.0 | 522.11.3 | Windows
2000, XP, Vista | June 11, 2007 | Public beta, first release for Windows XP and Windows Vista (not supported on Windows 2000, although it will run on it) Has same new features as the version for Mac OS X. |
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| 3.0.1 | 522.12.2 | June 13, 2007 | Public beta, second release for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Major security updates. | | 3.0.2 | 522.13.1 | June 22, 2007 | Public beta, third release for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Security updates. | | 3.0.3 | 522.15.5 | August 1, 2007 | Public beta, fourth Windows release. Includes major stability enhancements, including a fix for a memory leak. | | 3.0.4 | 523.12.9 | Windows
XP, Vista | November 14, 2007 | Public beta, fifth Windows release. Fixes many UI behavior issues, though issues still remain. Is not executable on Windows 2000 (in contrast to 3.0.3). Added many shortcut functions found in most major browsers (for example, switching tabs). |
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| 523.13 | December 17, 2007 | Safari 3 Beta 3.0.4 Security Update: A security update meant to prevent cross-site scripting attacks was applied to the existing release of Safari. | | 523.15 | December 21, 2007 | Safari 3 Beta 3.0.4 Security Update v1.1: This update fixes an issue introduced with the previous security update “that may cause Safari to unexpectedly quit when browsing certain websites”. | | 3.1 | 525.13 | March 18, 2008 | First stable release of Safari for Windows. Introduces support for CSS Web fonts and animations and improves support for SVG and HTML 5 media. Performance improvements. Added automatic spell checker for searches. | | 3.1.1 | 525.17 | April 16, 2008 | Improved stability and added security updates. | | 3.1.2 | 525.21 | June 19, 2008 | Improved stability and added security updates. | | Version 4 | 4.0 | 526.12.2 | June 11, 2008 | First developer seed. Includes SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter. Adds ability to save webpages as standalone web applications. Added optional Windows native font rendering. Passes Acid3 test. |
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Mobile| Major version | Minor version | WebKit version | Operating System | Release date | Features |
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| Version 3 | 3.0 | 419.3 | iPhone OS 1.1.4 | February 26 2008 | Ability to save links to websites on the Home screen. |
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| 3.1.1 | 525.20 | iPhone OS 2.0 | July 11 2008 | Ability to save pictures, some web pages can be viewed in full screen |
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See also
External links- downloadable older versions of Safari for web testing
- Safari 4 preview can be downloaded here
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