Check out this post by rakaz, which provides a quick walk-through on enabling the debug menu in Safari for Windows, which provides the ability to access JavaScript exceptions, show the JS console, enable a runaway JavaScript timer and turn off “Site-Specific Hacks”. This should make life a bit easier.
Windows
Safari's Font Rendering on Windows
I just ran across an interesting feature of the Safari 3 Beta for Windows. Apple has included a copy of Lucida Grande and Lucida Grande bold. But instead of dropping them into the main Windows font directory, where all apps could make use of it, the fonts are under the \Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources\
. So, sites that set Lucida Grande as the first font in their styles will look different in Safari than the other browsers in a Windows environment. Add the font smoothing capabilities built into Safari, and you can see some visible differences in text rendering on many sites across the Web when comparing IE, Firefox and Safari on Windows.
IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine
Microsoft has done a surprisingly cool thing – they have released a virtual machine for VirtualPC that has Windows XP pre-activated to make testing your design in IE 6 & IE 7 on the same machine even easier.
Virtual PC set free – further thoughts
After my initial post about Virtual PC and subsequent mailings to a couple of Web dev lists that I am subscribed to, I had a couple of interesting conversations on what this release means and why/if it is important. The question also came up as to whether or not the release is related to Apple’s BootCamp, which I asserted.
I do see a connection to BootCamp and Parallels. Virtualization is a powerful tool for develoeprs on any platform and I think Microsoft has recognized this about a step behind Apple, which has started to push this feature in one of the new commercials.
While Virtual PC won’t allow folks to run OS X software on a Windows box, it will provide a lot of folks the ability to set up a very cheap test environment for multiple operating systems and browsers, which will be important with the coming releases of IE 7 and Vista.
As a developer, I had been pondering the jump to OS X but held off for quite a while as I didn’t want to maintain a PC and a Mac at the same time. Once the Intel-based Macs came out and people started hacking the system to support XP, the need for a separate box for secondary/multiple OSes was gone. Now I can run multiple versions of Windows on my Macbook to test various OS/browser combos in addition to the Mac ones. Ultimately that means that Microsoft, and Windows-centric software makers will get less of my money (I won’t need to buy anything but the OS licenses) and Apple will gain another ardent user who has the ability to ensure his sites are compatible with their software.
This is an interesting battle as Apple sees itself as a hardware company that makes software and Microsoft views itself as a software company that produces products to work on most any “standardized” machine.
This may signal a new front in the war for computer market share; one that I hope will translate into more competition and improved features for all of us.
Virtual PC Set Free
Microsoft has set Virtual PC free. Makes me wonder if the folks in Redmond have taken notice of Apple’s free BootCamp or Parallel’s Desktop app. Use Virtual PC to “run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with the click of a button. Use virtual machines to run legacy applications, provide support, train users, and enhance quality assurance.” This is great news for those of us wanting to test IE 7 (or for that matter, Vista) without installing the beta on a production system. It will also prove useful once the full version is out, and we want to keep a version of IE 6 handy.
Right-click in XP on MacBook Pro
Add right-click to XP on MacBook and MacBook Pro – This should make life much easier while testing code on XP in Bootcamp, and I would assume Parallels as well.