Safari on Windows…finally

For anyone who develops websites on a PC that actually gives a hoot about anything other than IE (which should be everyone but you would be surprised) this is fantastic news. I have been researching a way to do this for at least a couple years. From running Kubuntu on a LiveCD and using Konqueror to get an idea, to looking into PearPC and never finding a copy of an older Mac OS to install, I have had enough of semi-solutions and 30 hoops to jump through just so I can make my websites look the same for everyone.

It does look like though, as I have read elsewhere, that “beta” finally means “beta” again. I downloaded the single install of Safari 3 (no QT) and installed it. No text. No text input. This seems to be a common problem as I read through the comments of the 456 Berea St. post.

Well, I look forward to having a full working version. No, scratch that, I am ridiculously excited about a full working version.

Safari 3 for Windows

Update: Finally got the thing working after a bit of work.

1. There are two fonts inside of C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources
2. Copy those (install them) within your C:\WINDOWS\Fonts folder
3. Start up Safari (it should still be broken)
4. Rename C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources to something else (I did C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources2)
5. Start up Safari (still won’t work)
6. Rename C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources2 (in my case) back to C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources
7. Now start Safari, you should see menus now and be able to enter addresses and the such
8. Now go to C:\Documents and Settings\(your login name)\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari\ (of course replace the login name with your login name, also you have to have hidden folders showing to get to this)
9. Open Fonts.plist with a text editor (as a general text/code editor I like Notepad++, but any editor will do) and add the following to the second dict

   <key>Times New Roman</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsTIMES.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Times New Roman Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsTIMESI.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Times New Roman Bold</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsTIMESBD.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Times New Roman Bold Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsTIMESBI.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Verdana</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsverdana.ttf</string>
   
   <key>Verdana Bold</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsverdanab.ttf</string>
   
   <key>Verdana Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsverdanai.ttf</string>
   
   <key>Verdana Bold Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsverdanaz.ttf</string>
   
   <key>Tahoma Bold</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontstahomabd.ttf</string>
   
   <key>Tahoma</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontsTahoma.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Trebuchet MS</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontstrebuc.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Trebuchet MS Bold</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontstrebucbd.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Trebuchet MS Bold Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontstrebucbi.TTF</string>
   
   <key>Trebuchet MS Italic</key>
   
   <string>C:WINDOWSFontstrebucit.TTF</string>

And that should do it for ya, at least it did for me. I’m not even gonna broach the topic of how Safari treats fonts and the difference between respecting the pixel grid and not, all I know is that somebody needs to create an “Open in Safari” context menu extension for my Firefox that I can put along with my “Open in IE” and “Open in Opera” to finally make my bug hunting setup complete.

Oh, one last note, if the installer refuses to even start, it’s because it won’t run on an account which the login name contains non-ASCII characters, or something like that. Solution? Create a new account (something simple maybe ^_^) and install it in there.

Update: I’m getting a Mac so I can run parallels.

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