Sex and the Safari

A certain space shuttle in the heavens above was hooked up with the International Space Station, releasing life forms into its anatomy. On a more down-to-earth approach, I decided to switch my office shuttle from 33 to 19. I had been noticing 19 for a long time and the allure finally got the better of me today during the return trip.

The verdict isn't good. The 2-by-3 seating made things very cramped. The chairs didn't recline and the overall suspension was so bad, I had to change the font size on my Opera Mini from smallest to medium. It was only then that I was able to read a Digg article, in spite of the severe wobbles, on yesterday's launch of Safari 3 (Beta) for Windows.

I had tried downloading Safari on my office workstation earlier during the day. While this was successful, installing wasn't. All attempts failed. I tried downloading again and the trajectory was the same yet again. That's when I gave up. The Digg article made me realize I wasn't alone in my tribulation. Anyway, my one-evening stand with 19 was over by the time I stopped reading the article that was full of negative vibes from the user community about Safari.

Reaching home, I flung myself at Mantu's laptop and downloaded the browser. The installation was without hiccups this time. One thing about the Mac that I always hated was the atrociously fluorescent-blue scroll bar while the rest of the native applications had a metallic look. Thoroughly incongruent. It seemed as if the original scroll bar had gone missing and was replaced by a cheap plastic replica from an Indian hardware store. Why on earth can't they come up with a more austere color like gray or buff?

To make matters worse, the scroll is shaped like a capsule sliding through a tube. Did Apple think that the Mac would be used only to goof around? Click on a text area on a web page...and yes, it's once again surrounded by a blue halo! The integrated progress bar in the address bar is, needless to say, also blue. While this may be good keeping uniformity in mind, I guess I was beginning to see blue all around. The starkest, of course, was the scroll bar. It was as glowing-blue as our tubelight or the scroll on Mantu's recently procured mouse.

All this blue will surely make folks remember the impotence pill, Viagra. I'm sure people will agree that such a fanciful color doesn't necessarily render itself well on all pages. Perhaps only kids' and porn sites are apt for it. But wouldn't people be more attentive to a certain other 'scroll bar' when visiting porn sites? ;) Digg even has an article calling Safari The Ultimate Porn Browser, albeit the reasons are entirely different.

Though there are downloadable skins that help change the overall look (including the candy colors) of the browser, I prefer the simplicity of nativity. However, I may be forced to ask for some show of skin if the ubiquitous blue begins to turn me insane. I suspect it has already begun to happen.

Page renditions are nothing spectacular. Text appears a lot thicker than via my Firefox. Certain sites (like Yahoo! Mail Beta & Blogger) are rendered partially paralyzed, though I shouldn't really blame Safari or the sites per se. I'm not warned when I close my browser with multiple tabs, in spite of setting the Preferences to the contrary. But this is only a Beta, so I'll arrest a harsh judgment.

Overall, I'm not really happy at my first time experience with Safari. But this wasn't a one-night stand. I'll occasionally try to experiment with it to spice up my life. But for now (and possibly for the rest of my life), I'm happily married to Firefox.

I'll change my blog's blue background soon!