Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Google has announced that they will release the Beta version of Chrome today (for Windows). They haven’t made it publicly available as of this writing, but have given some sneak peaks of it’s features, philosophies, processing, and design in a comic book.

Why is the type so blurry on Safari? Believe it or not, this is intentional.

Both Microsoft and Apple use a technology called sub-pixel rendering. This technology basically splits pixels into three parts (RGB), and allows for three times the resolution flexibility. Microsoft and Apple have two different philosophies when it comes to how to utilize this technology.

Joel Spolsky explains:

* Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.
* Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.

So, Apple is willing to over-anti-alias the type in Safari in an attempt to make it look prettier. Although the type rendered in Firefox and IE isn’t quite as “pretty”, it is much sharper and more legible. It is doubtful that Windows users will be willing to switch to the fuzzy text found in Safari any time soon.

Webkit is the application framework which Safari is built on, developed by Apple. It went “open source” in June 2005, but on June 11, 2007 (Safari 3’s release date) a Windows port was added. Leander Kahney from Wired said recently that it appears that Apple is turning Webkit into ” a big open-source development project to rival Mozilla”. Kahney also stated, “Unlike Mozilla, which has only a nonprofit foundation to back its efforts, two big companies are pushing WebKit: Apple and Nokia, which is using the technology for some of its smartphones.”

Just 3 days after it’s initial beta release, Apple already has a software update available for Safari.

“Changes in Safari 3.0.1 for Windows beta: Latest security updates”

Safari for Windows had only been released a matter of hours before “security researchers” began hammering away at it.

Thor Larholm wrote a PoC exploit in just 2 hours, and shared his method and thoughts in “Safari for Windows, 0day exploit in 2 hours“. The attack can use an installed Firefox application and the Gopher URL protocol (other “attack vectors” besides these could be available), but the actual vulnerability is provided by Safari. Thor also provides a direct link to a page that WILL crash your Safari browser on Windows just to demonstrate!

Aviv Raff was able to locate a memory corruption by running Hamachi (”a community-developed utility for verifying browser integrity, written by H D Moore and Aviv Raff”). More can be found at “Apple Safari for Windows - Out with a crash“

David Maynor found 6 bugs (4 DoS and 2 remote code execution), and reported them in his appropriately named article: “Niiiice…“.

“The world’s best browser. Now on Windows, too.”

On Monday, June 11, 2007, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had created a version of Safari of Windows.

Safari, which previously ran solely on the Apple Macintosh operating system, has approximately 4.9 percent of the browser business. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has around 78 percent, while Firefox has around 15 percent of the browser market.