Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Safari

Safari is the Apple-built browser that began shipping with OS X 10.3 (Panther) in late 2003 and is now the default browser for Macintosh. It uses the WebCore layout engine, which is based on Konqueror’s KHTML layout engine . Safari 2.0 (also known as Safari RSS) was released in 2005 along with OS X 10.4 (Tiger), just two days after David Hyatt, the lead developer on Safari, and his team managed to make Safari the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid2 test . Until Safari 2.0.2, which is just getting disseminated, no significant improvements to CSS handling or support had been made since Version 1.1, so that is what we will address here.

Tip

The Acid2 test (http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/) was released in mid-April 2005 by the Web Standards Project as a way for makers of web browsers and web design tools to test their adherence to mature web standards. As of this writing, development versions of iCab and Konqueror have passed the test, and Opera should pass by the time this book publishes. On October 31, 2005, Safari 2.0.2 became the first publicly released, non-beta, non-preview browser to pass Acid2.

Konqueror is the web browser and file manager/viewer part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) and is quite popular on Linux/Unix operating systems. Currently, its market share is too small for it to be discussed here, but the developers are working to integrate much of the work on Safari’s WebCore layout engine back into KHTML.

At this point in time, there ...