Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Computer, Inc. for its Mac OS X operating system. The code for rendering web pages is based on Konqueror's KHTML engine. As a result, Safari's internal HTML engine is free software and is released under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License. Improvements to the KHTML code are merged with the Konqueror project. Apple also released additional code (known as WebCore) under an open source 2-clause BSD-like license. The source code for the rest of the browser, including Apple's external GUI, however, has not been not released.

Safari utilizes Apple's brushed metal user interface, a bookmark management scheme that functions like the iTunes jukebox software, is integrated with Apple's QuickTime multimedia technology and features a tabbed-browsing interface similar to that of Mozilla. A Google search box is a standard component of the Safari interface, as are software services which automatically fill out Web forms and which spellcheck entries into web page text fields.

Safari Beta 1 was released at the 2003 Macworld conference, and was refreshed in the spring of 2003. Version 1.0 was released in June 2003, and was compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 Jagaur and later. Safari version 1.1 was included with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, which was released on October 24, 2003. Version 1.1 included several rendering improvements, and was the first version of Safari to be set as the Mac's default browser.

Prior to the release of Safari, Apple had bundled Microsoft's Internet Explorer as its system's default web browser since 1997. Internet Explorer is included in the OS X 10.3 software package, but is no longer the default browser. Prior to 1997, Apple Macintosh computers had shipped with Netscape Navigator as their default web client.

Safari 1.0 browser sports a "metallic" user interface style
Screenshot of Safari 1.0.
Safari 1.0 browser sports a "metallic" user interface style.

Other Macintosh web browsers

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