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The Safari 3 Public Beta has launched and now there's a Windows version! Of course I immediately downloaded it but I found it something of a disappointment - when I ran it there was no text getting displayed anywhere at all (the title was blank, the menus were blank and no text on the page - I couldn't even type into the address bar). I tried re-installing, and I tried using Apple's newly provided update utility, which for some reason kept demanding to install iTunes, but no luck.

The solution was in Apple's support forums, delete the fonts from the Safari.resources folder. This at least got me a usable browser, but there are still some issues with fonts. The browser chrome is now rendering in Times Roman, which I'm sure is not the look Apple is going for, and it seems anything which is using particular font (like, for instance, whatever font is used by the admin theme on this blog, and whatever WebSense is using to tell me I'm wasting time at work) doesn't render. Although others have issues with Apple's font rendering, it seems to be only a few people having issues which are not cosmetic.

Even with the font issues it still looks quite pretty, but the other vices of Apple software are still present. Aside from a mindless insistence to install iTunes, updating Quicktime installed a quick launch shortcut without asking, added new links to my start menu without asking me where I wanted to put them and re-activated the status bar icon I have to turn off after every update. Similarly Safari inserts itself into the root of the 'All Programs' list without asking if I might have a better idea. All in all I think I might wait until the final release before attempting any serious use.

Update: Found a better solution to the Safari font issues - I replaced my Fonts.plist file with one from a colleague's working install, put the Lucida font files back, and now my chrome is rendering properly. Still missing fonts on a few web pages though.