Since Apple has decided to release Safari for Windows, it got me thinking, what’s preventing me from using Safari as my default browser for web development. Up until now, I had been using Firefox with a few extensions for web development: Venkman, Firebug, and Web Developer. It got me thinking, Apple is releasing Safari so Windows users can develop for the iPhone. I’m thinking that’s the main reason, and it might be nice to pull some of the marketshare as well. Since I primarily use Macs for my web development, I wanted to see if others were using Safari for web development and what their feedback has been.
I came across the Hicksdesign blog and there was an entry about using Safari in web development. They outlined some add ons for Safari. First, was the web inspector that can be enabled by using the nightly builds of Webkit found on Apple’s site. This is one of the features I had been using in Firebug and I figured this is something that was necessary in order to make the transition easier. The next add on was Safari Tidy. It much improves the view source functionality in Safari, indents the code properly, and checks for errors. That extension coupled with SafariSource and all the coloring is pretty similar to Firefox’s view source functionality. Since I’ve been writing a lot more JavaScript code for the Web 2.0/AJAX style sites I’ve been working on, the included JavaScript debugger Drosera seems to work just fine for me.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since I have been using Safari/WebKit as my primary browser. Overall, I’m pretty happy. Ever since Firefox came out I was using it and I figured I would see what was out there and if there was a better option for me. As of right now, I guess it’s too early to say which is better or not. Of course I always have to have the majority of modern browsers installed on my machines in order to keep my clients happy. Otherwise, I’ll continue to use Safari for web development and everyday surfing until maybe even something better comes along. If you use Safari for web development and have something to add, please feel free.
