Apple makes its flagship browser available to Windows users for free

At its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco today, Apple demonstrated several features of its upcoming Leopard operating system which DailyTech covered previously. The biggest software announcement however comes in the form of Safari, OS X's default web browser. Like iTunes, Apple is now making its Safari web browser fully compatible with Windows.

Safari 3 is available today via a public beta download. According to Apple, Safari is roughly twice as fast as Internet Explorer and is roughly 42-percent faster than Firefox in terms of HTML browsing performance.

Safari 3 for Windows comes with the following features:

* Pop-up blocking
* Tabbed browsing
* SnapBack
* Private browsing

New to Safari is the ability to drag tabs out of the main browsing window. Doing so will turn a tab into its own browser window. This feature is available on both Mac and Windows versions of Safari. Private browsing turns off caching features, allowing users to browse without worrying that Google searches and page histories are saved.

No word from Apple on when the final release of Safari 3 will come but it's safe to say that when Leopard ships in October, Safari 3 will be finalized.