If you are also excited about the new Safari Browser for Windows, please defer installing the beta version on your PC until Apple releases a new Safari patch the fixes the display problems.

The current version of Safari, which is more of an alpha version, has problems rendering text on web page, adding bookmarks and crashes often. The Safari support forums on the Apple website are flooded with complaints from Windows Users who are also facing similar problems while loading web pages inside Safari.

Infact, there seems to be a clash between the Lucida fonts bundled with Safari and the ones that are existing in your Windows fonts folder. If you use the Apple supplied fonts, your browser Menu bar, bookmarks and toolbars will either disappear or show greek characters.

Related: Fix Font Display Issues in Windows Safari

Look how the Yahoo! website appears inside Safari for Windows - the text near the Yahoo! services is not displayed while the news headline fonts are showing random characters:

One of the geeky solutions suggested is to manually edit the fonts.plist file in the c:\documents and settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari folder and restart the browser.

Add the following lines at the beginning of the second <dict> node the file:

<key>Verdana</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdana.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanab.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanai.ttf</string>
<key>Verdana Bold Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\verdanaz.ttf</string>
<key>Tahoma Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\tahomabd.ttf</string>
<key>Tahoma</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\Tahoma.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebuc.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Bold</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucbd.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Bold Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucbi.TTF</string>
<key>Trebuchet MS Italic</key>
<string>C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\trebucit.TTF</string>

Apple should quickly fix the problems in the Windows version of Safari else it may soon leave an average impression in the minds of Windows XP or Vista users.