“This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.” – Groucho Marx

Safari on the iPad is an absolute joy to use and the experience feels unique to the iPad, not just an enlarged iPhone experience like I had expected. For web junkies, this just might be the best web experience out there. Safari on the iPad is very close to Safari on a Mac, but revamped for a touchscreen operation system. So in a sense, Safari actually lives up to it’s name on the iPad. Unlike most mobile devices, like the iPhone, that give you bite sized mobile versions of websites, here you are getting full versions of these websites. Safari on the iPhone feels like a trip to the zoo while Safari on the iPad feels like a full fledged trip to the wild.

The web pages loaded quickly and then, similarly to the iPhone, you can use your fingers to scroll or pinch to zoom in and out. If you find yourself at the bottom of a lengthy page you can tap the silver frame at the top of the screen to snap back to the top. Navigating to and around sites is simple and intuitive. As expected, you can opt to sync your bookmarks with your Mac or create new and separate bookmarks for your iPad.

In addition to a much bigger screen to work with, there are several enhancements over the iPhone here. For example, Google will auto suggest as you are entering in your search terms and Safari will auto suggest as you are entering in web addresses. Also when you come across a link in a web page you’re reading and you want to open it in a new window simply tap and hold to bring a pop up menu with the option to Open in New Page.

The iPad does not allow for multitasking or tabs on the browser like the full version of Safari. Instead you can have up to 9 Safari pages open at a time and go back and forth between them.

Of course the one major thing missing is support for Flash. I don’t want to beat a dead horse here as it’s been discussed ad nauseum all over internetland, but not having Flash on the iPad is a big deal. For now. With the fact that Flash has its weaknesses and there are other alternatives out there combined with Apple selling a million iPad’s in less than 30 days and has already sold 50 million iPhones, I think it’s clear that the days are numbered for Adobe Flash. Many major websites have already revised their websites to make them iPad friendly, with many more to come. I’m sure that most iPad users would agree that Hulu is the one we’re all waiting for. I’m confident in 6 months or so the iPad will be able to take full advantage of just about everything the web has to offer. Meaning as fantastic as Safari is now it’s only going to get better.