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Apple announced a public beta of Safari 4 today with the "Nitro" engine that runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.

"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."

 

The new public beta is available as a free download from Apple's website for both Mac and Windows.

 

085934-safari4.jpg

 

Apple details the new features found in Safari 4:

- Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;

- Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they've seen before;

- Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes;

- Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;

- Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;

- Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;

- Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text;

- Developer Tools - built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and

- Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars s

 

http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

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https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/154735-safari-4-public-beta/
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Can't say i like it.. first off, its hard to drag the tabs around only able to do so by holding on to the tab corner. and then the add tab button is too far right.. I personally still drag the whole windows from the top edge portion of the window, and now having it crowded with tabs.. i can accidentally drag on the tab corner and end up dragging one tab out of the browser.. or click onto the tab close button.. errr..so... whats the deal with apple's usability? me back to firefox

 

good thing that it now has full page zoom tho.. i really wanted that for safari.

Wow, I think I like it.

 

Top Sites is really cool. I can have that up and watch all the sites I normally check and see the stars come up as the sites change, begging me to check them out.

 

Another feature that will turn into a time waster, I'm afraid. But totally cool, lol

Innovation, [in-uh-vey-shuhn], noun

 

1. The act of copying other web browsers.

 

2. The inclusion of features that have been available in Firefox, Chrome, and Opera for quite a while now.

 

Don't get me wrong though, I'm liking it a lot more than Safari 3. Especially the Windows version, due to the fact that it ACTUALLY BLENDS IN WITH WINDOWS. : D

 

I still prefer Firefox though.

I tell you: If we fart, we stink, but when Apple farts... it's another new innovation. I mean, why does everything Apple writes has to be so darn cocky?

 

Question: "Why does Apple compare this Safari Beta against the current version of Firefox, instead of the much faster Firefox Beta with the new JS engine? Well done Apple, but no thanks.

 

FYI: Here's a link where this started back in September 2008, by Mozilla!

http://nightly.webkit.org/ <-- remember that url and live by it, no need to wait for apple to update their consumer {censored}.

 

also if your on the bleeding edge of browsers heres the next firefox : http://www.mozilla.org/projects/shiretoko/

 

-D-

Question: "Why does Apple compare this Safari Beta against the current version of Firefox, instead of the much faster Firefox Beta with the new JS engine? Well done Apple, but no thanks.

 

I'm a big Firefox fan but Apple's Nitro is faster than Tracemonkey (javascript is one of Webkit's huge strengths). On top of that, Tracemonkey may get cut from the final release of Firefox 3.1.

I tell you: If we fart, we stink, but when Apple farts... it's another new innovation. I mean, why does everything Apple writes has to be so darn cocky?

 

Question: "Why does Apple compare this Safari Beta against the current version of Firefox, instead of the much faster Firefox Beta with the new JS engine? Well done Apple, but no thanks.

 

FYI: Here's a link where this started back in September 2008, by Mozilla!

 

Firefox 3.1? Outdated much. I'm on 3.2 nightlies bro.

Some great new features and definite speed improvements - less RAM usage and less CPU usage while going faster than ever.

 

Had to run these three terminal commands before I got it the way I like it:

 

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

 

^

 

These two reset the blue progress bar. Can I ask why they'd remove that? Seems silly to me.

 

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

 

^

 

This one resets the awful tab bar, and made my theming application Safari-friendly! Double bonus!

 

Unlike cover flow, I find I'm actually using this top sites shit. It's kind of neat honestly.

Rubbish. Now I now I know I won't be switching to Safari anytime soon.

 

Cons:

-Can't double click to open tab - it minimizes window instead

-Need to click on the right edge of the tab to drag the tab - instead of drag tab from anywhere.

-Can't close a tab using mouse wheel.

-Tab bar at the top with the decreased usability of the tabs is an absolute nightmare!!

-Opening a new page from the "top sites" page is a bit sluggish.

-Blue progress bar removed from address bar - just a spinning wheel instead.

-The "top sites" feature is a rip off of "most visited" menu of firefox.

 

 

Pros:

-Score 100 in acid3 test!! Yay

-Seems to handle websites much better than safari 3 and even Firefox.

-The new "top sites" page is really useful, but still needs a lot of work!

 

This is just my first impressions. I haven't had the time to review it all, but that was enough to make me stick with firefox.

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