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Safari (web browser) new beta released for Mac & PC!

Bob George

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Apple has released Safari 4 (public beta) for Mac and PC. I've had a little play around with it (on Mac) and here are my thoughts....

It's brilliant!

When you open up Safari 4 for the very first time it launches a windows displaying on of the best new features, Top Sites. This page displays your favourite sites in a very beautiful way.

Picture11.png

Example of Top Sites

One of the first thing I noticed was the new title bar. At the very top of the browser window where the webpage title is displayed is now also the tab bar. New tabs open across the title bar which save screen real-estate and just looks great. I haven't tried Safari 4 on Windows but I doubt this would be the same as the Windows title bar functions a little differently from the Mac title bar.

Picture9.png

Example of the tabbed title bar

Probably the most talked about new feature is the beautiful coverflow feature. You'll know coverflow if you have an iPod and use iTunes. It's a beautiful display feature and you can now use it to browse through your top sites, history and bookmarks. For example, in the below image I searched through my history for "Michael Jackson" and it displayed all the results in coverflow so I can see the pages without having to open them and find the specific one I want.

Picture10.png

Example of searching through history in coverflow display

It still has all the old features of Safari that we love like being able to drag and drop text and images from your browser to the desktop, expandable text boxes (a feature I'm using right now to type this), snapback search etc. and according to Apple it's still the fastest web browser. Not sure if this beta has actually been benchmarked yet to prove that. But I do know many tests proved that Safari 3 was the fastest browser. You'd assume the same for Safari 4.

This is a free web browser and it's available for Mac and PC. Don't waste your time with IE or Firefox, once you use Safari you realise how inferior they both are. I definitely recommend Safari 4. It's great even for a beta. Can't wait for the full release. I know you'd love it if you downloaded it. So just do it.
 
It kind of look like Google Chrome, and the Top Sites idea is also heavily 'borrowed' from Chrome, although made more 'elegant', the apple way.
Don't waste your time with IE or Firefox
Click to expand...
You really need to try out some Firefox extensions, trust me. :p Try 'Autopager', for example.
That said, I would really love to try it, but I'm not installing it because of the amount of crap Apple installs with their software.
I mean, I do NOT need the iPodSupportblabla.exe etc process when I install a web browser, for crying out loud.
 
Lassan said:
It kind of look like Google Chrome, and the Top Sites idea is also heavily 'borrowed' from Chrome, although made more 'elegant', the apple way.
Click to expand...
But one of the observations many people made about Chrome when it first came out was its likeness to Safari.

That said, I would really love to try it, but I'm not installing it because of the amount of crap Apple installs with their software.
I mean, I do NOT need the iPodSupportblabla.exe etc process when I install a web browser, for crying out loud.
Click to expand...
That is a valid criticism. I don't use Windows so I have no experience with using Apple software on a PC but I am told they try to force you to download other Apple software with Safari such as iTunes and Quicktime, vice versa when you download iTunes for Windows. Apple needs to make things a little easier for their PC customers.

Cnet has done a benchmarked the latest browsers, including the Safari 4 beta, and found that Safari is the fastest. It's 3.5x faster than Firefox 3 and 42x faster that IE 8!! Here's the chart:

pc_benchmarks1.jpg


And here's the full article: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49301219,00.htm
 
Cool, if i have time i'm gonna download it, i use firefox most of the time but started out on safari 3.2.1

At the moment i prever firefox but i'll give safar a chance.
 
i've never tried it on pc, but Safari runs smoother (and looks classier) on a Mac than Firefox does though it's definitely inferior when it comes to features and practicality. i tend to use both depending on what i want to do.

and Chrome's still acting like a beta, so i'm going to wait until a better version comes out. i've given up on updating and trying out unstable ish years ago. it's the only area in life where i'm a tight-arsed conservative at.

"don't let the tools dictate your work".
 
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