Apple released their first public beta of Safari 4 today, and being the app junkie that I am, I gave it a spin.
My overall impression: Safari 4 has some good improvements — the least of which is not speed — but has nothing revolutionary.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s new in Safari 4:
Tabs: The most notable UI change is having tabs on top. I like it for the simple reason that adding and removing tabs does not distract from the viewing window. The downside is that with the tabs on top the ability to drag tabs around has changed slightly. You can only do so from a grip on the right side. There is also the added risk of accidentally closing a tab when you are simply trying to move the entire Safari window around.
Cover Flow. Cover Flow comes to Safari 4 in Top Sites (see below) and a full history search (see that below, too). I’m not a huge fan of Cover Flow, but I like it for the history search.
Top Sites. Top Sites puts your most visited sites in a cool little window. You can “pin” sites, which will always keep them there. I’m sure this will be used by some people, but I’m not sure how or if I’ll use it.
History View. You can now see the websites in your history using Cover Flow, which I find useful. The extra visual cue helps locate something I need but didn’t clip or bookmark in Delicious.
Smart Address Field. This is better implementation, giving you a top hit and page names with URLs when you are typing in an address in the URL field. Unfortunately, it is not as smart as Firefox, which would find http://www.apple.com/safari/ just by typing “safari” in the field.
There are a couple of weak points in Safari 4:
Plug-Ins. Safari 4 crashes — or, more accurately, does not launch — with certain plug-ins installed. For me, that was Glims. Even with search improvements in Safari 4, I still like the search shortcuts, additional site searches, tab controls and search when typing offered in Glims.
Page zooming. When I zoom in and out on a page, Safari hangs. That’s bad. In fact, that’s very bad.
If you want more information about Safari 4, I’d recommend having a look at these pages:
Apple’s Safari page: You can download Safari 4b1 from here.
150 Features of Safari: This is Apple’s extensive list of Safari features, not all of which are new in Safari 4.
Hidden Preferences: Want your old tab bar back? How about the blue page loading status bar? This list will let you do that and more. (H/T Daring Fireball)
1Password functionality. If you use 1Password, like I do, then you can use this little hack to get 1Password functionality in Safari 4b1. That said, the way the 1Password developers update their app, you’ll have the fix in and update within 24 hours.HA! They actually updated 1Password before I finished posting this. Just left this point to show how responsive the guys at Agile Web Solutions are.MacWorld Review: It’s a review from MacWorld.
ArsTechnica Review: It’s a review. This time from ArsTechnica.
In the end, I like Safari 4, and I’m going to keep it loaded and use it as my default browser. I’m hoping Glims will add computability soon. Better yet, it would be nice if Apple would just add the functionality of Glims natively.
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