What’s new in Safari 4; what works and what doesn’t
If you have already downloaded the public beta of Apple’s WebKit-based browser, you may noticed that it’s fast. But how fast is that and does this latest version of Safari break anything in the process?
Yes, of course, you could and should read Apple’s What’s New in Safari 4 page, but that will only give half the picture.
Nice improvements
For example, one of the first things I noticed after installing and firing up Safari 4 was that Inquistor, a Google searchbar enhancer, was broken. Big deal? Hardly, because Apple’s baked search suggestions into the Google search bar.
Top Sites is yet one more riff on Apple’s cover flow viewing tech.
Another thing that Safari 4 beta breaks is 1Password support. However, the fine, fine people at Agile Web Solutions had posted a beta fix within hours, so a fully tested update should be available any moment now.
“Even though some of Safari 4’s new features seem like they are borrowed from competitors’ applications, it clearly sets itself apart as a top-class Web browser. Meanwhile, if you would like to browse the Internet, iTunes style, you can download the Safari 4 beta from Apple’s site”—Daniel Ionescu at PCWorld
Safari 4’s “Tabs on Top” feature is taking some getting used to, but I think I will have gotten over the headache (seriously) in another day or two. That is, it is really super hard to get my eyes to move that quarter inch higher, but I’m thinking that extra skinch of display space will be worth the effort (see also, Safari 4 beta: Put tabs back where they belong).
“[W]hile the user interface improvements overall catch Safari up to the competition and in some cases surpass it, the fact that extensions are missing is an egregious oversight given how powerful Mozilla has shown them to be with Firefox”—Stephen Shankland at News.com
See also:
—Safari 4 Beta First Impressions, Cult of Mac
Testing and graphic by LifeHacker
Lastly, Apple touts Safari 4 beta as being “X” times faster than Internet Explorer (or whatever) and Lifehacker’s benchmarking bears that claim out. However, I’ve found the speed improvements to be spotty with some sites just wicked fast and others as fast / slow as ever.
Conclusions
All in all I’m quite pleased with Safari 4 beta. Yes, some folks have experienced problems, including issues with Mail, and they’ve gone so far as to uninstall the application in frustration.
On my 2.1GHz MacBook running OS X 10.5.6, Safari 4 beta has crashed twice, but has recovered without incident, which is roughly on par with how Safari 3 would behaved on any given day. So, there are features that actually matter and it is faster, while being neither more or less stable, which on the balance puts me ahead.
How is Safari 4 beta running on your Mac or PC? There’s a lot to talk about…
What’s your take?
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February 25th, 2009
Blazing speed, and much sharper rendering – zoom adjusts the frame as fonts increase in size – great improvement. Zoom button can be added using ‘Customize Toolbar,’ and tabs are easily navigated through using [control Tab]. Top Sites is innovative and well implemented, as is Cover Flow for History and Bookmarks, which are completely searchable. Great upgrade, overall.
February 26th, 2009
Whoa. Safari 4 is awesome. No problems encountered.
February 26th, 2009
I had an issue (albeit small) with Mac MSN, when you click off the conversation it doesn’t leave a cursor there, so when you go back onto the conversation you have to keep clicking the conversation to type… small i know but it was annoying enough for me to uninstall the beta.
I do like the Coverflow, but i couldn’t work out how it displayed sites, because it displayed some sights that i hadn’t bookmarked. As for speed i think it’s a vast improvement, even now working on the regular safari i was surprised to see how fast it actually loaded sites.
March 2nd, 2009
Could not get Coverflow on my PC… Does it just work on the Mac.?…I especially enjoy using the preview sites on Google Chrome..
March 2nd, 2009
If you’re running XP or later with DirectX 9 or later installed, you should be OK. Are you sure DirectX up to date and activated?
March 17th, 2009
I found tag logs when refreshing the safari 4.0 beta for all the sites
March 17th, 2009
I found tag logs when refreshing the safari 4.0 beta for all the sites
March 23rd, 2009
I found that I couldnt open a new tab or open some webpages in another tab (clicking and holding apple key) i also didnt notice a noticable improvement in speed! but that may just be my internet provider sucking as usual.
Is there anyway to pick what websites come up on the top sites view? i noticed that the images of the pages have little thumb tack symbols, but i didnt notice them actually doing anything? I want to use top sites to replace the bookmarks bar, but it keeps putting webpages that i visit rarely in, its almost like having a history all over again! any ideas anyone?
March 23rd, 2009
Yes, drag and drop:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090224100956157