Safari Beta 4 Released OS X + Windows. Awesome so far ...

[Cody Overcash]

Safari Beta 4 is now available for download for both Windows and Mac from the Apple site. According to Philip Schiller, Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing "Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," going on to say "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."

Features

• Top Sites. This is the first thing you see when you open Safari. All your recent sites are arranged nicely in a grid. You can choose between Small Medium and Large which changes how many sites are shown. When you first start Safari this page opens up and the most recent sites you have visited appear as default. Clicking edit on the bottom left allows you to arrange and pin sites that you care about so they always show up. This is especially useful when creating a new tab since the Tops Sites screen pops up. Pin you most commonly used sites for quick access.
  
  
• Cover Flow. Apple loves their Cover Flow. In this new Safari 4 beta it is used to view through your Web History and Bookmarks. It does look awesome as along as you wait for it to catch up loading previews (I have countless bookmarks and such) otherwise it will just show a nice little black screen for preview. It looks awesome but in reality doesn't add any real functionality -- of course looking cool is half the battle.
  
  
• Tabs on Top. The Tabs have been moved to the top bar. This is actually a really awesome idea. The Menu bar area of Safari has a smaller vertical footprint than before because of this leaving just as much functionality while giving you more vertical webpage viewing are. One gripe. The close the tab is on the left of the tab instead of the right -- that's going to take some time to get used to. You also have to grab the right corner (where close tab used to be) to drag and rearrange tab order when before you could click anywhere in the tab but that makes sense since there is no top menu bar now -- you have to be able to grab somewhere to drag the entire window.
  
  
• Full Page Zoom. Zooming in full page not only zooms text, it zooms images as well. There is also a text only zoom available if you prefer. Quality while zooming in doesn't degrade much as well!
  
  
• Smart Address and Search Fields. The Address Field now provides you with options to select from your browsing history and bookmarks to select as you type in words to the Address Field. The Search Field also has been enhanced to show suggestions and recent searches. At the bottom to the enhanced search field is also the option to highlight the word you are searching for every time it is used in the current page you are viewing.
  
  
• Those are the major new features. Apple says they have a total of 150 features and you can find here.
• Missing feature. Automatic loading of all the tabs you already had open in your previous browsing session. Is that so hard to do Apple? FireFox does it.

Performance

The new features may be awesomely functional (for the most part) and look neat but they mean nothing if the browser is slow. Safari 4 Beta doesn't have an issue with speed. Apple boasts that Safari 4's new Nitro JavaScript engine executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Microsoft's IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Under normal use it feels a bit faster than the previous Safari (which was faster than its competition already) while loading normal web pages and there is a noticeable speed increase when loading pages with heavy duty javascript.

For the last few hours I have been using Safari 4 beta it has been a pleasure. I have to admit I am won over by the new features -- especially the tabs at the top. The eye-candy is something that I can't really complain about as well. On top of it all this new version of Safari is performing as well if not better than the previous version which was already a very quick browser. What puts this Safari over the edge is the bleeding edge support for web standards including both HTML 5 and CSS 3 which are the future of the internet and support some really cools things like highly polished gradients and mirror finishes (CSS 3) along with the ability to do more advanced offline webpages (HTML 5. If you haven't heard about Google's preview of their offline Gmail google it).

This is a pretty excellent browser especially for a beta. The Mac OS X version if of course better than the Windows version but I have to admit, with this release the Windows version is catching up quite a bit (it is better than IE7 any day). You can grab Safari 4 beta from Apple.

In case I wasn't clear enough above here is the one sentence summary:
Safari 4 beta is awesome on Mac and Windows.

Update

The folks at cnet did some benchmarking:
<img src="http://www.modmyi.com/images/safari4pc.jpg" width="400" height="256"><img src="http://www.modmyi.com/images/safari4mac.jpg" width="400" height="256">

Update 2

Some nice tricks to enable/disable hidden preferences have been discovered. Mac users just enter the following commands in Terminal and then relaunch Safari/Open new window. Windows users you can do the same thing by editing the Preferences.plist file located in Documents and Settings\Your Username\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari with your favorite XML editor.

Move the tab bar to its old location

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

Put back blue loading bar (use both commands) and move loading spinner back to the tab

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

Turn off the new address autocomplete menu

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO

Turn off the new search bar menu

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

Remove CoverFlow

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO

Disable dimming when you click on a Top Site

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapsho t -bool NO

Disable Top Sites

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

Undo your changes

defaults delete com.apple.Safari <key>

[dale1v]

OMG. one1. I kneel.

[Grassmasta]

While it is pretty, I'm feeling like it lags a little in speed from Google Chrome. However, chrome isn't that stable (I get "ahh snap!" quite often). I'm gonna give this a fair shot though. Thanks for the heads up yo!

[luiz]

i<3it

[LastSonOfKrypton]

Thanks for the update. I'll definately check it out

[mcrider]

Drats--Can't install because I'm on a Hackintosh and can't upgrade my version of leopard to 10.5.6 (which it requires), and can't install the Tiger version because I am using leopard.

[dale1v]

Drats--Can't install because I'm on a Hackintosh and can't upgrade my version of leopard to 10.5.6 (which it requires), and can't install the Tiger version because I am using leopard.

I was on 10.5.6 before my ancient hard disk failed.

[Knievel]

It opens faster and it looks beautiful on Vista.
I like it.

[mcrider]

Well I had to check it out so I put it on my laptop. How come no one mentioned the developer tools? They're awesome! You can view the inspector inline on the page like FireBug, it has a good JS debugger, and a database inspector. Cool stuff.

[SuperJoker]

Woot, awesome!!

[MetallicaFan1991]

Meh, I've tried Firefox and Safari but always end up using Internet Explorer.

[idolpunk]

looks cool, gonna check it out

[Cody Overcash]

Well I had to check it out so I put it on my laptop. How come no one mentioned the developer tools? They're awesome! You can view the inspector inline on the page like FireBug, it has a good JS debugger, and a database inspector. Cool stuff.

weren't those added in safari 3?

[mrblader]

Just tried installing, it said I needed 10.5.6..... I never updated from the factory 10.5.3 because I herd one of the new updates Killed the DFU while trying to jailbreak.

Is this the case still for 10.5.6???

I would really love to try this out, but wont bother if the DFU mode wont work on my phone.

[Cody Overcash]

Just tried installing, it said I needed 10.5.6..... I never updated from the factory 10.5.3 because I herd one of the new updates Killed the DFU while trying to jailbreak.

Is this the case still for 10.5.6???

I would really love to try this out, but wont bother if the DFU mode wont work on my phone.

10.5.6 broke DFU. You can patch it fairly easily.

Oh and if you haven't patched OSX 10.5.6 the devs posted a neat little guide:

As noted previously OS X 10.5.6 introduced a bug that affected the use of DFU mode. with some Macs. There have been previously published hacks and techniques to fix this, but here is another method that can be used to easily restore functionality.

1. You will need an account with ADC (Apple Developer Connection) this is free and takes a few minutes to sign up, you should read the terms and conditions carefully and you should only sign up if you are thinking of developing applications in the future - Apple Developer Connection - Mac Dev Center
2. Download the disk image “IOUSBFamily-315.4-log.dmg” for Mac OS X 10.5.5 Build 9F33” (yes, that is a “5” in 10.5.5 - this is a developer debug package of the USB kernel extension).
   Unplug non-vital USB equipment, such as external DVD writers, USB scanners, USB mass storage devices,
3. Unplug non-vital USB equipment, such as external DVD writers, USB scanners, USB mass storage devices, at the most leave a Keyboard and Mouse connected.
4. Install IOUSBFamily-315.4.1.pkg from within the disk image
5. Reboot your system!
6. Perform necessary DFU activity with QuickPwn or PwnageTool.
7. To get back to how you were before the patch (stock 10.5.6)
8. Download the disk image “IOUSBFamily-327.4.0-log.dmg” for Mac OS X 10.5.6 Build 9G55”
9. Install IOUSBFamily-327.4.0.pkg from within the disk image
10. Reboot your system!
11. Reattach your USB peripherals.

[ericidle]

Its working well on my pc running Win7 build 7022 much better that IE8 beta and also much more polished release that M$ can manage which tells a lot dont you think!!

Having said that I'm much happier with Win7 than I was with Vista...............just can justify a mac to myself

[jamesgunaca]

Two questions:

1) Does it support application windows like Chrome does?

2) Does anyone know if they've improved on multi-touch support for the current gen MacBooks?

Firefox 3.1beta2 sports some nifty multi-touch gestures compared to Safari 3:

In both:
Three-finger swipe left/right = back/forward navigtaion

In FF 3.1b2
Three-finger swipe up/down = top of page / bottom of page navigation
Two-finger pinch/un-pinch = zoom-in / zoom-out
Two-finger rotate = navigate between tabs


I've avoided using Safari 3 on my new MBP because of the quickness of the FF3.1b2 as well as the enhanced multi-touch features that Safari doesn't yet boast.

I'll test Safari 4 when I get home...on a PC at work and just can't give up Chrome for Safari.

[mcrider]

weren't those added in safari 3?

Most of it yes, but not this well designed and without certian features. See Apple - Safari - 150 Features - Learn about the features available in the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser.

[[email protected]]

Been Using it all day and its great...However I really miss the blue address bar progress indicator. Kinda confuses me the way it is now...

[sziklassy]

I think this is the first time I have ever been "wowed" by Safari... time to try this thing out!