Apple Announces Safari 4 Public Beta

[admin]

Apple Announces Safari 4 Public Beta
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Posted by: Glenn

Apple today announced the public beta of Safari 4, a new version their popular web browser for the Mac and Windows PCs. According to the company, Safari 4 is the world's fastest web browser. The "Nitro" engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. It's also the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Other new features in Safari 4 include the following:

- 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 so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.

Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard version 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001 or Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.11, a minimum 256MB of memory, and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire. Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor.



http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/1144.html

[scooper]

I've wanted CoverFlow in Safari forever. It's also super fast! So fast that's crashed on me three times already.

[g5g5]

I cannot wait to get home from work.
_________________
1.25GHz Mac Mini / 1.8GHz iMac G5 / 2.0GHz C2D Mac mini (2009)
4GB iPod mini / 2G iPod shuffle / 16GB iPhone 3G
Apple TV 2
iLife's a Bitch!

[usarcher]

Just downloaded it at work, it seems pretty nice so far. Guess what site was already at the top of my Top Sites page I really like this feature, get a snapshot of the page before you even go there to see if anything is new.

[milo]

It didn't work for me; changing between tabs quickly confused it and rendered it unusable. Specifically, I was not able to return to some tabs after I had viewed another.

[Huff]

I was hoping for the Mac mini update today, but I guess this will do. Actually, some of these new features rock. I just wish that I had a faster machine. The Cover Flow stuff is loading up really slow on my G4.

[WheelSpinners]

This is an awesome update. I really like the new search and Tabs on top, even though they copied that idea from Chrome. It's also way faster the Safari 3. I wish they would have keep the aqua status thingy in the address bar though. I liked that feedback.

[Ben Tex]

[Grover Time]

I just don't care for the tabs being on top. I wish there was an option to move them back down.

[Fox]

Can you use it alongside Safari 3, or does it replace 3? Safari 3 has been freezing up on me a lot of late, so this would be a good time to try 4.
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Mini 1: 2.3 ghz Core i5; 8 gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500 gb Seagate XT
Mini 2: 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb Seagate
Also a Cube, 13" MacBook Air, 20" 2.66 ghz iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, Mint & openSuse

[scooper]

[Cypher]

Just installed it and rebooted and immediately got the crash notifier.

but it started up ok and filled out my top sites list. I think that’s going to be a very useful feature.

Not sure on the tabs on the top that’s going to take some getting use to.

Quite happy with it so far as long as the crash notifier was a one off.
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

[Ben Tex]

[Rightondamark]

[Cypher]