Safari 4 Beta

Hooray! A New Product.  Apple has recently released the first public beta version of Safari 4.  It was made available  to developers about six months ago.  On February 24, Apple released the first beta version of Safari 4.

What’s new?

Safari has always been there with their own twist on browsing the web.  Safari 3 is still considered one of the fastest browser.  There are a lot of new features, they actually put up a list called “150 features“. They are not all new,  only is 29 of them can be considered new for Safari 4. Some of these features have already been introduced by other browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome.

Safari team has borrowed couple of ideas from Google Chrome, first thing you will notice is the new look. They move the tab bar to top just like Google Chrome.  Here are some features you will notice with Safari 4.

  1. Windows Font Rendering:  Safari now use the standard rendering technique for its users. Which i think makes a lot of sense since they a lot of people who use windows use this software.
  2. Tabs on Top: Just like Google Chrome, they have the tab bar on top with their own touch of course.  More tabs you have less the tab size will be.  That’s the only difference.
  3. New Look :  Safari 4 for Windows doesn’t have that dark silver look. It is now more of a Windows application.
  4. New JavaScript Engine: With this new release, they are introducing a new javascript engine called “Nitro”. According to Apple, it’s 8 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1.  It is quite noticeable.
  5. Navigation: Almost all browsers have adopted this feature. When you open a new tab, it would show the thumbnails of most or recent visited websites.  I think it was introduced by Google Chrome.  Although, Safari is introducing this feature with its own unique way.  For instance, iTunes feature “Cover Flow” is now possible in Safari 4.
  6. Developer Tools: Safari is now an ideal tool to debug, tweak or optimize a web site.

Eye Candy or Best Performance?

I’d agree if they hadn’t change the way program operates.  First of all,  It’s noticeably faster. Second of all, some of those features are useful.  I think that product is going to grab a lot of attention and a lot of people will consider switching from IE, Opera, Firefox to Safari. Last of all,  Safari’s windows integration and standard font rendering are a plus for loyal windows users.