Safari 4 Public Beta

I’ve never tried reviewing a piece of software before, so I don’t know exactly how this is going to turn out...but I’m going to have a go at it anyway. Apple recently released a public beta of the newest version of its web browser, Safari. Among the browser’s new features are two worth noting - the new location of the tabs for tabbed browsing, and the Top Sites splash page.



In Safari 4, Apple changed the way tabs are displayed when you enter tabbed browsing mode, moving the tabs from their former place under the bookmark bar (or under the toolbar, if you don’t have the bookmarks bar displayed) to the top of the window. Apple’s stated purpose for the change is to let you see more of the window you’re browsing, reducing the housekeeping clutter at the top of the window by up to one-third. It’s a lttle odd to get used to at first, but I didn’t find it off-putting, although some in the Mac community are grumbling about it.

The behavior of the tabs doesn’t change (much): CMD-T opens a new tab; CMD-C closes the current tab; and using the left and right arrow keys while holding down CMD and SHIFT lets you move from tab to tab. The only change is that you have to click on the adjustment triangle in the top right corner of the tab to change the tab’s position - you used to accomplish this by clicking anywhere on the tab and moving the mouse left or right.



The other new feature of note is Top Sites, a graphical splash page that displays the front pages of the sites you visit most often. Click on any of the pages and it swooshes up to fill the window as though you were loading it normally. Top Sites can display images in small, medium, and large sizes - the smaller the image, the more sites fit on the page. Small images lets you see your 24 most-visited sites; medium displays 12; and large shows 6. If one of the images has the top right corner peeled back to show a blue background with a white star, that means the site has been updated since you last visited. An edit button at the bottom of the page lets you delete any of the displayed images (the remaining images all move up one spot and the next site in line assumes the last position). Click on the Search History button and you can see your most recently visited sites in Cover Flow format, just like iTunes lets you view songs by cover art, sort of like fanning through songs in a juke box.

I do have a few minor quibbles with the new browser, though. There’s no longer a button you can push to stop a page in mid-load (although there is a keyboard shortcut to accomplish this), and the advancing blue bar showing page load progress in the address window is gone; but those are honestly very minor quibbles. It’s a solid piece of software, and it even feels a bit zippier than Safari 3. All new browser versions claim that they are the fastest browser ever in the whole history of the Internets, but this is the first time I can remember going to a new version of a browser and even having the vaguest sense that it’s actually faster than its predecessor.

Now, like I said, this is the first time I’ve ever written a sort-of review of software, and I’ve only been using the new public beta for a couple of days, so these are just first impressions, and not meant to be an all-inclusive list of new features. Click here to get more information on the new features from the Safari page on Apple’s website. Safari is a free download available for both Mac and Windows - so even if you haven’t had the good sense to buy a Mac yet, you can still benefit from the excellence of Apple’s software.