Feb 24

Safari 4 Review

Apple released Safari 4 beta into the wild today (pun intended), with a new look, and new features it really does pack a punch. I’ll be looking over several of Safari 4’s new features.

Screenshot of Safari 4

Interface Changes

Tabs: Safari 4 sports a new implementation of tabs. Tabs are now at the top of the window, which in my opinion looks far too similar to Google Chrome’s implementation of tabs.
Chrome's Tabs Vs Safari 4's Tabs
Visual History: Viewing your history is now graphical. Using Cover Flow, you can easily view your history visually. It is a pretty nice feature, and Cover Flow is being used in more and more of apple’s products.
Viewing The History In Safari 4
Top Sites: When you opened a tab in safari 3, it would just bring up a blank page. Now in Safari 4 there is a “wall” of your top visited sites.
Top Visited Sites

Rendering Engine Changes

Acid 3: The new version of WebKit that is included allows Safari to pass the acid test with flying colors. Safari 3 only achieved a 39/100.
Nitro Javascript Engine: The new javascript rendering engine makes Safari’s rendering 4 time faster than Firefox 3

There are over 150 new features in Safari 4, so I couldn’t cover them all in one blog post, so I tried to highlight the most interesting features. To view all the changes you can check out Apple’s Safari Features Page

Bugs/Problems

Apple Mail: After installing Safari 4 Mail.app crashes about every 30 seconds. It is due to the new version of WebKit that is installed with Safari 4. This is caused by the GrowlMail plugin, if you disable it it fixes the problem.
1Password: 1Password does not officially support this release of Safari 4, but it does support the Developer preview, to get it to work in Safari 4, go to 1password.app>Contents>Resources>SupportedBrowsers.plist and change 5528.1 to 5529 (Thanks Martin!)

6 Responses to “Safari 4 Review”

Tom, on February 24th, 2009 at 10:20 am Said:

The wall of most-visited is another Chrome feature, too. Still, that’s definitely a good feature to swipe — now if only Firefox had it!
Brendan DeBeasi, on February 24th, 2009 at 10:23 am Said:

Yeah, It’s like Google Chrome: Safari Edition, but all the new features are well-implemented, and look very polished.
Joe Bloggs, on February 24th, 2009 at 10:57 am Said:

If you’re seeing Mail crash you should check if you have GrowlMail installed. If so, remove it and the crashing will probably stop.
Tom von S., on February 24th, 2009 at 11:08 am Said:

Disabling GrowlMail solved the Mail.app problem for me
Caleb F. S., on February 26th, 2009 at 11:18 pm Said:

I just did the Acid 3 test for Safari 3.2.2 and it scored better than it first did: 77/100. SO, it has been improved…by a lot. Then it was improved even more in version 4 Beta if it got 100/100. That is good progress.

I also just tested Firefox 3.0.6 using the Acid Test. It got a 69/100. So, not better than the current version of Safari, but definitely better than the first. I just thought I’d give that trivial information. IE 8 did even worse..20/100.

There is a list of 150 features that they have either added or improved in Safari version 4 Beta (http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html). It looks like they are adding parental controls as well as Phishing protection, Malware protection, and Anti-Virus integration…among others. So, apple HAS created their best browser yet. Much better than versions 1, 2, and even 3!! I cannot wait for the full release so I can update to it!!
Pinderkent: Responses to the release of Safari 4 Beta., on March 7th, 2009 at 10:01 pm Said:

[...] Safari 4 Review: A general review of the new and updated functionality, but also mentions bugs and problems relating to Mail.app and 1Password. [...]