Introduction Apple has just released today the first beta version of their forthcoming Safari 4.0 browser. Safari 4.0 is completely re-designed, and therefore quite different from previous 3.x versions. Here is a mini-review of the top new features with screenshots (taken on a Windows XP machine). Getting Started You can download Safari 4.0 beta. The size of the Windows setup file is approximately 25 MBs. Looking Chromey Upon the first launch of Safari 4.0 beta it didn’t take much time to realize that Safari 4.0 was heavily inspired by the design.

Well, we now have the Tabs located on top, UI icons reminding of Google Chrome, as well as the Top Sites page / feature. Top Sites Top Sites is showing your favorite sites in a thumbnail grid, which is pretty eye-catching. You can customize it easily, add / remove sites, or pin / lock them in a certain position.

Cover Flow Apple’s favorite navigation UI, Cover Flow, has made its appearance in Safari 4.0. You can now view your History and Bookmark sites in Cover Flow mode. Native Look and Feel on Windows Safari 4.0 is using the Windows fonts to render the web pages, as well as the Windows native UI controls (buttons, scrollbars etc).

Windows users who enjoyed the Mac OS style controls on previous Safari versions might be disappointed. The “x” button, which is closing each tab, is placed on the left-hand side of the tab. That’s a bit awkward for Web browsers, as in Firefox, Google Chrome, IE, Opera the tab closing button is always on the right-hand side! Moreover to re-arrange the position of a tab, you need to click on the according right-hand side icon of each tab and drag. Again re-arranging tabs is far more easier on the other browsers, even on IE7, and especially pretty cool / natural on Chrome.

Emotion symbol download for mac. If a key isn't designed to repeat in the app you’re using, copy the character to the clipboard.

You can also see the Downloads window on the above screenshot. It reminds of Firefox Downloads window, however without the search option. The “Preferences” window has not changed much since the last Safari version, here is a screenshot featuring the Windows native UI controls.

Enjoy the absence of the numerous OK / Apply / Cancel etc annoying buttons, which are found on other Windows applications. Search Dialog The search dialog is located on the left-hand side of the address bar, and upon typing something, the suggestions are coming up pretty fast!

Acid3 Test As expected, Safari 4.0 beta scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Performance Safari 4.0 is powered by the “Nitro Engine”, which according to Apple, executes Javascript more than 3 times faster then the current Firefox 3.0.x does. Well no doubt, while opening some pages for the review purposes everything was going on pretty fast. However the performance in terms of consumed RAM was terrible. 10 opened tabs - 240 MB of RAM!

Safari Download For Mac

Conclusion Safari 4.0 is definitely better than previous Safari versions, however the UI has yet to be perfected. The new options are well designed, and supplement the overall browsing experience. The so-called are still going strong. We are waiting for the Google Chrome Mac version, Firefox 3.1, IE8, Opera 10, and the final Safari 4.0 version.

Click to expand.There is an interesting bug in Safari 4, one that didn't exist in Safari 3, and that is that graphic hyperlinks only work if the site is displayed at 'normal' size, and not if the site is 'magnified' or 'reduced' in size. The bug is that regardless of presentation size, the click points remain constant at their positions in the 'normal' size. I reported this problem to Apple almost two months ago and find myself somewhat disappointed that it wasn't fixed in the final release. I've checked and the bug also does not exist in Firefox or Opera. The site, one I developed, has passed the W#C Validation Service with no errors. That site can be seen at. The error is in the hyperlinks attached to the four wedges at the bottom of each page.

Install Apple Safari 4

Click to expand.I just now established that a possibly related Safari 4 failure occurs when viewing the New York Times 'article skimmer' website at. In this instance the click points for the hyperlinks seem to remain correct regardless of magnification or reduction, but the positioning of the resulting 'pop up' activated by holding down the shift key while hovering over an article summary is incorrect, at least when compared to the behavior in Firefox. In Safari the position of the popup varies depending on magnification or reduction and in firefox the position of the popup is always directly atop the hovered over article.