Safari 4 Beta – Pros and Cons and More

Safari 4 beta – is it worth a try?

There’s a lot of buzz about the Safari 4 beta released to the public this past week. Here are a few bits of info gathered around the web, to help you decide if you want to try the beta version, or to give you a chance to get ready for the final release. I haven’t tested Safari 4 myself, so I won’t go into detail, but here’s some of the more interesting info I’ve come across. One thing to remember if you want to try Safari 4 beta out: Remove any Safari plugins or input managers (unless they have been specifically updated for Safari 4, such as 1Password). Otherwise the beta will crash on startup every time.

Computerworld.com Review of Safari 4 beta

Ryan Fass writes at Computerworld.com offering an in depth review of the new browser. His review is entirely positive, without the criticisms found in other articles. It’s worth a read to better understand the new features built in to Safari 4beta.

First Look: Safari 4 Beta

Rob Griffiths writes for Macworld.com about the new release, emphasizes the speed of the new browser and lists some of the new features, with links to more info about features, differences between Safari 4 beta and Safari 3, Firefox 3.0.6, Opera and other browsers. He also mentions tweaks and tools available for Safari 4. Read his article here.

More about features

Apple’s 150 Features page describes all the new goodies that will make our browsing life so much better. They may even be right…

Ajaxian.com talks about the Safari 4 beta’s new features, as Apple see ‘em: Speculative Loading (loads docs, scripts and style info for a page ahead of time, so they are ready when you need them), CSS Effects, CSS Canvas, Acid 3 Compliance, Nitro JavaScript Engine and HTML5 Offline Support are described briefly

theAppleBlog has an article about the new browser as well, listing new features. They find it faster to render and load pages, and outlines new features.

ZDNet has a bit more insightful article, covering the new features but commenting on potential negatives for new users as well.

Safari’s new tabs: Love ‘em or Hate ‘em?

Dan Frakes wrote a great article for Macworld.com outlining some of the pros and cons for Safari 4 beta tab treatment. It’s different from Safari 3 in a number of ways, but the main difference is that the tabs are on top of the window, replacing the title bar.

Dan lists a number of advantages and disadvantages, and links to a hidden setting to restore the interface to Safari 3′s interface, as well as to ways to tweak Safari 4′s interface. Rather than list them here, I would prefer that you read his article in full.

MondoMouse complements Safari 4′s tabs

Dan Frakes wrote another article about using MondoMouse to navigate and select tabs in Safari 4 beta.

Defending Safari 4 Tabs

Manton Reece feels that the new tabs in Safari 4 are not so bad, but he does point out several usability problems, including potential tab navigation pitfalls. As a user who usually has between 5 and 15 tabs open at any time, I am curious to see if I can use the new scheme or will revert back to the Safari 3 interface once the new version is out of beta.

The Unix Geek has some definite opinions about the public beta:

1. Putting tabs on the top of the window was really smart; now there’s a lot more space for actual browsing. However, you have to select the upper-right corner of tabs to move them, unlike in Safari 3 where you could move them by selecting them anywhere.
2. The X to close tabs is hidden in non-active tabs until you mouse over them.
3. I still find Cover Flow useless in most cases, but I really like its implementation as a Bookmarks or History browser.

He also found the new browser a big faster, and liked the ability to save web applications under the File menu.

Gizmodo.com tested Mac and PC versions of the Safari 4 beta, and lists what they like – and don’t like – so far.

OSNews.com writes Safari 4 Beta: UI Disaster. The tabs, again, are taking a bit of a beating. Not everyone agrees with this opinion, but his points are quite good. The similarity between Safari 4 tabs and Chrome (Google’s new browser for Windows – Mac not available yet) is noted, and the differences make the difference, so to speak.

Ars Technica roundup

Ars Technica has a growing number of Safari 4 articles.

Hands on: Safari 4 beta fast, mixes polish, rough UI edges addresses new features, some criticisms and comments, and a few cautions.

Safari 4 how-to: Top Sites Browser in a nutshell shows the new Top Sites Browser, something that Apple figures will dazzle the rest of us by offering a visual “wall” of our most frequently visited Web sites. There’s more to it than meets the eye, though. Read the full article to find out how to use this feature and customize it for your personal needs.

Opening the package and peeking under the hood of Safari 4 looks at what’s inside Safari 4, and how it works. This is a bit geeky, but very interesting if you understand or want to understand a bit of how Safari 4 is put together.

CSS Recipes for WebKit

Apple posted a page explaining new CSS usability with code and examples for web designers and developers. Most of the “recipes” will degrade gracefully on other browsers and some are not part of the CSS3 standard, but they are very cool and for Safari 4 users will really add to the browsing experience.

The new properties are:
Simple Drop Shadows
Roll Over Pop Outs
Animated Image Rollovers
CSS Multicolumn Layouts That Work
Simple CSS Rounded Boxes
New Types of Form Controls
A Simple Pop-out Box

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