MacFixIt has some great info re: Safari 4 beta. Below are links with a brief synopsis of the articles:
Reverting Safari’s Tab Behavior
The full article can be found here.
One of the biggest gripes I’ve heard about the new Safari 4 beta is the new tab behavior. Safari 4 may be faster rendering Javascript, have new tools and some “cool” features like Top Sites and Cover Flow, but the new tab bar rubs some the wrong way.
If you can’t stand the new Tab location, enter this in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO
Then quit and launch Safari 4 again. To go back to the ”normal“ tab bar, re-enter the commmand with ”YES“ instead of NO”.
Safari 4 public beta: problems and fixes
The full article can be found here.
The new Safari 4 beta is just that, a beta for testing by the public. It’s showing some instability, is not compatible with plug-ins for Safari 3 and “haxies” and has caused some instability in other apps.
THIS IS FOR TESTING ONLY! It’s not a finished product, so use caution!
Some problems noted:
- Startup fails
- Mail Crashing
- Issues with Growl
- Gmail and Hotmail
- Webmail Interfaces and some web applications
The article has some fixes for some of these problems. Removing any and all Safari add-ons, removing the Growl plugin and any others that work with Apple Mail, and booting in Safe Mode (hold down the Shift key while starting your Mac) have helped some users.
Safari 4′s hidden options
The full article can be found here. I’ve put the various tweaks here, but it is all from MacFixit and is in no way my original material. It’s such great info I wanted to make sure it got widely spread.
This article provides Terminal commands to change various aspects of Safari 4 beta. If you are not comfortable with monkeying around under the hood with Terminal, leave these alone.
From MacfixIt:
To run these commands, copy and paste them in the Terminal. All of these commands are “boolean”, which means they take either a “YES” or “NO.” Ss such, to revert them just re-enter them in the terminal with “YES” (the default value) at the end
Change Tab Locations
To change the location of the tabs from being in the toolbar to being under the URL address bar, enter the following in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO
Bring back the blue loading bar
The new “loading” indicator is a spinning wheel at the right side of the address bar. This shows activity but doesn’t indicate progress, and, as such, has some users wanting the old style back. The following two commands will bring back the blue indicatory bar that displays behind the URL.
- defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
- defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NOdefaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO
Turn off the Google search suggestions
When users enter search terms in the Google search field, suggestions based on popular searches will display. Users can turn this off by entering the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO
Revert to old URL completion behavior
The previous URL completion mechanism would grab any reference to a URL and try to complete it for the user when URLs were manually entered. These could come from History as well as Bookmarks, but the completion was rather crude. In Safari 4 these auto-completions are displayed in categories, so users know where Safari is referencing them from. If this behavior is undesired, users can revert to the old completion list.
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO
Disable “Top Sites”
The new “Top Sites” feature is a snapshot of frequently visited websites, which also displays update indicators for the sites. This is accessible by default as the new page view (instead of a home page), or by clicking the grid of squares to the far left in the bookmarks bar. To disable this feature, users can enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO
Disable “Cover Flow” in bookmarks manager
Apple really likes their “Cover Flow” feature, which started in iTunes and made its way to the Finder and now to Safari. Users can minimize this by dragging the separator bar up to the top of the window; however, users can also completely disable it by enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO
Change the dimming behavior of Top Sites
This is relatively trivial, but by default when users select a page in “Top Sites”, the view of the page will dim while Safari accesses the page and updates it. This provides a visual that the current view may be “out of date” and when the page brightens up it will be showing the current page contents. If users don’t want this dimming behavior, they can disable it with the following command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -bool NO
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