Apple Announces Safari 4 beta for Download
By Bob on Feb 24, 2009 in Computer Software
Seems the browser war continues. Apple just released it’s beta of Safari 4 today, announcing the new upgraded browser is three times faster than any other on the market. The big change with the new version is what Apple calls the Nitro Engine, which runs javaScript 4.2 and is four times faster than on Safari 3 according to Apple. We just downloaded the new browser for testing and I am sure you will be reading in the near future our take on the browser. I myself do not use Safari, instead I use Firefox mostly in part for it’s hugh extention support and Google Chrome.
Here are some highlights as whats under the hood with the new features.
- Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
- Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they’ve seen before;
- Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes®;
- Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
- Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;
- Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
- Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text;
- built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and
- a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.
You can download the beta for both Mac and Windows here.
i really love the layout of Safari 4. the graphics of this browser looks much better than firefox.