Apple Debuts Safari 4 Beta for Mac and Windows

CIO Magazine ^ | February 24, 2009 8:03AM | By Jennifer LeClaire

[Swordmaker]

Apple, Inc. has made a beta of Safari 4 available to the public and says its the fastest and most innovative browser for the Mac and Windows. New features in Safari 4 include new views, tabs and a Nitro JavaScript engine that Apple says is up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7. Safari 4 is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects.

The browser wars are starting again. Apple on Tuesday launched the public beta of Safari 4. The maker of the Mac is billing its latest browser version as the world's fastest and most innovative for both Mac and Windows PCs. Analysts said Apple is right to brag about its latest innovations.

The Safari 4 beta comes with a slew of new features that aim to make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable. Top Sites, for example, offers a visual preview of frequently visited pages. Full History Search lets you search through titles, Web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages. And Cover Flow lets you flip through Web history or bookmarks much the same way you flip through your album covers on the iPod.

"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into Web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 Web standards that enables the next generation of interactive Web applications."

The Lightning Round

According to Apple, the Nitro JavaScript engine in Safari 4 is the world's most advanced browser technology. The claims are impressive. Apple said Nitro runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Apple also said Safari loads HTML Web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.

"It's hard to innovate on the browsing experience these days. It's simple. It's familiar. It works. But Apple really has done some nice stuff with the Safari 4 beta," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret. "I have only been using it for a few minutes, but it definitely feels like there's a speed bump here."

Beyond the speed, Apple has also integrated nine new key features in Safari 4. Tabs on Top aims to offer better tabbed browsing with drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones. The Smart Address Field automatically completes Web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history. And Smart Search Field lets users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches.

What's more, Full Page Zoom offers a closer look at any Web site without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text. Built-in Web developer tools debug, tweak and optimize a Web site for peak performance and compatibility. A new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows 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. (continued...)

Battling for Browser Share

As Gartenberg sees it, Apple is indicating it is serious about the Web and taking the experience to the next level. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so Web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable Web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks.

"What we have here is a whole new era of browser wars going on with Microsoft , Apple, Mozilla and Google battling it out. The stakes may be different, but they are no less important than they were in the last century," Gartenberg said. "Safari 4 cements the Safari position on Mac OS. Mac OS users have a first-class integrated browsing experience and don't have to look elsewhere. But it also drives the technology further onto the Windows platform."

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

the format retaining, graphic and font resolution size independence of the Zoom feature are great!

Are you suggesting that if I'm using 4.0 beta, and I key in a couple of zooms, that the format of web site doesn't ever get blown up, forcing me to zoom back out?

Honest injun?

[Terpfen]

That’s not the same. That disables Javascript across the board; NoScript selectively whitelists and also protects against XSS exploits, among other things.

[Golden Eagle]

the format retaining, graphic and font resolution size independence of the Zoom feature are great!

The lack of this feature has been why I have generally NOT been using Safari. The other basic feature they've been lacking that practically all other browsers have is the ability to prompt for cookie acceptance in real time, do you know, has that been addressed as well? Thanks!

[Swordmaker]

Are you suggesting that if I'm using 4.0 beta, and I key in a couple of zooms, that the format of web site doesn't ever get blown up, forcing me to zoom back out? Honest injun?

Honest motor. One of the worst offenders is Mac Daily News... the various fonts often spill over their bounding boxes in the format on any Text zoom... but on Safari 4.0, everything grows proportionately. No spill... no over writing... no piling text on text.

[AZLiberty]

To refresh: Command-R on the Mac, if it’s like previous version. Don’t know if Control-R works the same way on Windows.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

" Netscape was doomed when AOL bought it, but MS used their old tricks to damage Netscape."

Netscape was a pawn in a much bigger game than most folks here seem to recall.

Early on, Netscape's largest shareholder (a matter of public record, easily verified) was an investment firm called Amerindo. Think: Amer. Indo.

"The name Amerindo came from the fund's first investors, a group of Indonesian Chinese who wanted [the founder, Cuban expatriate Alberto] Vilar to call the firm American Indonesian Singaporean Investment Co. but settled for an abbreviation." --Fortune, October 25, 1999

Amerindo ran a smallish tech-oriented public mutual fund. Most of what you'll find about them on the web will regard that defunct fund, or Vilar's later jailing, and those are not what's interesting. Their main action has always been their private investment fund, that group of Indonesian/Chinese billionaires.

So: yet another initiative of the Clinton Administration just happened to benefit Indonesian/Chinese billionaires, the same species of shadowy moneybags familiar from Chinagate, the Buddhist Temple donations, etc etc. One can easily imagine one of these gentlemen pulling Clinton aside at a White House coffee gathering and whispering that Something Must Be Done about this Microsoft monopoly that was killing their investment in Netscape...

A neat circle, IMHO. As with all else regarding the Clintons, follow the money.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

on Safari 4.0, everything grows proportionately. No spill... no over writing... no piling text on text.

Sho' 'nuff! I didn't wait for your reply to my question, but did the download and tried it for myself. Went to a website that I hadn't been able to magnify, and - Shazam! Works like a champ!

I mentioned it to my son the Comp Sci degree holder, and he ragged on Safari by saying that IE 8 already has that feature. I of course replied that Safari is a gazillion times faster than IE . . .

No hiccups yet . . . wonder how long 'til this beta goes mainstream?

But I haven't figured out what benefit the "top tab" configuration is supposed to be. Just something to get used to, looks like - unless it's done to give them more room to adequately label multiple tabs . . .

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Are you suggesting that if I'm using 4.0 beta, and I key in a couple of zooms, that the format of web site doesn't ever get blown up, forcing me to zoom back out? Honest injun?

Honest motor. One of the worst offenders is Mac Daily News... the various fonts often spill over their bounding boxes in the format on any Text zoom... but on Safari 4.0, everything grows proportionately. No spill... no over writing... no piling text on text.

The thing that I'm having trouble getting used to is a direct consequence of that - before 4.0, images didn't zoom, and now they do. So on web sites with images, I'm used not only to the overlapping text tendencies but also to smaller images. Even the "spell," "preview," and "post" chicklets below this text box look funny because I'm used to seeing them at their unmagnified size.

[Covenantor]

The only thing I haven’t found is a way to change the default search engine from Google.

Go to edit, choose preferences, go to general, choose default search engine

[Swordmaker]

Under the View menu you can check the "Zoom Text Only" item for the previous way of zooming...

[6SJ7]

Thought this was a cool hack to apply to the Safari 4 browser. It uses a pie-chart to show progress as a website loads. The pie-chart overlaying the website favicon during the load. It also restores the ability to add a separate "reload" icon to the toolbar (I know you can use the looping-arrow icon appearing to the right of the URL, but I'm use to the stand-alone "reload" icon).