Safari 4 beta
 

I recently installed Safari 4. It definitely is (or at least feels) faster than 3. The "Top Sites" is an obvious rip from Google's Chrome, but is still useful.

When you first start Safari 4, you are greeted with a quick into 'video'. This 'video' was actually just a webpage some experimental CSS animations and images. No Flash or whatever.

EDIT: Well, the only thing that is an actual video was the Safari logo with the bouncy compass thing.

If you missed it, the page is here:
http://www.apple.com/safari/welcome/

I was surprised to actually see this implemented, as it has only been a recent addition in the nightly WebKit builds.

I'm still up in the air about Safari 4... lots of different things to get used to, but it is definitely faster. Do you happen to know offhand if it has a "Classic" mode? I'm just curious and admittedly haven't gone through the Preferences in detail to see if there is an obvious configuration for that.

Opera had that long before Chrome and I think, but not sure, that Firefox had that option as a plugin from a 3rd-party. I figured it would get picked up by other browsers eventually but I would have thought it would have been much much sooner.


What aspects are you referring? You don't have to make Top Sites your homepage. There are also plenty of hidden features that will make it look a lot more like Safari 3. Such as restoring the blue progressbar, reverting to the old Tabs setup, eliminating Google Suggestions, etc. Just go the site below or check MacOSXHints.com's main page as I'm sure they've all been submitted.

• http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...90225234804752

PS: I'm loving Safari 4. The only thing that is missing is sandboxed processes for each tab, like in Chrome, but this release came too soon for such a low level rebuild since Chrome's debut. I'm sure Apple et al. will include this feature as standard eventually.

It's probably just something that we'll all get used to, but I was mainly referring to the tab format... I haven't spent much time in Safari 4 yet, so that was just my initial observation. It just feels different -- I guess it's supposed to. All of my extensions are for Firefox so I need Firefox to be productive during the day. I was just being curious -- just giving it a good once over, I didn't see a setting to display the previous style tabs.

Does anybody know if using Safari 4 will prevent me from using Safari 3 or if it munges any preferences making Safari 3 unusable? (In case Safari 4 is not working well).

Not sure, but the installer .dmg came with an uninstaller package...

Be sure to uninstall any 3rd party addons, like Glims or PithHelmet, as they have been reported to make Safari 4 crash.

Yeah, the new tab layout is going to take some getting used to. I liked it when all the tabs were the same size so I could rapidly close a series of tabs by clicking the same spot. Plus it's sorta weird seeing the tabs as the title bar.

Restore your tabs with this hint:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...90224084121758

Oh, I also noticed they renamed the new JavaScript engine from "SquirrelFish Extreme" to "Nitro". Probably just because it sounds more professional.

You can also close tabs quickly by using the hotkey: CMD-W -- actually CMD-W works in most applications to close the current window or view within the application.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

It turns Safari 3 into Safari 4 Beta. That is, you still have just one Safari, except that it is now Safari 4 Beta, not Safari 3. I would have been annoyed by this, but I use Opera as my main browser and never really use Safari. Been giving the Beta a run every so often for bug finding purposes though.

My biggest concern is the direction that Apple seem to be taking with a lot of their UI designs lately. It's erring on style over substance - some parts (e.g. Top Sites) are flashier than they need to be. I did not buy a Mac for a flashy UI - I bought one because OS X had an easy-to-use, consistent and clean interface (amongst many other things).

(Before reading the next paragraph, please know that I am aware that the location of tabs can be restored to their old location - that is not what my point is about)

As far as I am concerned, "Tabs on Top" reduces usability for the sake of an extra 10 rows of pixels (woo, an additional 1% of my screen can be used to view web pages). The downside being that the notion of the window as the application container is lost - standard window-centric behaviours such as "click anywhere on title bar and drag to move window" no longer apply. You have to avoid certain tab-specific hot spots. Furthermore, since tabs are essentially "windows within windows" the behaviour of a tab should be equivalent to the behaviour of a window's title bar (e.g. click anywhere in tab and drag to move tab). That used to be the case, but no longer is. Now it's one behaviour for normal windows and a different behaviour for Safari windows. One of Apple's strengths has always been UI consistency, and I therefore see "Tabs on Top" as a step in the wrong direction.

If Apple want a "wow" feature, then they need to have a Tab-switcher-for-tabs (cf Cmd-Tab for apps) and an expose-for-tabs built in to Safari. Then you can remove the tab bar altogether. After all, the OS X desktop does not keep a list of open windows hanging around - that's Redmond's approach.

"Top Sites" is good - I am an avid user of Opera's equivalent, although you should be able to right-click on the thumbnail and bring up a contextual menu with such things as edit address (in my opinion, having a single "Top Site"-wide edit button is daft).

I am not too keen on the reload button being located in the address bar, but it has probably been done to give Safari 4 and MobileSafari a consistent feel. It doesn't bother me that much, since I always use Cmd-R to reload a page.

@ EatsWithFingers,

I disagree with Top Sites being too flashy. They could have easily made it work like original Front Row, with the pages swirling around when you click the arrow buttons or click the mouse (or something else flashy, yet ultimately slow in usage), but they choose a very simple small, medium or large option for the number of windows you can display on Top Sites. I do agree that more control should be given to how one chooses Top Sites, but for their first go I think it is very slick. It is one of the things I have always liked about Opera and hoped Apple would adopt, and knew they would once Chrome adopted it from Opera.

The up turned and tabs will become commonplace, as well as the separate process per tab, but that won't come until a major revision. I have a couple netbooks in which the additional pixels, albeit a small amount of vertical space, does help when rendering pages.

If you don't like the new tabs you change them back to the old style in the PLIST file on OS X. The same goes for the blue progress bar in the URL field. You can also use the Customize Toolbar option to add the Stop/Reload button to an area you choose.

Firefox still has the benefit of being the most widely supported standards-based browser and has extensions, but I can't see much of any reason to use Opera over Safari

True, it could have been waaay more flashy. I'm just not a fan of things which use 3D effects unecessarily (don't get me wrong, I think Top Sites looks great).

I'm certainly looking forward to when each tab is a different process. As for the "tabs on top" becoming commonplace, does that mean that Terminal and other apps which use tabs will start doing it too? I just hope that the user can choose which style they want (as is currently the case with Safari Beta 4).

For small-screen devices, I think that everything should be hidden. For example, you mouse (or touch) the top edge of the screen and a list of your tabs appears, or the title bar appears, or your bookmarks appear (which one depends on where you mouse/touch). Basically, have the browser always running in full-screen mode.

Until very recently, I was still running 10.3.9, and Opera was the only browser which was fully updated for that OS - Safari was stuck on 1.3.2 and Firefox on 2.x. Although I'm running 10.5.6 now, I still use Opera because I'm used to it (and I don't like the "feel" of Firefox for some unknown and probably irrational reason). As for the "extensions" thing, I don't really use any - the only "extra" I have is a custom style sheet. Opera has full-screen mode (i.e. just the web page - no OS X bar at the top, no window toolbars) and I think that Firefox and Safari require extensions/hacks to do the same. I don't use the full-screen mode, but I can see it being useful on small-screen devices (such as your netbooks). And there's also the "security through obscurity" arguement: Opera is not a mainstream browser, and thus there is a lower probability of any flaws being exploited.

I do keep Firefox and Safari around for sites which don't support Opera, and I periodically switch to using Safari or Firefox just to keep tabs on their progress. I see the possibility of myself jumping ship once the next round of browser releases come round, since Opera's new javascript engine (the one coming with version 10) doesn't appear to be as fast as the new ones for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

On a related note, I read somewhere that Safari 4's javascript engine ("Nitro") is "Apple's version of WebKit's SquirrelFish". Does anyone know what the differences are, or if it's just a simple case of rebranding?

I think it does mean that SL will probably adopt this new look and feel in the window bar for apps like Terminal and Finder. Perhaps Apple is seeing how people like it in Safar 4 Beta first. While I like it, I think such an extreme change should also come with a visible option in System Preferences to revert back to the old tab setup.


That is one of those reasons why Opera rocks!


I never liked that feature in Opera or IE. While I want as much page rendering space as possible I also want to see my tabs. too.

I don't use the full-screen mode, but I can see it being useful on small-screen devices (such as your netbooks). And there's also the "security through obscurity" arguement: Opera is not a mainstream browser, and thus there is a lower probability of any flaws being exploited.

Nitro is Apple's marketing name for SquirrelFish Extreme. I guess they felt SquirrelFish was a bit too esoteric to make people understand that it was powerful. Using cheesy names from American Gladiators is much better. :D

Just wondering: Does anyone else have a MacBook/Pro/Air with multitouch, and is noticing that the pinch zooming is WAY too sensitive?

To list a gripe I'm currently having with Safari 4, I believe John Gruber nails it:

The new progress spinner doesn’t make Safari slower, but it does make it feel slower. This time I really mean it: Please scrap it.

Was playing with Google Maps on a friend's MacBook and the zooming was far too sensitive (1 trackpad height = min zoom --> max zoom). However, this was Safari 3, and the zooming was done via two-fingered up/down movements.

It may therefore be a general sensitivity thing (i.e. a setting in trackpad prefs) than specific to Safari 4 Beta. I can't check to be sure, as I'm running a 5-year-old PowerBook G4 whose trackpad only recognises single fingers!


I remember when I first started using Safari and it had the address bar progress indicator instead of a separate bar elsewhere as IE had at the time (and may still do for all I know). Initially, I really didn't like it, but then sort of got used to it. Personally, I only look at the progress bar until something appears on screen (i.e. ~1s), and after that only if it is obvious that page elements are missing, at which point the progress bar tells me nothing I don't already know - the activity window does that. Plus, I never found the progress bar to be that accurate, so as long as there is still an indicator that Safari is "doing something" I see no real difference (in fact, a paused progress bar is probably worse than a continually spinning icon).

Either way, I'm not going to be put off by the progress indicator used if the browser itself is good (which it is).

EDIT: I forgot to address Gruber's point that you agree with: I don't feel that the spinning progress indicator makes Safari feel slower. However, I do prefer progress bars to progress spinners for long-duration events (e.g. >1min), provided that they are at least reasonably accurate. Safari's progress bar is neither for long-duration events, or in my experience that accurate.

EDIT 2: I should point out that I do not expect any web browser's progress bar to be that accurate for the following reasons. A web page typically requires the browser to load files from multiple sources, and it is not immediately clear what the total amount of data that must be downloaded is. The total amount of data which the browser is needing to download may therefore jump up by unpredicatable amounts, at unpredicatable intervals. Furthermore, the download speed for each file may fluctuate, further decreasing the reliability of the progress indicator. And the fact the total duration is quite small means that there is no time for reasonable averages to be settled on.

For me, if I even pinch no more than...well, the small unit of measurement you can think of, WHOOOSH. Smallest size. I try to adjust it again...It blows up to the biggest size possible. I think I'll try to capture it on video.

Yes, it's quite annoying. I can't find a PLIST option to prevent this. I've submitted it as a bug to Apple. The best work around I know of is to hit Command+0 (zero) to go back to the default size. Trying to accurately zoom back to the correct size usually adds even more frustration.

...sorry but i feel Safari is a /fail, Firefox FTW!

Safari= little kid with magnifying glass
Firefox= Adult with FLAME THROWER!!!
(picturing this is far more enjoyable!...) however on a more serious stand point... i do appreciate the user friendliness that Safari provides.... (many of the ppl i work with daily are techtards (i apologize to any and all who find that term offensive) however When offered between the two... Firefox all the way... but that is just me..

I pretty much use Firefox exclusively. There are some things with Safari that I just don't like. The new tabs are certainly too different. Title bars have always had a purpose, and putting tabs there destroys the title bar usefulness, and IMHO destroys the usefulness of the tabs. I don't like that there is no drop down for the URL bar. I don't think I use it a whole lot, but enough that I miss it if I'm in Safari. Perhaps the worst feature is the triple click the URL bar to select all the URL text. What's up with that? I need to select the entire URL way more often than I need to edit the URL. Oh well, at least I have a choice, and that choice will be Firefox.

Safari 4 Beta
 

I've been using Safari 4 Beta about a month now, and it's working fine for me. Couple of items take some getting used to, but overall I like it okay. Now, my question: when I click "About Safari" I see "Version 4 Public Beta
(5528.16)". Does anyone know If the last item is the "build" number, and does it get periodically updated? I wondered as Apple fixed bugs and made other changes if these were automatically updated to Safari 4 or if I would have to get online and download Safari 4 Beta again to get the latest changes?

Thanks for any help....Jim