Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple, Beta Beat
Apple offers Safari beta 4 for Mac and Windows
The new browser features:
- Cover Flow -- You can browse through your site history or bookmarks the same way you browse album covers in iTunes
- Top Sites -- look at renderings of your favorite sites, and open any one of them with a single click
- Full History Search -- A clever way to visit sites you have been to in the past. You can type a word or phrase into the history search field and you'll get a cover flow view of sites that match your criteria
- Nitro Engine -- Apple claims JavaScript now executes 30 times faster than IE7 and 3 times faster than Firefox
- Tabs on Top -- Allows Safari to have multiple pages open at the same time in a single browser window, and to switch back and forth with a click. The new Safari beta gives you more room at the top of the sceen when in tabbed mode.
- Windows Native Look and Feel -- The Windows Safari 4 beta more closely matches the look of other Windows applications and gives access to standard Windows fonts; Apple claims the same performance boost on Windows as in the Mac version
Safari 4 beta also includes some improved developer tools. Details on those options can be found here.
The TUAW team is installing the new beta now, and will have some thoughts & impressions later today. Go get it!
Here's a look at Safari on Windows (from Download Squad)
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
d3bruts1d said 10:01AM on 2-24-2009
Holy mother it's running fast. I never cared much for Safari 3, but I'm really liking Safari 4.
Reply
kasthor said 6:12PM on 2-24-2009
I'm not waiting for chrome for Mac anymore...
really nice
mail works good for me
Mike said 4:55PM on 2-24-2009
Yeah i thought it was way faster than the last version of safari ive been using it most of the morning no problems with it yet cant wait to see the full version.
mike said 10:08AM on 2-24-2009
It's nice but I'm 99% sure it was crashing my mail app. Had to uninstall and now mail runs fine
Reply
Daniel Tull said 10:16AM on 2-24-2009
Yeah, it's definitely crashing Mail for me too. I love the improvements, but I don't think I can work without Mail...
KeynoteKen said 11:24AM on 2-24-2009
Time to take a look at what changes you may have made to Mail or Safari because I've got the new Safari and Mail open now with no issues. Just loaded an HTML email just to make sure.
Dorv said 12:21PM on 2-24-2009
Count me in on those that Mail won't work anymore immediately following installation. The error reporting is blaming it on Growl Mail, but even when I disable it and disable Growl, and it still crashes.
Mike said 12:24PM on 2-24-2009
Yeah as soon as I took down S4beta mail worked fine again. It's doing something to mail.
Joachim said 12:40PM on 2-24-2009
I had the GrowlMail Bundle installed and since I removed it Mail is stable again.
Paul said 12:42PM on 2-24-2009
Yes, GrowlMail is causing (most of) the crashes, but just disabling it doesn't fix the problem. I moved the GrowlMail bundle out of ~/Library/Mail/bundles and everything is working (I moved it so I could easily put it back if I wanted to)
All other Growl notifications still work after this.
I'm staying with Safari 4 and will go without GrowlMail until the Growl devs issue a fix.
drewb2b said 1:16PM on 2-24-2009
Diddo. I loved it... if it wasn't for Mail crashing all the time, I'd have kept it. Back to Safari 3 for now.
boxeeftw said 1:38PM on 2-24-2009
Yeah ive got safari 4 and mail running together too, no problems. Try uninstalling and reinstalling any add-ons you have.
Mike said 1:51PM on 2-24-2009
It looks like you're all right. I uninstalled growl but it was still in the mail app so I had to turn it off. It works now.
Greg said 1:54AM on 2-26-2009
Yeah, mail isn't working for me either.
Apple needs to get on this, I can't even get new messages.
matthewpompeii said 11:32AM on 2-24-2009
love it!! just trying to figure it out, especially my top sites!!! love it love it love it!! please post 'how to's' and the like...
Reply
Pedro said 10:10AM on 2-24-2009
Agreed! This thing FLYS. It's like the performance of Chrome, with a ton of apple goodness baked into it.
Reply
quandmeme said 1:11PM on 2-24-2009
Sounds like some of the Chrome interface advances made it in to, that's exactly what Google wanted. Users win.
Kev orng said 10:12AM on 2-24-2009
Safari seems snappier!
Ahh, it had to be said
Reply
richtownsend said 10:39AM on 2-24-2009
Keeps crashing on Start. Have to research why....anyone who got it to run using the Glims plugin?
Reply
alex said 10:16AM on 2-24-2009
Oh I'd love the smart address field, have been looking for a plugin for Safari 3 for a long time...
Reply