Well, it's Tuesday, and that often means a software release from Apple. Today, both Mac and Windows users can scarf up a beta copy of Safari 4, with many new and desirable features. Here's a download link for those who are ready to go.

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

Other features include Full Page Zoom, a 'smart' address field, a 'smart' search field, and more robust phishing and malware protection.

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)

Adium, the reigning king of 3rd party multi-network chatting on the Mac, has been updated to v1.1, but don't be fooled: even though it appears to be a minor x.1 update, there's a pretty significant list of changes here. Tabs seem to be all new, with the ability to move the tab list to any side of the chat window (top, left, right, etc.). Customizing Adium's menubar icon has also gotten a lot easier, now that it is an official xtra for which you can download new icons from AdiumXtras.com. DirectConnect over AIM - the feature that allows you to simply drag pictures into iChat windows and have them display in-line during a chat - should also work more reliably, and it is automatically initiated when needed now. Rounding up the list of major changes is a new ability to import iChat accounts, statuses and chat transcripts, helping Adium to become your central chatting hub.

Of course this isn't all, so knock yourself out with the complete list of changes if you're feeling adventurous. Otherwise, simply start up Adium to receive the auto-update notification or head over to Adiumx.com to download a fresh copy, and be sure to donate to the Adium crew (check the bottom of the page) for their fantastic work on a great chat app.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

While Meebo is still working on optimizing their web-based chat service for the iPhone, a new player by the name of eBuddy is joining the ranks of FlickIM, JiveTalk and Trillian Astra. Already doing business like Meebo as a web-based, multi-network chat service, eBuddy has just announced an alpha version of their iPhone-optimized chat app that is heavy on the features, though certainly a departure from mimicking the increasingly standard iPhone-ish UI. With support for AIM, Yahoo! and MSN (which I thought was now called Windows Live Messenger?), as well as text styling and the all-too-handy tabbed chatting, eBuddy definitely offers a powerful iPhone chatting experience - if you're willing to wait for the web app to load, that is.

Users can simply visit ebuddy.com on their iPhone to access the optimized app. Alpha tester beware though: eBuddy took a surprisingly long time to load even over my AirPort Express Wi-Fi, which makes me worry about testing it over EDGE.

Still, it's nice to have options for those times when Apple drops the ball, and eBuddy looks like one of the most feature-packed chat alternatives for the iPhone yet.

Thanks Chris

Move over Shiira, cuz there's another browser in town that can bring the power of Exposé to its tabs. Cocoamug Software's TabExposé enables Safari (even the new v3 beta) with a configurable shortcut key to display the current window's tabs in an Exposé-style layout. To be sure, however, it only works on the current window and the tabs that window contains; if you have more than one window open with tabs in Safari, the others will sit in the background.

TabExposé works well in Safari 3 beta on my MacBook Pro, and with extra options like applying a color bar to the top of the tabs when TabExposé is invoked, $4.90 is a very, very tiny price to pay for such a handy Safari tab management tool.

Google's Summer of Code is a really cool, really massive project focused on open source that first started back in 2005. It functions on a pretty simple concept: the company gives out grants to student developers (this summer they brought on 900 from a list of 6,200 applicants) to work on open source projects for the summer, and we all subsequently benefit in one way or another. Take a gander through the long list of projects on the menu for this summer, and click on any to see what the goals are.

Whether or not these goals are met by the end of the summer is another thing entirely, but there are some great projects and features on the list for such apps as Adium, Camino, Thunderbird, Inkscape and much more. Adium, for example, might gain features like basic voice chat, AppleScript and Bonjour support, while a juicy feature on Camino's todo list is Tabsposé, bringing the window management wonders of Exposé (much like the WebKit-based Shiira features) to the more Mac-like alternative to Firefox. In fact, one of the developers involved with working Tabsposé for Camino is blogging the effort, with a few posts already online covering developer-oriented topics like getting caught up with minor details and coding resources, but also including teaser mockups of what Tabsposé might eventually look like.

Long story short: Google's third round of Summer of Code looks like it will again do some great things for Mac OS X software and open source on a broader scale. Heck, those open source developers are even getting paid, which must be a nice change of pace for some of them. We'll keep an eye on what new features arise from this Google-funded coding powwow at the end of the summer.

TUAW reader Jason wrote in asking us how to switch between open tabs in Safari. If you're using tabbed browsing in Safari, it may not be immediately obvious how to navigate other than to click on the tab you want to view. Fortunately, Apple did build in keyboard shortcuts: to cycle left between tabs, type Command-Shift-Left Arrow or Command-Shift-[. To cycle right, use Command-Shift-Right Arrow or Command-Shift-].

Firefox uses a different approach. To select a tab, hold down the Command key while pressing a tab number. Command-1 selects the first tab, Command-4 the fourth. (For the curious, in Safari, this Command-Number approach selects the nth item in your Bookmark bar that is not a folder.)

More after the jump...

It's true, I admit it, I have a bit of a thing for tabbed text editors (I'm seeking counseling). Anyway, I've discovered yet another one. Peter Borg (who is also behind the very cool Lingon launchd utility) has just released version 3 of his Smultron open-source text editor (with vertical tabs). This update improves a lot of things, including project management, application speed, memory usage, and not least of all, the interface (the tabs themselves are not new). Though I won't be dropping TextMate anytime soon, Smultron definitely looks like an interesting entry in the free text editor sweepstakes.

Smultron is a free download from sourceforge.

MacRabbit has released CSSEdit 2.5, a significant update to their fantastic CSS editing and manipulating application. As if CSSEdit 2.0 didn't bring enough cool features, v2.5 is almost like sneaking a peek at your v3.0 birthday presents that are stashed away in your parent's closet the day before your party. There is a list of what's new on the MacRabbit's blog.

Quite the update, but a free one for registered owners of v2.x. Users of 1.x can upgrade for $14.95 instead of CSSEdit's regular price of $29.95, and of course a demo is available from MacRabbit.

[via Nik Fletcher's Twitter]

We last mentioned Sticky Windows over a year ago, and now finally the window clutter tab utility has finally been updated to version 2.0 as a universal binary. Sticky Windows allows you to create a tab from any window. You just drag the window to the edge of the screen and it shrinks down into the tab. You can then click on the tab to get the window back. Also new in version 2.0 are tab types: manual vs. automatic (all tabbed windows other than the foremost one automatically shrink) as well as drag and drop to the tabs (though this doesn't work with every application). The Sticky Windows site has an extremely slick flash movie that demonstrates what it does (notice the clock in the menu bar of the movie). I have to say, though, that I'm not that big a fan of the pink scaling visual effect that you see each time a tab shrinks or expands.

Sticky Windows is $20 and a demo is available from Donelleschi Software.

[Via MacMinute]

We've seen video previews of some of Safari 3's features (the upcoming Leopard version) before; thought that particular video is no longer available - three guesses as to why. Here's another one you should probably check out before Apple's legal team starts firing off C&Ds: it's a demonstration of Safari 3's ability to drag and drop tabs throughout the bookmarks bar (finally!), as well as dropping them into their own new window entirely. While other browser have jumped the gun on these features, and you can have them in Safari with the help of Saft and SafariStand, it's nice to see these features being built in by default for all users to appreciate - though we bet Hao Li, Saft's developer, might not share the joy in losing one of Saft's key selling points.

Opera, the little browser that could (and did - go free, that is), has finished its beta and reached version 9, going Universal in the process. New features include:

• a built-in BitTorrent client
• adding your favorite search engines to Opera's search bar simply by right-clicking them
• site-specific preferences for cookies, pop-ups, etc.
• thumbnail previews of tabs when hovering over them
• widgets (hey, at least they didn't call 'em 'gadgets')
• customizable content blocker
• and more

This version definitely seems snappier now that it's Universal, and (say what you have to) these new enhancements like a built-in BitTorrent client show that Opera is blazing a trail faster than its competition. Give this version a whirl if you haven't touched Opera in a while but are still curious about it. If you need help with a browser transition, why not check out some of the del.icio.us tools (like my personal favorite: Delibar) we've blogged that take the 'bookmarks bar' out of the browser and into Mac OS X's menubar, removing the need for worrying about which browser you're using.

One thing I love about Chax, the vital iChat plug-in, is that its developer has been reliably rolling out a good handful of new features and fixes, even with a .0.x update like this one. New features in 1.4.1 include:

• Growl notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available
• Options to have the tab window come to the front when receiving a new message
• Option to disable the close buttons on tabs
• Option to have the contact lists automatically resize to fit the number of visible contacts
• Contact list row height will now adjust itself according to the size of a custom font as long as user icons are hidden (the two line view will not resize)
• Default iChat floating window notifications now work with tabs
• Clicking on a Growl message notification will bring iChat to the front and select the originating message window

You can check out the full list of new features and bug fixes in Chax's release notes, and grab your own copy from Kent Sutherland's site.

PimpMySafari noticed that Saft, a vital Safari plug-in, has been updated to version 8.3.0. New and updated features include:

• New feature: AutoComplete always on
• New feature: Tab thumbnails (like Shiira’s Tab Expose, not Omniweb style)
• Improvement: Also restore tab history when undoing closing tab
• Improvement: Undo support for closing other tabs

Saft is available from haoli and sells for $12 for either Panther or Tiger, though the Tiger version is the only one being updated. A demo is available, but if you're already an owner, you can snag the 8.3.0 upgrade from haoli's Saft for Tiger download page.

I know there are various plugins, addons, widgets and thingamabobs that will allow Safari to bookmark a group of tabs you have open. If you haven't installed any of these extras or you're just an applescript fan at heart, I found a one-trick script over at ScriptBuilders that should pull this trick off just fine. However, I haven't tested this yet, and the script's page doesn't state whether its compatible with Tiger and/or Panther, so if you try it out, please post your thoughts.

No, that headline is not a typo: at long last, after hoards of OS X users have cried out to Apple in vain for a feature to be added to iChat that other clients have had for what seems like a millennia (I'm Irish. I exaggerate. Sue me) - iChat now has tabs, thanks to the latest Chax update to v1.4. You have the option of placing tabs at the top or bottom of a chat window (or not using them at all, of course), and you can also chose colors for the text in the tab based on whether there is a new message, the user is typing or they've gone offline. I know I speak for many, many iChat users when I say: thank you, Kent Sutherland.

Another handy new feature in the update is a set of (optional) Chax menu badges to designate which iChat menu features belong to Chax. Of course, there are various bug fixes and tweaks, but what are you waiting for? Go grab the latest Chax update for tabbed iChatting goodness, and while you're at it: leave a donation for Kent's hard work.