Safari 4!

Posted by James

March 3, 2009

The release of Safari 4 Public Beta a little over a week ago now has spurred on a lot of downloads on the Apple site, heres just a post about what I think to “the worlds fastest web browser” update, and a heads-up on it’s new features.

Firstly, Safari 4 is available for free download as per normal for both Mac and PC as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is important to check the system requirements before going ahead with the download.

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There are notable changes to this new version, however some people might think that there isn’t technically, but I think there is and they are big changes too in my opinion. Here are just some of the new features:

Top Sites – This new feature allows the user to see a preview of their favorite sites all on one page, with the option to see 24, 12 or 6 sites under the “Edit” option, and all the the sites are available to view with just one click, this feature really does look amazing from any angle.

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Cover Flow – Cover Flow gives a very graphical Apple-looking way to search through site history and bookmarked sites, it gives a full page preview of the site in question exactly how the user last saw it, this should be better for memory recall in the long run shouldn’t it.

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Tabs On Top – Something I’ve certainly never seen before is this beaut of a design. Safari 4 now has all tabs appear at the top of the browser window above the search bar instead of below, which admittedly did look odd when I first saw this, but after using the browser for over a week now it does have it’s benefits, apart from when you click another icon you didn’t mean to click.

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Nitro Engine – For me the single most important feature of Safari 4 is this, it’s new Nitro Engine which boasts that it outraces it’s main competitors such as Firefox by three times and Internet Explorer by up to 30 times in the page loading and javascript departments. Seriously when I read this claim I laughed and didn’t believe it, but trust me it really does do the business.

They are just some of Safari 4’s new features, but there are 150 in total and each one improves the browser more.

If your looking at your web browser now and thinking “this is boring” then you should definitely give this Public Beta a try because it’s great. And this is only a Beta, meaning that this isn’t even the full version of the browser yet….WOW!

Download Safari 4 Beta now from the Apple website by clicking here.

[images source: Apple]

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