Safari 4 beta released

Goodbye, native controls and window decorations. I'll miss you.<p><a href="http://i43.tinypic.com/2mk2uo.png" rel="nofollow">http://i43.tinypic.com/2mk2uo.png</a>

I've been using a lot of this in a developer preview for a while now, and the improvements over 3 are many, especially in the massively improved web inspector. The majority of the new things today are in the UI -- the tabs at the top, the top sites home screen -- and the majority of that is just Chrome done better.<p>I'm surprised at how quickly they've aped Google, actually. Perhaps just to spite them for taking so goddamn long over Mac Chrome? To be honest, I'd rather they'd aped the process-per-tab thing more.<p>Still missing: undo last tab close. Don't like the fixed "Add bookmark" button much, either.

A few thoughts:<p>1) The Top Sites needs a way for me to manually add a site I want to add. It looks beautiful but right now I've got one site in my top list that I feel shouldn't be there, because I didn't like my #6 and cycled through far too long, looking in vain for the one I wanted. (EDIT: Fixed!)<p>2) The feel is incredibly Mac-like. This is what I've wanted Safari to be like all along.<p>3) People that run the browser in "anti-chrome" mode (remove the bookmarks bar and the URL bar and run all searches with CMD-L) will find this to be the best solution they've ever used. Now there's a single line, since even the tab bar is gone. Brilliant solution on Apple's part to the problem of eliminating chrome. Furthermore, there used to be a bug where the search bar wouldn't vanish if you used the Google search bar during CMD-L. That bug is gone, meaning there's no need for a workaround (though I still think having a shortcut for a javascript-prompt Google search is the best solution).<p>4) It's a little harder to drag the tab bars around: I like that they let you detach more simply, but rearranging will take a week's getting used to.<p>5) Using Zoom with multitouch is incredible - I love how that feels - but not quite perfect. It's too responsive.<p>6) Multiple tabs look great - I like the expanded view and the faded out text that appears.<p>7) Trying to open an old tab I keep trying to double click, which minimizes the window. Not quite optimal.<p>8) No spinning loader for the page I'm currently on? Frustrating.

The one thing I always, always miss when I attempt to switch from Firefox to Safari is how Firefox automatically executes an I'm Feeling Lucky search from the address bar. It's an even better feature now that it searches my history/bookmarks first, allowing me to save the I'm Feeling Lucky step if I find a match first.<p>Safari mimics the live search of bookmarks/history in Safari 4, but what happens if I don't find a match there? I'm left with the search term in my address bar, and now I have to jump over to the Google Search field, <i>retype</i> my query, execute it, and then mouse down to the search results to get where I'm going.<p>Sigh.<p>Of course, if Firefox didn't regularly take up 15-20% of my CPU resources after having it open for 10 minutes I wouldn't be trying out new browsers every 3 months!

Still baffled by lack of proper auto completion for URLs based on the (HTML) title, e.g. typing 'hacker' into the address bar still does not offer me e.g. news.ycombinator.com even when this page has been loaded before, cached and stored in the history (btw: the new history search _does_ find URLs based on the title and other page content).

Hidden settings: <a href="http://pastie.textmate.org/398861" rel="nofollow">http://pastie.textmate.org/398861</a> (including blue progress bar and tab bar placing)

I like it so far. The only thing that bugs me a little is that when you open a lot of tabs, it's a bit more cramped than before (and I'm always afraid of hitting the "close tab" button), and that to re-arrange tabs, you have to drag them by the corner (otherwise you move the whole window).

Who can complain about an (alleged) increase of javascript speed of 4x.<p>Unfortunately, apparently still no support for plug-ins?<p>And the vaguely suggested help for developers... marginal: "built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility"

I don't know if this is just in the version 4, but it seems to me a major bug the fact that I'm not able to cycle through tabs when I'm on a page with an input text box selected, like in Google.com.<p>Does anyone confirm this or is it just ignorance from my part?

I like the location bar completion. It's a mixture of Safari/old Firefox's completion (+ faster speed) and the new Spotlight/FF3 style autocomplete. I think this is one example of good attention to detail on Apple's part.

Interesting that this release lacks the one notable feature of the Safari 4 Developer Preview. I wonder whether it's been cut entirely or simply cut from the beta release.

So, what's webymnd's take on this?

I'm really not liking the Chrome style 'tabs on top' my eyes are used to looking in one place for a tab and now it's somewhere else! I use Firefox as my primary browser and only use Safari as a dedicated browser for Google Reader - the difference in tabs is going to confuse me for quite some time I imagine.

Did they fix the bugs from 3.2.1 where Safari would forget your Facebook login and screw up logging into Gmail?

Best point for me: more screen space because what used to be the tab bar has been reduced to 0px.<p>Worst point for me: Progress indicator is gone/almost invisible. I now have to check twice whether or not I properly clicked a link.

Cool stuff, but I'm having a problem with the new Web Inspector... it seems to show the ungzipped file size for all files, rather than the gzipped one (which would be more useful).

I do love how minimal it is. It seems to be running really well on Windows 7 too.

I'll be interested to see how this compares to the Webkit nightly builds...

My google hosted email won't load with this.

It is pretty fast with respect javascript. Here are some results from my tests comparing it with Opera.<p>OS X: It way fater on every test except for 3D Mesh Transformation. (Safari:<a href="http://dromaeo.com/?id=60726" rel="nofollow">http://dromaeo.com/?id=60726</a>, Opera:<a href="http://dromaeo.com/?id=60727" rel="nofollow">http://dromaeo.com/?id=60727</a>). Safari was slower to respond compared to Opera during the tests and did consume more memory.<p>Windows XP: It way fater on every test except for 3D Mesh Transformation. (Safari:<a href="http://dromaeo.com/?id=60707" rel="nofollow">http://dromaeo.com/?id=60707</a>, Opera:<a href="http://dromaeo.com/?id=60712" rel="nofollow">http://dromaeo.com/?id=60712</a>). Safari wasn't responsive at all compared to Opera during the tests and did consume more memory.<p>Looks like my favourite browser, Opera, needs new javascript engine.

Yes, this is good.<p>On first glance it seems like they also fixed some of the blocking i/o issues that caused beachballs in Safari 3 and earlier - I wouldn't be surprised if they vastly improved this, since the whole history indexing thing probably is fairly intensive with disk.

For frontend web coder, here's yet another browser to test on.

According to <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html</a>,<p>"Enhanced Keyboard Navigation<p>Thanks to the enhanced keyboard navigation options in Safari, you can navigate the web without a mouse. Press the Tab key, and Safari jumps to the next password field, pop-up menu, or input field."<p>This is innovation !