Feb 24 2009
Is there anywhere Apple won’t put Cover Flow? Safari 4.0 Beta Announced
Today Apple announced the public beta of Safari 4 for Mac (under Tiger or Leopard) and Windows (XP SP2 or Vista).
Apple claims the Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. Safari 4 also has other new features like “Top Sites” (which gives shiny thumbnails of frequently visited pages), Full History Search, Cover Flow (because everything has to have Cover Flow), and Tabs on Top (with no option to put them back where they were).
Safari 4 is available immediately as a free download. A more complete list of features is listed after the “Read more.”
The new features in Safari 4 include:
- Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
- Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they’ve seen before;
- Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes;
- Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
- Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;
- Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
- Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text;
- built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and
- a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows for Windows users that actually like the way Windows looks.
Note:For those of you using 1Password, Safari 4 might appear to break the password app’s functionality, but it is actually not the case. 1Password Version 2.9.9.BETA-11 (build 7364) works wonderfully well with Safari 4. To access this update, go to Preferences in 1Password and under Updates check the box next to Include Beta versions and then click the “Check now” button. A new version will be offered to you. Download it, apply its plug-in to Safari and restart your browser.
People Who Read This Item Might Also Like…