Safari 4 Beta First Impressions

Giles Turnbull ()

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Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in First impressions, Opinions, Reviews, Software, Web |

  • Keith Thomas

    I have always had to have a second browser on all my Macs. It is this second browser (currently Firefox 3) that I cannot afford to lose. I have no problem blowing away the eye-candy browser (i.e. Safari) that does not work with quite a number of web sites that are critical to me. I have upgraded to Safari 4 and I now have even nicer eye candy to look at when I take a break from doing serious work through FF3. Very cool.

  • http://www.junkskull.blogspot.com Danny Policarpo

    i hate coverflow also and i can’t see the point of its use in safari its bloody annoying so i am defo on the same wave length as you there as for tabs its bit weird getting used to them but i think i will as for history search seems pretty much like safari 3 so i donno it all seems ui based changes… and i am not sure if i like them or not yet :S

  • AndyM

    Personally, I think the tabs on the top is HORRIBLE. I hope they make an option to either place them on top or the bottom. Maybe I will get used to it, but for now, it is annoying. The rest is pretty cool. I understand that cover flow can be a bit much for browsing history, but sometimes it is nice to find a site you have been to but forgot the name. I don’t think it hurts to have it there. And, I agree with what you are saying about the ‘Top Sites’ area. It’s more eye candy that may or may not be useful. I will try it out for a bit. You can customize it to the sites you want with a little work. Just open a new window, go to the site you want, and drag it in to the ‘Top Sites’ area. Then, click on the pin to keep it in its place. This is one feature of Opera that I kind-of liked.

  • Steve Wanless

    I have no plans on leaving Firefox as my main browser and this beta release just strengthens that. We all know Apple can make beautiful eye candy things but I think they have gone over board here. The Tabs on top are just weird and hard to use. Perhaps I should try to use if for a month…. perhaps not?
    The ‘Top Sites’ and cover flow book marks are neat demonstrations of what can be achieved but neither are anything that I would find my self using if I ever started using it as my main browser.

    There has to be a reason for doing everything, and just cause you can isn’t the right answer. I know they have plenty of highly paid staff who are ment to know what they are talking about…. I just don’t get the point of any of it.

    Maybe cooler screenshots of their software might help sales??

  • Matt Janssen

    I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I do like what I see of Safari 4 right now… I really just wanted to comment about the Cover Flow – I, too, feel it is a gimmick that has its uses in some places (like iTunes) but not really anywhere else. But since I never browse my Bookmarks through the Bookmarks Manager this doesn’t really bother me.

    For anyone who cares: A way to get rid of Cover Flow – just grab the little resizer just above the list of your bookmarks all the way to the top. It will get to a point where the Cover Flow browser disappears but you still get the search function. (It doesn’t turn it “off” but you can’t see the webpages anymore so it is pretty much gone.)

    I hope this is helpful to someone.

    I’ve used Safari since my Windows days and have no intention to switching my browser now. Safari 4 brings some new things to the table which I do think that once I get accustomed to them I will wonder how I ever lived without them – a common theme with me and Apple.

  • http://thewillseys.us/scott/blog scott

    I think some people just don’t like change. I like Safari 4. A lot. Apple just made Google releasing chrome on OS X totally irrelevant, IMO.

    As for the overwriting thing, I always make the assumption that it will unless it says otherwise, and think about the approach for simplicity apple always takes. They aren’t going to litter hard drives with various versions of Safari. And if they did, do they update all shortcuts/dock icons to the new version? Or leave them pointed at the old?

    No matter which choice they took, people would complain about it.

  • http://www.kawphy.ca Nscafe Unleaded

    The new layout and the top sites, to me, smack of “creating featurism”. It’s kind of nice to look at, but it isn’t really needed.

  • http://ochyming.wordpress.com/ Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira

    Very, very bad review!

    Top sites is NOT new thing, apple only did it better.
    As they say the core engine is the real, REAL thing.

    Eye candy?
    Uh-Uh.

    … for now i’ll put WebKit aside.

  • Harald Striepe

    None of my plug-ins broke. It appears stable – at least for the first 8 hours of use. The UI changes take some getting used to, but change is good…

  • MIke

    Installed Safari 4 on my iMac. Played with it for a while then used the uninstaller that came with it. Safari 3.2 came back with no problems.

  • Kate

    They’ve added the stop and refresh buttons to the address bar like mobile safari… huh… and stop only shows up when you hover over the progress circle. I don’t think I care much for that.

  • joe

    over at MacDailyNews, they have a link to a page that explains how to return to old tabbing and some other preference settings. I haven’t tried these yet, so touch at your own risk

    http://swedishcampground.com/safari-4-hidden-preferences

  • http://www.jackisyourcontractor.com Jack

    the “endless obsession with coverflow” is to prepare the way for touch screen Macs. Coverflow (along with dock grids and fans) will make it very easy to use your fingers to sort through data and navigate around your Mac. This was a theory posted on my website jackisyourcontractor.com (in the current events section) and I still think it is true.

  • Sinister Joe

    I love it.

    Sometimes I open a new tab like I might flip channels on a TV. I don’t know exactly what I want to read but I want something different. The Top Sites feature is a fun way to pick something. The application of CoverFlow in history is just a huge benefit IMO. How often are you doing some hardcore googling and maybe you saw something but you don’t remember the page name? Full history searching & coverflow means you can find it much easier. (instead of looking through each site in your history one by one)

    The top tab bar is OK. Not different enough for me to care much.

    Real Zoom is great and long overdue.

    The most obvious thing about Safari 4 is Apple has put some serious attention on the Windows port. Safari is now a serious contender on Windows.

  • Adrian

    After installing Safari 40 Beta, and playing with it for a while, I got to the conclusion it is not for me, at least, not as long as I cant get rid of the cover flow, and until I can install SafariStand or any other Flash blocker.

    By the way, any one wishing to uninstall Safary 4.0 Beta, there is an uninstall script in the same dmg as the installation script.

  • rauy

    How the tabs look in Safari 4 beta reminds me very much of Google Chrome. As well as showing recently visited webpages in thumbnail form…I’ve been digging that feature on Chrome ever since the first iteration.
    Hmmm, perhaps Apple took a cue from Chrome? Whatever happened to originality?

  • http://palacestationhotel.net PalaceStationHotel

    They have the Windows option already ready

  • spurn

    Nobody seems to be mentioning the speed. I’ve found Safari 4 to be super fast, much more so than FF3.

  • http://www.xanga.com/Mark_Hines Mark Hines

    Although claimed by Apple as fastest browser, I dont think its qiute that fast! I have used many other browsers and feel that google crome is the fastest of them all. By the way they have added new features such as “cover flow” which I like very much.

  • http://blog.argentinaslovenia.com Carlitos

    Anybody tried Safari 4 with the Foxmarks plugin? Does it still work?

  • tony

    I agree with Giles on all his points and will too be sticking with Camino. Far too much eye candy with no real benefit. I also have gone as far as uninstalling Safari 4 as it kills Apple Mail when you have GrowlMail installed which I can’t live without.

  • Mike

    I don’t see how people don’t understand CoverFlow for bookmarks. It might not be worthwhile to you, but know that there are a lot of people out there (like me) with very VISUAL memories… oftentimes, all I can remember is that I was on a site two weeks ago reading a cool article and the title was in a big red font. Well, that’s great, but without a way to look through my history visually, I’m not going to spend hours flipping through the titles and trying to rediscover it. All Apple’s done is give you ANOTHER tool to help find stuff you were recently looking at, and it’s a tool that unlocks new potential at that. Stop the hate!

  • Leon Dubois

    Hi, I have just downloaded the new safari 4 beta from apple.com and yeah there seems to be cool new features. I would just like to say that I have not really used a whole lot yet as I just downloaded it but I will mention the differences that I see in my macbook now that I really dont like:
    1: in msn messenger when typing in the box where you type and then hit enter or send – i have to aim cursor in type area and click the type area to put the cursor back there after each time i send something when chatting. It really slows chatting down and is very annoying. Aim cursor, click the area, type, send, aim, click, type, send. Very slow vs type, send, type, send.
    2: When dragging a picture from a website to a folder usually there is a .jpg at the end of the picture name once its in a file. Now since new safari 4 it does it puts a .jpg.jpg at the end now. Now its impossible to know if I have that picture alreadty as it would normally put a -1 behind the .jpg if the picture i am grabbing from internet – like a sports car etc is already in my file and is therefore a duplicate. Now because its a .jpg.jpg even if its a duplicate I cant know that it is because it normally would be just .jpg and then have a -1 at the end of the pic name. Very frustrating!
    3: Certain websites the back arrow wont work and just seems to refresh the page. I have to click the back arrow several times very fast for it to go one page back – also very frustrating.
    If anyone can help me out here it would awesome as these 3 points are very annoying. Please help. It might just be the set up or maybe its the way it is. I would like to go back to my reg safari that came with my macbook if thats the case.
    Thank you
    Leon Dubois
    (sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)

  • http://vilaboa.cl Gabriel Vilaboa

    @Carlitos (on February 24th, 2009 at 11:43 pm)

    yup, its wortks (Safari 4 with Foxmarks)