Earlier this week, Apple released a new version of their Safari web browser. I've been trying in out for a few days and I'm a happy camper.
This is actually a beta version of the fourth version of Safari, so there may be a few bugs to be worked out in it. However, I haven't come across any yet. What I have come across is one very noticeably faster internet experience, and I'm not the only one.
The Safari 4 beta is available for both Mac and Windows, so it has been examined by experts on both sides of the platform aisle and the reviews have been almost unanimous. Most agree that the Safari 4 beta is now the fastest web browser on earth, almost three times faster that it's closest competitor, Firefox 3. For someone who spends as much time on the internet as I do, I love the fact that I have a new tool which is saving me time every time I use it. And, it's free!
In addition to a big speed boost, Apple had added several new features that seem borrowed from iTunes and the iPhone/iPod Touch. The Top Sites feature lets you enjoy an at-a-glance preview of your favorite websites. Safari 4 Beta tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page.
As it does with iTunes, Cover Flow offers a highly visual way of reviewing your site history and bookmarked sites, presenting full-page previews of the websites that look exactly as they did when you last visited them.
Cover Flow also partners with Full History Search, giving you a dramatic new way to revisit sites, letting you flip through full-page previews of the sites you visited in the past. Safari automatically stores all the text and a thumbnail of every page in your history. Just type a word or phrase in the History Search field in Top Sites, and Safari quickly presents you with a list of possibilities. In fact, you can search for anything that was on a page you visited, even photo captions. To jog your memory, Safari presents the sites it finds in Cover Flow, giving you the opportunity to spot the right site on sight.
The Safari 4 beta takes the tabbed browsing up a notch...literally. The tabs have now been moved to the top of the browser window to allow more room to view pages. I don't use tabs that much myself, so I can't really speak to the improvement.
All in all, I am very happy with the changes Apple has made to there web browser. Even though this is a beta release, I'm going to suggest that you download it and give it a spin yourself.
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