14 DAY TRIAL // Like hitting that NOS button in racing games? If so, you'll love Safari 4! Moments ago, Apple announced the public beta of Safari 4, “the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac and Windows PCs,” according to the official report. The new version of the Mac specific web browser introduces the new Nitro engine, which allegedly runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.
Apple says there's more... much more to be had with the fourth major release of Safari. New features that make browsing “more intuitive and enjoyable” also include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks and more.
“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”
A complete list of the new features in Safari 4 is available below.
· 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, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.
On the Mac side, Safari 4 requires any Mac running Security Update 2009-001 and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 or Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, or a Mac with an Intel processor or a Power PC G5, G4, or G3 processor and built-in FireWire. Some 256MB of RAM is also needed for a good experience, while features like Top Sites and Cover Flow on Mac OS X Tiger require a Quartz-Extreme compatible video card. We will detail these requirements in a separate article.
